The Scramble for AI

Artificial intelligence is suddenly everywhere. It seems as though no conversation about jobs, education, health care, technology, or politics happens without an inevitable question about how AI could disrupt it all. 

This surge in public interest can feel surprising. After all, the concept of AI—the intelligence derived from machines sifting through data—isn’t particularly new. But when the AI-powered ChatGPT launched last November, it was a global a-ha moment. The chatbot captured the world’s attention precisely because it mimicked conversation with an all-knowing human friend. Now we could see what AI was capable of. It could pass a bar exam and ace the SATs and do the kinds of things generations of humans have spent countless hours slaving over. Advances in computing had finally caught up with science fiction; the possibilities of AI’s applications in a range of industries emerged into view. 

 

The areas concerning AI that have so far generated relatively less public attention—relative to, say, jobs—are the ones intersecting with foreign policy. But that’s going to change. Cutting-edge AI requires vast amounts of computing power, which involves the most advanced semiconductors. And only a handful of companies and countries have a lock on that market. The great scramble for AI is having a profound impact on global power. In fact, it has for a while. Semiconductors are already shaping wars, cyberattacks, alliances, and more. One of the main areas of disagreement between the United States and China—the independence of a small string of islands with a population of 23 million—is intractable in part because Taiwan is responsible for nearly 90 percent of the world’s high-end chips. 

Consider this issue—“The Scramble for AI”—an early attempt on the part of the Foreign Policy team to understand how this new technology is shaping geopolitics. In our lead essay, Paul Scharre likens the current race for supremacy in AI to the nuclear race several decades ago. Now as then, competition will likely mean a sprint to secure the materials that go into computing hardware. It will also create a world of haves and have-nots. Thankfully for FP subscribers, Scharre lays out a strategy for winning—and regulating—this race.

Will the United States stay ahead of China on AI? That might be the wrong question, according to two top scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Matt Sheehan. They think policy wonks should instead be asking how the United States can reduce the likelihood of catastrophic AI-related accidents in interactions with China. 

What about warfare? Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led U.S. forces in Afghanistan, pairs up with AI expert Anshu Roy to describe how unbelievable amounts of data points are now being fed into machines to predict battlefield outcomes. This isn’t just hypothetical. Their systems are already in use. The question is how to make sure AI is used in war planning the right way and by the right actors. 

This sounds like a good time to discuss ethics and safeguards. Alondra Nelson, who served in the first two years of the Biden administration as a top science and technology policymaker, explains how we should think about regulation. The rules of the real world should apply online and beyond, she says.

Finally, back to where it all started: ChatGPT. Think you can tell the difference between an essay written by a machine and a smart human student? There’s only one way to find out. Our analysis will reveal the machine’s tells—until the next version of GPT, of course.

Working on this issue, it has often felt as though we’re living through a science fiction novel. Down on Washington’s National Mall at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, a new exhibition reveals a kaleidoscope of distinctly Black futures. Don’t miss cosmologist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s review of this landmark show, with an exhilarating conclusion from the author that she is living “an Afrofuturist dream come to life.” 

The future is well and truly with us. 

As ever,

Ravi Agrawal

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