Strikingly, however, neither of them mentioned the public, namely the billions of ordinary citizens around the world that the A.I. revolution, in all its uncertainty, is sure to affect. Dont they also deserve to be included in decisions about the future of this technology?

We believe a global, democratic approachnot an exclusively technocratic oneis the only adequate answer to what is a global political and ethical challenge. Sam Altman himself stated in an earlier interview that in his dream scenario, a global deliberation involving all humans would be used to figure out how to govern A.I.

There are already proofs of concept for the various elements that a global, large-scale deliberative process would require in practice. By drawing on these diverse and complementary examples, we can turn this dream into a reality.

Deliberations based on random selection have grown in popularity on the local and national levels, with close to 600 cases documented by the OECD in the last 20 years. Their appeal lies in capturing a unique array of voices and lived experiences, thereby generating policy recommendations that better track the preferences of the larger population and are more likely to be accepted. Famous examples include the 2012 and 2016 Irish citizens assemblies on marriage equality and abortion, which led to successful referendums and constitutional change, as well as the 2019 and 2022 French citizens conventions on climate justice and end-of-life issues.

Taiwan has successfully experimented with mass consultations through digital platforms like Pol.is, which employs machine learning to identify consensus among vast numbers of participants. Digitally engaged participation has helped aggregate public opinion on hundreds of polarizing issues in Taiwansuch as regulating Uberinvolving half of its 23.5 million people. Digital participation can also augment other smaller-scale forms of citizen deliberations, such as those taking place in person or based on random selection.

Deliberations among randomly selected participants have been tried out globally, too. On the sidelines of the 26th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties in 2021, a pilot for a global climate assembly was convened online. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, also recently ran so-called community forums among 6,000 randomly selected users divided into smaller groups for discussing cyberbullying regulations in the metaverse.

Finally, there is a rich worldwide tradition of participatory policymaking, from Swiss Landsgemeinde and New England town meetings to Indian Gram Sabhas, East African Barazas, and Brazilian participatory budgeting processesall giving voice to those willing to participate.

Its time for these elements to be combined and deployed on the topic of A.I. governance at a scale commensurate to the issue at hand. A good precedent for this is the European Commissions 2021-22 Conference for the Future of Europe, which combined an innovative multilingual digital platform, four panels of 200 randomly selected European citizens, and several national citizen panels, allowing 5 million website visitors and 700, 000 event participants to debate about Europes challenges and priorities.

When it comes to A.I. regulation, one could imagine a global assembly running alongside other localized assemblies. The global body would build a consensus on the boundaries of A.I. and delineate a universal bill of rights that should inform its continued development. The localized assemblies would then craft specific policies for particular political and regulatory contexts.

These assemblies could be augmented with wide crowdsourcing technologies that tap into the collective intelligence of the broader population and track public opinion. They should use A.I., too, helping citizens better understand the promise and challenge of the technology while increasing the efficiency, transparency, and quality of deliberations. In fact, a new program just launched by OpenAI will award grants to fund experiments in setting up a democratic process for deciding what rules A.I. systems should follow, within the bounds defined by the law. This is a welcome invitation for creative thinking on inclusive and representative processes to determine the future development of this technology.

There are important questions left to resolve, such as who will design, govern, and organize this endeavor. We envisage the authority to commission and initiate the process coming from the U.N., which is the most likely source of legitimacy in the global arena. But the design, governance, and organization of these deliberations should be left to distinct groups of stakeholders, including leaders in A.I. and participatory democracy.

Crucially, we also suggest bringing into the governance body former members of citizens assemblies and similar processes in a way that balances Global North-South representation. This foundation would pave the way for the mutual accountability and civic leadership indispensable to the success and legitimacy of such a global initiative.

Establishing a new model for global governance is not only key to reining in A.I.it will also set an important precedent for how to manage other 21st-century issues such as climate justice.

Creating A.I.-specific government agencies may be part of the solution. But we should also start planning for more ambitious, global, and democratic solutions. By drawing on the collaboration, creativity, innovation, resilience, and vision of the global citizenry, we can chart a sustainable and deliberative course for A.I. governance and free the futuretogether.

Hélène Landemore is a professor of political science at Yale University, a fellow at the Ethics in AI Institute at the University of Oxford, an advisor to the Democratic Inputs to AI program at OpenAI, and an advisor to the non-profit organization DemocracyNext. She served on the Governance Committee of the most recent French Citizens Convention and is currently undertaking work supported by Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, through the AI2050 program.

