The Forum for Cooperation on Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) is a collaboration between the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation and Global Economy and Development program and the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). Founded in 2019, the project grew out of a Brookings-CEPS effort to explore transatlantic and international cooperation in AI development and policymaking.
FCAI hosts regular AI dialogues among high-level officials from seven governments (Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States) as well as experts from industry, civil society, and academia. The forum is co-led by Brookings scholars Cameron F. Kerry and Elham Tabassi alongside CEPS Director of Research Andrea Renda.
Over its first 18 months, FCAI held nine AI dialogues, bringing together hundreds of participants for high-level, multistakeholder roundtables. These roundtables explored topics including similarities and differences across national AI policies, avenues for international cooperation, AI research and development (R&D) ecosystems, and AI standards development.
In October 2021, FCAI published its first interim report, “Strengthening international cooperation on AI,” co-authored by Kerry, Brookings Senior Fellow Joshua P. Meltzer, Renda, and CEPS Associate Researcher Rosanna Fanni. The report focused on the most compelling reasons for increasing international cooperation (the “why”); the issues and policy domains most ready for enhanced collaboration (the “what”); and the instruments and forums to advance international AI standards, regulatory cooperation, and joint R&D projects (the “how”). The report presented 15 specific recommendations spanning regulatory alignment, standards development, and joint R&D.
FCAI publicly launched the report at a Brookings event: “Aligning technology governance with democratic values.” U.K. Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Nadine Dorries praised the “excellent” report as a “helpful step in [the] process” of building international AI collaboration.
Since then, FCAI’s research agenda has broadened to track the rapidly shifting global AI governance landscape, examining topics from regulatory alignment and privacy-enhancing technologies to AI sovereignty and international standards frameworks. FCAI dialogues identify opportunities for international cooperation on AI regulation, standards, and R&D, translating ideas and recommendations from these dialogues into reports and analysis that offer concrete, actionable solutions to shared global challenges. A full record of FCAI dialogues and related research is available on the Brookings website.