China’s Lead in the AI War Won’t Last Forever
Bloomberg Opinion,
By Hal Brands
November 13, 2019, 3:30 AM GMT+5:30
Of all the emerging technologies that will change our daily lives, none has more transformative potential than artificial intelligence. And AI — the use of computers to solve problems that would normally require natural, or human, intelligence — will also have a profound effect on the global balance of economic and military power. It will change how societies are governed and people are ruled. Debates about whether China or the U.S. will dominate the 21st century are thus necessarily debates about who will lead in AI innovation, and whether democratic or authoritarian systems are better suited to that challenge. A new report from the bipartisan National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence contains reason for cautious optimism on that latter question, even as it reminds us that an authoritarian China will be a formidable competitor indeed. The AI commission, led by former Alphabet Inc. chairman Eric Schmidt and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, was created as part of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. Its existence reflects a widespread fear that the U.S. is falling behind China in the global “AI race,” and a growing recognition of just how critical this cluster of technologies will be. Experts generally agree that AI will enable vast increases in economic productivity — perhaps doubling growth rates in next 20 years — and thereby confer great advantages on those countries at the leading edge of innovation. AI could change how countries fight, by allowing the most advanced militaries to better understand the battlefield, synthesize information, enhance their speed of decision, and coordinate complex operations. So-called drone swarms — the use of large numbers of small, autonomous flying vehicles to disorient and overwhelm an enemy — are but one example of AI’s potentially revolutionary military applications. Not least, AI is already influencing the global contest between democracy and authoritarianism. Through schemes such as its notorious “social credit” system — which rewards or penalizes Chinese citizens according to their behavior and political loyalty — China is using AI to reduce the costs of repression by helping the state surveil and control public behavior. Meanwhile, AI is enabling “deep fakes” and other forms of disinformation that can be exploited to disrupt democratic politics.
For these reasons, the commission concludes that American leadership in AI is imperative — that there is “no way to protect the American people, U.S. interests, and shape the development of international norms … if the United States is not leading the way.” But will America’s democratic system be up to that challenge in the coming decades?
There is good reason for concern. Xi Jinping’s government has openly proclaimed that China should lead the world in AI technology by 2030, as it makes a larger effort to displace American power in the Asia-Pacific and perhaps globally. And while China started from a significant disadvantage, it is exploiting some key features of authoritarianism in its bid to overtake the U.S.
The centralized nature of the Chinese system allows Beijing to make huge investments in national priorities and compel the cooperation of leading technology firms. While the precise amount that the Chinese government is investing in AI is not known, informed estimates place the number somewhere in the tens of billions of dollars. Leading Chinese tech firms — such as Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. — are supporting China’s network of national laboratories involved in AI-related research. The U.S. government, by contrast, has often struggled to induce leading firms — notably Google — to cooperate in exploring national security applications of AI.
China is also able to harvest vast quantities of data generated by its population, helping it refine the algorithms that drive current and future waves of innovation. And authoritarian regimes are far less constrained by the ethical, legal and privacy debates that can slow experimentation and utilization of new technologies. These factors have stoked fears of an efficient Chinese autocracy leaving America’s dysfunctional democracy in the dust.
Fortunately, the reality is not quite so simple. The fact that China is so determined to use AI for domestic policing purposes is itself indicative of the deep insecurity that pervades China’s authoritarian political system. When it comes to innovation, China has created a startup culture far beyond anything previous American rivals — like the Cold War-era Soviet Union — could have managed. Yet there are lingering questions about whether even smart authoritarian regimes can stay at the cutting edge of innovation while restricting the free flow of information, maintaining a rigidly hierarchical system and enforcing political orthodoxy within its universities. “Until and unless China relaxes its draconian political controls,” writes David Shambaugh, one of America’s leading experts on China, “it will never become an innovative society and a ‘knowledge economy.’”
Conversely, America’s open society and political system continue to provide many advantages: world-leading universities that rely on freedom of inquiry and expression; an educational system that promotes critical thinking and questioning of established wisdom; a competitive, decentralized ecosystem of companies that promotes bottom-up innovation; a system of intellectual property rights that encourages creativity.
Moreover, it is misleading to think of the AI competition as a race with a single finish line. Historically, the country that benefits most from a new technology is not necessarily the country that first develops that technology. Rather, it is the country that figures out how to apply that technology in new and effective ways. The British Navy invented the aircraft carrier during World War I, but the U.S. and Japan mastered that technology during World War II by figuring out how to use carriers in ways that made battleships vulnerable and obsolete.
Applying new technologies, in turn, requires flexible, adaptive institutions. And while China has made real progress in professionalizing its military, the combination of lingering corruption, politicization and a comparatively rigid command system will complicate the task of moving from creation to successful use of key technologies.
This doesn’t mean that America is guaranteed to remain the global leader in AI and other key technologies. Indeed, the U.S. has so far struggled to harness its various advantages as part of a coherent national strategy. The core challenge, the AI commission observes, will be “how to marry bottom-up and dispersed innovation with top-down vision.”
There won’t be anything easy about this, because it requires navigating the tensions that are inherent in the American model: Eliciting greater cooperation between the government and the private sector; protecting freedom of inquiry in universities and ensuring that the U.S. remains a magnet for foreign talent while also protecting against Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft; connecting AI-related efforts across the large and unwieldy federal bureaucracy; allowing healthy debate on the ethical principles that should guide AI development without allowing unending arguments to stifle progress. Meeting these and other challenges will demand all the technical expertise and political leadership the U.S. can summon. But in the long-term competition for primacy in AI, there’s no reason a democracy can’t hold its own.
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