Why the Artificial Intelligence Race Is an Arms Race

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By Crispin Rovere,The National Interest

Graham Allison alerts us to artificial intelligence being the epicenter of today’s superpower arms race.

Drawing heavily on Kai-Fu Lee’s basic thesis, Allison draws the battlelines: the United States vs. China, across the domains of human talent, big data, and government commitment.

Allison further points to the absence of controls, or even dialogue, on what AI means for strategic stability. With implied resignation, his article acknowledges the smashing of Pandora’s Box, noting many AI advancements occur in the private sector beyond government scrutiny or control.

However, unlike the chilling and destructive promise of nuclear weapons, the threat posed by AI in popular imagination is amorphous, restricted to economic dislocation or sci-fi depictions of robotic apocalypse.

Absent from Allison’s call to action is explaining the “so what?”—why does the future hinge on AI dominance? After all, the few examples (mass surveillance, pilot HUDs, autonomous weapons) Allison does provide reference continued enhancements to the status quo—incremental change, not paradigm shift.