Andrew Sorota is a researcher at Schmidt Futures working on projects at the intersection of democracy and technology.

Audrey Tang is Taiwans Minister of Digital Affairs and chairs the National Institute of Cyber Security.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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After meeting Xi, Blinken said China is not ready to resume military-to-military contacts, something the U.S. considers crucial to avoid miscalculation and conflict, particularly over Taiwan.

Still, Chinas main diplomat for the Western Hemisphere, Yang Tao, said he thought Blinkens visit to China marks a new beginning.

The U.S. side is surely aware of why there is difficulty in military-to-military exchanges, he said, blaming the issue squarely on U.S. sanctions, which Blinken said revolved entirely around threats to American security.

Yet Blinken and Xi pronounced themselves satisfied with progress made during the two days of talks, without pointing to specific areas of agreement beyond a mutual decision to return to a broad agenda for cooperation and competition endorsed last year year by Xi and President Joe Biden at a summit in Bali.

And, it remained unclear if those understandings can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international implications. Still, both men said they were pleased with the outcome of the highest-level U.S. visit to China in five years.

The two sides expressed a willingness to hold more talks, but there was little indication that either is prepared to bend from positions on issues including trade, Taiwan, human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong, Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, and Russias war in Ukraine.

Blinken said later that the U.S. set limited objectives for the trip and achieved them. He told reporters before leaving for a Ukraine reconstruction conference in London that he had raised the issue of military to military communications repeatedly.

It is absolutely vital that we have these kinds of communications, he said. This is something were going to keep working on.

Speaking to reporters Monday during a campaign fundraising trip to California, Biden said Blinken did a hell of a job. The president said you know progress was made with relations between the U.S. and China because of the meeting.

The U.S. has said that, since 2021, China has declined or failed to respond to over a dozen requests from the Department of Defense for top-level dialogues.

According to a transcript of the meeting with Blinken, Xi said he was pleased with the outcome of Blinkens earlier meetings with top Chinese diplomats and said restarting the Bali agenda were of great importance.

The Chinese side has made our position clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali, Xi said.

That agenda had been thrown into jeopardy in recent months, notably after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over its airspace in February, and amid escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Combined with other disputes over human rights, trade and opiate production, the list of problem areas is daunting.

But also Xi suggested the worst could be over.

The two sides have also made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues, Xi said without elaborating, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the State Department. This is very good.

In his remarks to Xi during the 35-minute session at the Great Hall of the People, a meeting that was expected but not announced until an hour before it started, Blinken said the United States and China have an obligation and responsibility to manage our relationship.

The United States is committed to doing that, Blinken said. Its in the interest of the United States, in the interests of China, and in the interest of the world.

Blinken described his earlier discussions with senior Chinese officials as candid and constructive.

Despite the symbolism of his presence in China, Blinken and other U.S. officials had played down the prospects for any significant breakthroughs on the most vexing issues facing the planets two largest economies.

Instead, these officials have emphasized the importance of the two countries establishing and maintaining better lines of communication.

Thus, Chinas refusal to resume the military-to-military contacts was a hitch.

Progress is hard, Blinken told reporters. It takes time, it takes more than one visit.

Blinkens trip is expected to herald a new round of visits by senior U.S. and Chinese officials to each others countries, possibly including a meeting between Xi and Biden in India or the U.S in the coming months.

Before meeting with Xi, Blinken met earlier Monday with Chinas top diplomat Wang Yi for about three hours, an encounter that produced a harsh assessment of the talks.

Chinas foreign ministry said it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict. It blamed the U.S. sides erroneous perception of China, leading to incorrect policies towards China for the current low point in relations.

And, it said the U.S. bore responsibility for halting the spiraling decline of China-U.S. relations to push it back to a healthy and stable track. It added that Wang had demanded that the U.S. stop hyping up the China threat theory, lift illegal unilateral sanctions against China, abandon suppression of Chinas technological development, and refrain from arbitrary interference in Chinas internal affairs.

In its readout of the meeting, the State Department said Blinken underscored the importance of responsibly managing the competition between the United States and the PRC through open channels of communication to ensure competition does not veer into conflict, using the acronym for the Peoples Republic of China.

In the first round of talks on Sunday, Blinken met for nearly six hours with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, after which both countries said they had agreed to continue high-level discussions.

Both the U.S. and China said Qin had accepted an invitation from Blinken to visit Washington but Beijing made clear that the China-U.S. relationship is at the lowest point since its establishment. That sentiment is widely shared by U.S. officials.

