Don't think a cold war can't happen again, we are already on our
way. For those of us who don't remember the cold war in 1945, hindsight has
shown it wasn’t inevitable. The United States and Soviet Union had been allies
during World War II, but then a series of choices and circumstances over a
5-year period set the conflict on its self-perpetuating track.
A new article in the November issue of Wired called "The AI
Cold War That Threatens Us All" by Nicholas Thompson and Ian Bremmer is a MUST READ. For all of us. If not for you, then for your future children or your
grandchildren. The article is more than 5000 words, you can still do it. AI is artificial intelligence.
Even though it's become a joke to think Mr. President Donald Trump
will take 30 minutes to read anything, he must - or have Ivanka read it to you,
this is of interest to her STEM initiative as well. Members of the Congress,
this is your job, to read articles like this one so you can understand the
severity of "a new cold war arms race over artificial intelligence (AI)."
If you don't understand something, email me (info@netlingo.com) and I will
explain it to you. Here's a paraphrased summary:
In the spring of 2016, an artificial intelligence system called
AlphaGo defeated a world champion Go player. The Chinese were perplexed because
most Americans were unfamiliar with the ancient game Asian Go, and the
technology that emerged victorious was even more foreign: a form of artificial intelligence called
machine learning, which uses large data sets to train a computer to recognize
patterns and make its own strategic choices.
At the time, Obama’s science and technology policy advisers
cheered it and saw it as a win for technology; the next day the rest of the
White House forgot about it. In China, however, 280 million people watched
AlphaGo win and what mattered was that a machine owned by a California company had
conquered a game invented more than 2,500 years ago in Asia.
In spring of 2017, AlphaGo triumphed again, this time over a
Chinese Go master ranked at the top of the world. This prompted China to act
fast: By October 2017, you may remember seeing China’s president, Xi Jinping,
standing in front of red banners and his fellow party members laying out his
plans for the party’s future. What many don't realize is that he specifically
named artificial intelligence, big data, and the internet as core technologies
that will help transform China into an advanced industrial economy.
After President Trump took office, the earlier AI reports were
archived, and --I can't believe I'm even writing this, he should be ashamed of himself--
in March 2017, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said the idea of humans losing
jobs because of AI was not even on his radar screen and that it might be a
threat in 50 to 100 more years(!) There's a NetLingo word for that: ID10T.
That same year, China committed itself to building a $150 billion AI industry
by 2030 (that's 12 years from now).
According to the Wired article, what’s at stake is not just the
technological dominance of the United States, it's that the arc of the digital
revolution is starting to bend toward tyranny, and one of the only ways to stop
it is to keep developing our own AI technology and partner with China on joint
AI research and corporations. Yeah right, like that is going to happen. Well
it's worth trying, and the only possible way is to learn from our mistakes.
It was never inevitable that the digital revolution would
inherently favor democracy. Over the past several years we've seen the crisis
of democracy unfold throughout the world and even though it has many causes,
social media platforms seem like the prime culprit. Social media has amplified
everyone’s worst instincts. Rather than cheering for the way social platforms
spread democracy, the authors are busy assessing the extent they corrode it.
Back in China, government officials watched the Arab Spring and
other uprisings with unease. Beijing already had the world’s most sophisticated
internet "control" system, which could dynamically block a huge swath
of foreign web domains, and now The Great Firewall can turn off internet
access in zones within cities. In fact, China recently censored, I mean
"digitally walled off" the entire province of Xinjiang after violent
protests there spread via the internet.
Even Vladimir Putin, a tech pioneer when it comes to cyberwar and
spreading disinformation, said the one who becomes the leader in the AI sphere
will be the ruler of the world. And Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, has
compared artificial intelligence to the discovery of electricity or fire. Yeah,
it's that big and it's that important, and AI is just one component to China's
advancing technology.
So, the world can commit to America's technology or to China's.
The old silk road is being strung with Chinese fiber-optic cables and we're
seeing more countries commit to China including Pakistan and huge swaths of
Africa. In May 2018, about six months after Zimbabwe got rid of the despot
Robert Mugabe, the new government announced that it was partnering with a
Chinese company to build an AI and facial-recognition system: Zimbabwe gets to
expand its surveillance state; China gets money, influence, and data.
The Wired article aptly states that for the past century,
democracies have proven more resilient and successful than dictatorships, even
if democracies have made stupid decisions along the way. Well Congress, we
cannot make stupid decisions about AI and our relationship with China during
the next 5-years. But there is nothing close to a serious debate as to how to
address this and so far, you're not doing too great with China. Please read the full
article in Wired "The AI Cold War That Threatens Us All" by Nicholas
Thompson and Ian Bremmer here: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-cold-war-china-could-doom-us-all
- Erin Jansen, Internet Specialist, Social
Psychologist, Founder of NetLingo.com
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