Artificial Intelligence and the Future of International Law and Power *

Abstract

This study investigates the way in which public discourse on social media reflects and shapes global power dynamics surrounding AI. Leveraging a corpus of approximately 21,000 English-language posts from Platform X (2021-2025), this study utilizes a computational linguistics framework-incorporating topic modeling, sentiment analysis, emotion classification, and named entity recognition-to analyze the construction of AI, interrogating its thematic narratives and affective investments across geopolitical contexts. Findings reveal a discourse shaped by U.S.-China technological rivalry, AI militarization, and infrastructural sovereignty, with strong currents of fear, anger, and skepticism. While Western powers and corporate actors dominate the narrative space, alternative discourses from the Global South emphasize digital dependency, exclusion, and justice. The emotional intensity and thematic complexity of the discourse suggest that publics are not simply reacting to geopolitical developments, but actively construct contested imaginaries of AI's role in world order. This research contributes to a growing body of literature that recognizes public discourse as a critical site of informal geopolitics and underscores the need for more inclusive, responsive, and ethically grounded AI governance frameworks.