China’s AI dominance poses a threat to US stability.
The Unstoppable Rise of AI
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently confirmed what many have long feared: AI is here to stay, and its proliferation is unavoidable. While Altman believes that AI could be used to empower humanity, he warns that its unregulated use could wreak havoc. AI presents major questions about man’s relationship with nature and how we interface with reality. In terms of our immediate physical reality, beyond questions of societal redundancy through economic displacement, artificial intelligence presents challenges about the rapidly evolving geopolitical conditions the U.S. is not prepared to adequately address.
“OpenAI was founded on the belief that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of our lives, but also that it creates serious risks.”
In particular, China poses the greatest threat to American interests abroad. In 2016, U.S. Air Force officials and the Obama White House warned that the Chinese Communist Party had an extremely well-funded and methodological approach to developing AI. China intends to invest $70 billion specifically into artificial intelligence research and has surpassed the U.S. in terms of patents filed in a single year. At the same time, communist China’s theft of American intellectual property has continued unabated as agents of the autocratic state steal sensitive information about American tech corporations and universities.
China is Pursuing Global AI Dominance
Vying for the role of hegemon, China views artificial intelligence as paramount to attaining global power and tightening its grip on its citizens. According to the State Council of China, the autocracy’s chief administrative authority chaired by President Xi Jinping, China intends to become the global leader in AI by 2030 with “breakthroughs in the integration of human-computer interaction,” increasing the value of globally strategic portions of its tech sector by trillions of dollars.
AI technologies also provide the digital infrastructure for Red China’s massive surveillance apparatus — as seen with the country’s processing of the Uighur Muslim population. China’s establishment of global economic initiatives, such as Belt and Road, and burgeoning financial alliances like BRICS, threaten the U.S. dollar’s status as the global reserve currency. The U.S. is not prepared to adequately address these challenges, and it is time for policymakers to take action.
China is using artificial intelligence to monitor and track the behavior of Uighur Muslims in “re-education” camps, where they are denied access to basic goods and transportation. While the operation is morally disordered, it’s undeniable that the Chinese government has a cohesive and organized approach to AI. On the other hand, the U.S. lacks a consistent and focused national strategy.
Assessing America’s Approach to AI
The Trump administration announced a budget of $142.2 billion for research and development of quantum computing and AI, with a focus on strategic industries and national defense. However, the Biden administration has been lacking in this area, with the FY 2022 budget not even mentioning AI. While the proposed budget for FY 2023 allocated billions of dollars toward AI, very little of it was directed towards cybersecurity or national defense.
Despite this, the U.S. is starting to catch up with spending on research and development. The White House’s proposed budget for FY 2024 touts the CHIPS Act, which poured nearly $300 billion into subsidies and grants to stimulate the domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips in response to the increasing threat of Chinese tech dominance. It also allocates $96 billion to the Department of Defense for quantum and AI research and development, and $30 million to start a National AI Research Resource.
The National Science Foundation will spend $140 million to launch seven new National AI Research Institutes, which will collaborate with the administration’s partners in Big Tech. The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced an updated National AI R&D Strategic Plan that outlines how federal investments could be used to bolster the integration of AI into American society.
However, despite the federal government throwing a frighteningly large sum of money into a vat of ideological pet projects that generally seem to backtrack on tech development, there is some reason for optimism. The U.S. Senate is preparing to introduce bipartisan legislation — The Global Technology Leadership Act — that will establish an office tasked with analyzing American competitiveness in critical technologies, such as AI, in comparison to global rivals in an attempt to stay abreast of China’s technological progress so we don’t fall behind.
Why This Matters
AI technology has the potential to revolutionize our world, but it also has the potential to be used for nefarious purposes. It’s crucial that the U.S. has a cohesive and organized approach to AI to ensure that it’s used for the greater good and not to harm individuals or groups. The U.S. must stay competitive in critical technologies like AI to maintain its position as a global leader and protect its citizens from adversarial use of similar technology.
The Importance of Artificial Intelligence in Today’s World
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize crucial industries such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and transportation. By allowing for faster and more complex calculations with unprecedented computational power, it could help facilitate breakthroughs in medicine, robotics, mathematics, and more that change the trajectory of human civilization. Additionally, AI presents opportunities for greatly enhancing national security through better facilitating intelligence operations and advanced defense systems.
However, mastery of artificial intelligence is crucial for remaining competitive on the global stage. China is heavily pursuing AI dominance in its quest to topple the U.S. as hegemon. Sources familiar with the operational status of Chinese AI believe the CCP greatly limits its people’s access to AI largely because of the technology’s ability to inadvertently challenge party orthodoxy, so AI is rolled out on an “app by app” basis. Programs such as ChatGPT are banned in China for this reason.
The Risks of AI
Ironically, there are parallel issues with AI in the U.S., where it is integrated with deference to the programmers’ ideological biases. ChatGPT, for instance, is incredibly withholding and manipulative of information that challenges the closely held beliefs of its handlers. Whereas the U.S. and its Western allies are beholden to certain prescribed methods of governance given our general shared affinity for human dignity, China’s national strategy is holistically on the advancement of the CCP’s global agenda.
The Chinese Communist Party prioritizes its conquest — its consolidation of power, wealth, and global influence — over everything else, including human dignity. This is why Sam Altman’s recently expressed interest in collaborating with Chinese AI developers is cause for alarm. China’s record of stealing American IP alone should be reason enough not to pursue this inquiry. Nevertheless, America should plow ahead.
The Consequences of Losing the AI Race
If the U.S. were to lose this technological arms race, and subsequently be displaced as hegemon, it “will erode America’s position as the provider of the world’s dominant reserve currency and ultimately lead to a funding crisis for America’s burgeoning internal and external debt,” David Goldman, a Washington fellow at The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, wrote in a 2021 essay. Should this funding crisis arise and the dollar no longer be used as the global reserve currency, the U.S. will lose its ability to sustain its more than $30 trillion national debt as well as “unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities of perhaps $100 trillion.”
That said, for the time being, the U.S. still has command of the global economic and cultural marketplace. However, without a focused national strategy on how to attain AI supremacy, the U.S. will be left in the dust, and Americans will suffer. Decisive action is needed.
The Short-Term Advantage of the U.S.
For the time being, it’s likely the U.S. will continue to have a larger presence than China in the global marketplace. But without a focused national strategy on how to attain AI supremacy, the U.S. will be left in the dust, and Americans will suffer. The U.S. has a strategic advantage over China in “brain drain” — highly educated Chinese expatriates fleeing CCP tyranny — and a significantly less regulated private sector in which business and innovation are rewarded through profit and cultural incentives. People actually like doing hard work in America.
Conclusion
AI is a crucial technology that has the potential to drastically improve productivity and output and, subsequently, material standards of living. However, it also presents risks and challenges that must be addressed. The U.S. must take decisive action to attain AI supremacy and remain competitive on the global stage. Failure to do so could lead to widespread suffering and misery for the American people amid unprecedented levels of economic chaos.
" Conservative News Daily does not always share or support the views and opinions expressed here; they are just those of the writer."