Blinkens visit came after his initial plans to travel to China were postponed in February after the shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the U.S.

In his meetings, Blinken also pressed the Chinese to release detained American citizens and to take steps to curb the production and export of fentanyl precursors that are fueling the opioid crisis in the United States.

Since the cancellation of Blinkens trip in February, there have been some high-level engagements. CIA chief William Burns traveled to China in May, while Chinas commerce minister traveled to the U.S. And Bidens national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Wang Yi in Vienna in May.

But those have been punctuated by bursts of angry rhetoric from both countries over the Taiwan Strait, their broader intentions in the Indo-Pacific, Chinas refusal to condemn Russia for its war against Ukraine, and U.S. allegations from Washington that Beijing is attempting to boost its worldwide surveillance capabilities, including in Cuba.

And, earlier this month, Chinas defense minister rebuffed a request from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a meeting on the sidelines of a security symposium in Singapore, a sign of continuing discontent.

On Saturday evening, the founder of Pershing Square Asset Management backed a pledge from podcast host Joe Rogan to donate $100,000 to charity if Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor and critic of vaccine misinformation on Rogans show, would debate presidential candidate and vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr. 

Ackman offered an additional $150,000, arguing that such a debate would enable the public to better understand these issues.

If you are truly interested in saving lives, you need to further the publics understanding of the truth about vaccines, he continued later that day, referring to Hotez. This is a debate you cannot walk away from.

Then, on Monday evening, Ackman walked back his support for a debate between Hotez and Kennedy Jrinstead claiming the doctor wasnt a credible defender of vaccines, compared to the extremely articulate Kennedy, who Ackman described as an excellent choice for an antagonist in the vaccine discussion.

Its the latest twist in a now multi-day controversy about whether it is better to confront with skepticism and, at worst, outright misinformation about COVID vaccines with moderation or open debate (even in skeptical spaces).

Billionaires fight over vaccines

The firestorm began Thursday after Rogan, host of the popular The Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Spotify, released his interview with Kennedy, currently pursuing a long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. On the show, Kennedy trotted out debunked claims against vaccines (such as the argument that vaccines cause autism), and suggested that large pharmaceutical companies were suppressing his views. 

Then on Saturday, Rogan took aim at Hotez, who serves as the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, after the professor shared a critical article about the interview. The podcast host demanded that Hotez debate Kennedy on his show, offering $100,000 to charity as compensation.

Other (wealthy) commentators joined in. Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted in support of Rogan, claiming that Hotez was afraid of a public debate, because he knows hes wrong.

Mark Cuban, the star of Shark Tank and owner of new healthcare startup Cost Plus Drugs, accused Rogan and Musk on Sunday of being disrespectful to health care professionals.

You are driven by self interest, Cuban tweeted. Dont lie to yourselves and all of us and tell us you are different.

Conventional wisdom

Ackman revealed himself to be a fan of Kennedy soon after the candidates interview with Rogan. One of the most powerful and mind opening interviews that I have ever heard, he tweeted on Thursday. I am intrigued to learn more. 

Then, in several more tweets over the weekend, the hedge fund investor explained why he wanted a debate on vaccines, pointing to his lack of faith in conventional wisdom and media consensus. 

The experts, the government, and conventional wisdom are often wrong, Ackman tweeted on Saturday, arguing that people were wrong about transient inflation, how easily Ukraine would fall to a Russian invasion and, perhaps controversially, the claim that COVID-19 did not escape from a laboratory in China. (The lab leak hypothesis is nowhere near accepted truth, with many scientists supporting a zoonotic origin for the coronavirus. The U.S. intelligence community is divided on the question of COVID-19s origins.)

Instead, Ackman claimed that truth can emerge when two or more articulate and intelligent individuals in an open forum discuss and debate a controversial subject.

Studies largely agree that COVID vaccines prevented millions of deaths and hospitalizations. Widespread vaccination in the U.S. prevented 18.5 million hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths, according to a December study from the Commonwealth Fund. 

Almost 70% of the U.S. has received at least two doses of a COVID vaccine. Yet take-up of the newest COVID boosters, which target the BA.4 and BA.5 variants that dominated last year, is slow: Only 17% of the U.S. have gotten the booster, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ackman, who tweeted on Saturday that he was not an anti-vaxxer, now thinks the campaign was too aggressive.

Many lives may have been saved with reduced negative long-term effects on the economy, the education of our children, and our citizens mental health had the U.S. listened to skeptics of either vaccination or lockdowns, Ackman wrote on Monday.