In science, economics and war, whoever has the best AI will win
You can’t yet ask a chatbot to produce a cure for cancer. But you can see that day from here.
Artificial Intelligence snuck up on many of us, who associated it with talking cars and runaway robots of sci-fi fame. George Jetson’s robot Rosie was framed as part of the family, but her “intelligence” never went beyond anticipating George’s desire for a cup of coffee.
AI in pop culture has usually been framed as some nefarious force intent on gaining power for no obvious reason beyond power itself — which makes sense, since that’s the way so much of our life is framed. The idea of an artificial intelligence devoid of political designs seems not to have occurred to us.
Yet we have watched it develop right under our noses — correcting our sentences, braking for road hazards we are slow to notice — not seeing it for what it was. AI’s first startling public appearance came a couple of years ago when it won an art contest by producing a dazzling image from a written set of instructions.
Even then it was viewed as a parlor trick as people signed up for the art-drawing app, created a few images on their own and then, the American attention span being what it is, largely lost interest.
Then, abruptly, we had open-source chatbots capable of jaw-dropping feats. In olden days, we mused whether 10 million monkeys pecking randomly at 10 million keyboards for 10 million years would at some point randomly produce a Shakespearian play. ChatGPT condenses 10 million years into 10 seconds.
These bots are successful because they almost instantly synthesize every idea, every thought, every experiment that has been committed to the world wide web. It can take the research of thousands of scientists around the world who have never even heard of each other and produce a sum that is exponentially greater than its individual parts.
More soberly, it will be able to (if it can’t already) scour every battle ever fought, the theories of the best military minds and the capability of every weapon in friendly and enemy arsenals and orchestrate a foolproof battle plan.
In science, economics and war, whoever has the best AI will win.
Which certainly must have been on the minds of the Chinese and Russians, those “dearest of friends” who recently met for declarations of mutual support and forced smiles in front of the cameras. This wasn’t an act of power, this was an act of fear.
Forget Russia’s battlefield setbacks — its greatest defeat is its setback on the world stage, as its technology and equipment has proved to be decades behind that of the West. China is in a similar bind. How it must have pained President Xi to appear on the same stage as the pathetic barbarian Putin — someone he surely sees as the miserable excuse for a human being that everyone else does.
But even if he won’t be including the grip-and-grin photos in his holiday letters, there was little choice. His hope is that two Eastern thugs can equal one democratic West.
But it is artificial intelligence that must keep both leaders awake at night.
Russia has shown that its technical prowess doesn’t extend much past hacking and international political mischief. China is further along, but it has a more existential problem: AI and dictatorships don’t mix.
Somewhat amusingly, far-right conservatives have been working on their own artificial intelligence model that will produce satisfactory answers to questions like, “What was the purpose of Jan. 6?” (Answer: to harmlessly tour the U.S. Capitol and buy some souvenirs.)
Unfortunately for them, these conservatives have the same problem as the Chinese: truth. How do you wall off the truth from a model whose success by definition depends on tapping every available source.
China’s first stab at AI was hastily shut down because it produced facts that were, well, factual, and thus counter to the ruling party’s pre-approved narrative.
AI is terrifying to some, and maybe it should be to all of us. But free societies that embrace open, unencumbered AI will have tremendous advantage over those whose existence depends on a carefully controlled flow of accepted information.
Everywhere you look today, there are causes for alarm: Russia’s nuclear posturing, China’s demonstrations toward Taiwan, Iran’s reckless pursuit of weaponry, Israel’s internal divisions, Mexico’s fentanyl labs, India’s quashing of political opponents, the rearmament of the Pacific nations, an American political party so devoid of basic morality that it prioritizes gun ownership over the lives of children.
The next few years will be interesting.
AI, however, might make all of this look like small potatoes. That’s a reason to be frightened. But it might also be a reason for hope.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: China and Russia are scared of AI; it might be democracy's last hope
