There’s a brief window in which the future of
AI will be shaped, primarily by actors in the
United States and China.
As it evolves, AI will eventually develop a mind
of its own: an ability to think about the world in a
way that’s both independent of human input and
distinctly non-human in the way it functions. We
can’t predict exactly what that mind will evolve
into, but we do know what it will evolve from: the
AI systems being built right now.
That means we’re living in a pivotal period of
history. From now until some time in the next
two decades, our current AI research and
development will shape the contours of the
landscape on which the future of humanity will
be built.
By the 2040s, the author estimates, AGI
systems will already be in place. As they begin
evolving into ASI, they will reach a point of no
return – developing outside of our control, too
powerful for us to stop or change. And as you’ll
find out later, the results could be devastating for
our species. The time to act is therefore now –
and if we don’t steer carefully, we might end up
driving off a cliff.
So who’s at the wheel? A group of corporate
giants and a pair of governments that are
becoming rival superpowers.
Those corporations are the “big nine” tech
companies, along with their various partners,
investors and subsidiaries. Six of the
corporations are based in the United States:
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and
Apple. Three of them are based in China: Baidu,
Alibaba and Tencent. The governments in
question are those of these two countries, along
with their respective allies.
For the sake of simplicity, we’ll speak of these
AI-steering corporations and governments in
terms of their being either American or Chinese,
although they often operate in or hail from other
allied countries. The idea here is that they
belong to one of two international camps
dominated by the United States and China.
As you’ve probably heard umpteen times before,
the United States is the world’s only remaining
superpower from the twentieth century, while
China is the emerging superpower of the twenty-
first century. The two countries are economically
intertwined in many ways, with considerable
trade and investment money flowing between
them, but they’re also political rivals. While the
United States is trying to maintain its domination
over the world, China is trying to assert its own.
In vying for power, these two countries are also
pushing very different visions of how society
should be run. In the next blink, we’ll take a look
at what these visions are and how they’re
guiding AI research and development.
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