Seán S. ÓhÉigeartaigh from the Centre for the Future of Intelligence
at the University of Cambridge wonders exactly what rhetoric around an ‘AI race’ actually means? He points out that for there to be a ‘race’ you have to have teams and a sense of where the winning might be.
China has never declared themselves to be in an AI-race, with anyone. Yes, President Xi has said, on occasion, the development of AI is a national imperative but only in the context of this being the case for every other nation on the planet. China has never declared an interest in ‘winning’ supremacy such that the rest of the planet could be subordinated to their technological hegemony.
On the other hand America, or more especially big tech companies and blowhard politicians, constantly invoke the specter of a winner-take-all race that the U.S. must win or be losers of for all eternity.
The paper notes a big advantage for tech companies and their for-profit-friends of creating this terrifying and existential threat is that it allows them to then argue for a lack of regulation and oversight.
This absence of guard rails, it’s argued by the interested parties, is necessary to match China’s posture failing to acknowledge China has, in fact, been very measured in how it’s fostering the development of AI and in some notable cases slowing down development.
To the question of ‘could China be secretly incubating a vast AI research effort clandestinely?’ Mr. ÓhÉigeartaigh (clearly an expert in this field) points out if this were the case the extra demand for kit, power and personnel would be showing up in multiple areas, and its not.
The real prize is believed now to be Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or the place where machines become not only smarter than humans but progress becomes recursive. But to get there doesn’t have to involve a ‘race’ and even in the land of AGI it’s not clear the first to arrive will have an in-perpetuity advantage.
He concludes; “..the stronger narratives around a US-China AI race have been overstated, and that the specific narrative of a US-China AI race for decisive strategic advantage, as currently presented in Western media and policy discourse, is one of the most dangerous fictions ever created. Moreover it is a fiction with the clear potential to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy, bringing into being a true race that would be even more dangerous. The world should not be lost on the basis of a fiction.”
The U.S. has form in overstating competitors’ strength to motivate spending and satisfy a political agenda and the late 1950s provides a salutary case-study (here: The Missile Gap Myth). It’s to be hoped the same mistake isn’t about to made with AI today standing in for the ICBMs of the mid-20th century.
You can read the work in full via the following link The Most Dangerous Fiction.
Happy Sunday.