Artificial intelligence should be a shared pursuit instead of the arms race that it has sadly become.

No sooner has the pandemic retreated, the bugles of war have been sounded. The sound of the war trumpets has shattered a long-standing principle encoded in the famous Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which brought an end to the Thirty-Year and the Eighty-Year Wars in Europe and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire. The two tenets of the Treaty have been the normative core of international law: one that the government of each country is unequivocally sovereign within its territorial jurisdiction, and two, countries shall not interfere in each other’s domestic affairs. Until Russia decided to shatter it with its tanks and planes.

AI is the other face of war

While we are riveted and horrified by this conventional war fought over ground, air, sea and social media, there is a more insidious and dangerous war being fought between the same nations in another area: Artificial Intelligence. Consider this statement from a joint paper by Eric Schmidt (ex-Google) and Robert Work: “We must win the AI competition that is intensifying strategic competition with China… China’s domestic use of AI is “a chilling precedent for anyone around the world who cherishes individual liberty…” A recent book co-authored by Henry Kissinger reechoes this ‘win at all costs’ sentiment. The Financial Times supports this: “…China has embarked on an arms race to develop AI-controlled weapons, in which the US and its allies are now determined to compete. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has made his own intentions clear by declaring: “whoever leads in this sphere will rule the world”.

China leading AI development

All big powers are joining the fray to ‘lead this sphere’ and putting money where their mouth is. China has committed billions of dollars to become a world leader in AI by 2030 by building a $150bn AI industry, focusing on smart cities, the military, and surveillance. Its tech giants – Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and Huawei, have been allocated specific AI areas to focus on. China has a big advantage – the data spewed out by its billion-plus connected people, with no privacy and security concerns hampering the harvesting of it. The results are showing – nearly a quarter of papers published in AI come from China, and it continues to file more AI patents than any other country.

US commits to invest in the AI industry

Meanwhile, the President of the United States issued an Executive Order in 2018 proclaiming AI development to be the second-highest R&D priority for America, after the security of its people. While it has committed to pour tens of billions of research money into AI, it is the tech giants that are leading the charge – Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Palantir, etc. The work is happening in both civilian and military areas: Project Maven, a facial recognition tool built by Google; Palantir’s data farms working for the US spy agencies, Microsoft and Amazon vying to host the Defense Department’s data and AI in their clouds.

Japan and EU join the AI game

The other world powers have stepped up too. Japan is focusing on robotics and has taken giant strides there. The EU has promised 1.5bn euros towards AI related research and support to compete with the big powers. The French and Germans have chosen specific areas to focus their billions on– autonomous vehicles, healthcare, industrials, the environment, The UK has chosen a different path with its stated aim to position itself as a world leader in ethical AI standards, hoping to create standards that are used across the world. Russia, following Putin’s statement, has committed $6.1bn towards making 30% of its country’s military robotic by 2025. India has also woken up to join this race by creating its own Artificial Intelligence Mission to support AI research and development towards and AI for All programme.

AI and geopolitics

The price is perhaps worth fighting for: $17 trillion of value added by 2030, according to a PwC report. But equally important is the geopolitical aspect of winning in AI: as oil shaped geopolitics in the last century, AI will shape it in the next one, with its potential for transforming warfare (see my article https://bit.ly/3MbCfl2 ) and the economy. But as Stephen Cave et al write in a Cambridge University paper (https://bit.ly/3CfTGMN ) , the narrative of AI as a race is both wrong and threatening. In this highly volatile world, it is perhaps time to change the narrative: to make AI development as a shared priority for Global Good, much like the COVID virus scientists share the virus DNA and research shared amongst every nation. We perhaps need a counter- Westphalian approach since these digital technologies will cross borders and permeate sovereignties with consummate ease. A great example is the proposal by Professor Gary Marcus to create a ‘CERN for AI’: ‘a global collaboration with thousands of researchers from over twenty countries, working together, in common cause, building technology and science that could never be constructed in individual labs, tackling problems that industry might otherwise neglect’… and discovering the Higgs Boson – the God Particle. This could be perhaps the best way to nip in the bud this other war.

FAQ