China Is Using America’s Own Plan to Dominate the Future of Artificial Intelligence
The Chinese are massively investing in AI research and tech, while the Trump administration is cutting federal programs wholesale.
In late 2016, the Obama administration published three reports that shared an extraordinary conclusion: advances in machine learning, a technology that allows systems to learn and improve without explicit programming, are enabling a revolution in Artificial Intelligence (AI) . As AI systems become increasingly capable of not only routine tasks like driving a car, but also complicated ones like designing car engines, AI technology will be the driving force behind transformations across both the economy and national security.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the authors of the Obama administration reports have received a heartfelt compliment from their Chinese counterparts. With China’s July 2017 Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, the country has announced that it, too, sees AI as the transformative technology that will underpin future economic and military power. China’s plan calls for exceeding all other nations in AI by 2030, but the checklist for China’s ambitious agenda is strikingly similar to the policies prescribed by the Obama administration’s reports. Greatly increase long-term investment in AI research and development (R&D) ? Check. Promote collaboration on AI between the private tech sector and the government? Check. Develop a pipeline of top AI talent? Check. Invest to mitigate AI’s potential risks and societal disruptions? Check. The similarities go beyond such high-level objectives, even including many specific policy details and recommendations.
A reader of both documents would be forgiven for concluding that the Chinese strategy’s authors had copies of the White House reports on their desks as they wrote. Unlike a college term paper, however, there are no extra points for originality in governance. All that matters is to have the right policies and to implement them effectively. Unfortunately, there is plenty of reason to worry that China may have an edge in implementing policies practically cribbed from the United States.
The Obama administration sought to increase support for AI R&D, since annual federal funding for all computer science and mathematics R&D is less than half of what Google alone spends. Rather than boosting those levels, the Trump administration’s budget calls for cutting AI research at the National Science Foundation by 10 percent, to a mere $175 million. China, meanwhile, has demonstrated a willingness to spend jaw-dropping sums on technology when there are strategic national interests at play. For instance, in 2014, the Chinese government announced a 1 trillion RMB ($150 billion) investment fund to turn the Chinese semiconductor industry into a global powerhouse. Those figures are not merely hype. By 2017, the government had already made a third of that sum available. Similarly, China’s new plan foreshadows massive increases in funding for AI R&D.
One might think that U. S. government support for AI R&D is not terribly important, so long as U. S. companies lead the way. Perhaps that’s true in sectors like health care, but the U. S. companies with the best AI technology are often considerably less willing to invest in national security applications. When Google acquired DeepMind, arguably the world’s leading AI R&D organization, DeepMind required Google to prohibit the use of their research for military and government surveillance purposes. When Google acquired a leading military robotics developer, Google announced that the firm would no longer accept military contracts.
