The United States and China are in a race to see who can be first in the AI arena and both are spending billions to do it. But many worry about the implications of how it will be used and if the world is ready to turn over human decisions to machines.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says artificial intelligence represents the end of the Age of Enlightenment. “It changes the human conception of reality and its essence of knowledge.”
The nearly 99-year-old has written a book with the former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt called The Age of AI: And Our Human Future. Both participated in a virtual discussion in a Council on Foreign Relations event. They say diplomatic discussions need to start now in order to prepare for what artificial intelligence could mean in the future.
“We take a position in the book that the most important thing to worry about is essentially launch-on-warning systems," says Schmidt. "These are called automatic weapon systems. And we don’t want a situation where the computer decides to start the war because the computer figured out something was going wrong that was perhaps not true or made a mistake.”
He says in an active cyber war, for example, you may not have time for humans to make the decision. That’s why diplomatic planning is essential.
“In the nuclear field we had a comparable problem, but with a much more transparent technology which was large and could be counted,” says Kissinger.
There are steps that can slow the AI race. The Trump administration restricted China's access to ultraviolet semiconductor manufacturing. It’s a measure the Biden administration has continued. The Dutch have enforced the ban, prohibiting the export of a machine that uses ultraviolet light to make the fastest microprocessors and memory chips.
A recent independent report by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence called for speedy upgrades to the Pentagon's data architecture. The commission was established under the fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act to examine ways to advance the development of AI for national security and defense purposes. The nearly 800-page document found that the U.S. government is not currently prepared for AI threats, and must become “AI ready” by 2025.
Using the brain power of computers is not all bad. Schmidt says AI did what scientists were unable to do - develop a drug called Halicin, which attacks antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The challenge will effectively regulate it.
