Artificial Intelligence (AI) And Global Geopolitics By David Gosset

THE HUFFINGTON POST

Artificial Intelligence (AI), a top priority for the ubiquitous American tech companies, for Industry 4.0 or digital China, is already reshaping global business, but this major scientific and technological disruption will also deeply impact the relations between powers.  While narrow AI has moved from the labs to our daily lives, informed personalities like Stephen Hawking, Nick Bostrom, Bill Gates or Elon Musk have rightly raised concerns about the risks inherent to a strong AI capable of equaling or even surpassing human intelligence.  Anticipating the emergence of an even more powerful and increasingly autonomous AI reinforced by quantum computing, these engaged voices are asking for a collective reflection upon what could constitute an external challenge to mankind, a technology which could dominate its creator.  The recent win of the AlphaGo computer program over the Korean Go champion Lee Sedol was indeed a strong signal of the rapid development of machine learning at the intersection of computer science and neuroscience.  However, a more immediate danger connected with the advancement of intelligent machines is an AI fracture enlarging what is already known as the digital divide. While AI’s algorithms and big data increase the productivity of a small segment of the global village, half of the world population still does not have access to internet. “Don’t be evil” can be Google’s slogan, but exponential technologies carry with them the risks of unprecedented inequalities. While AI’s social and political effects are often discussed the geopolitical implications of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” have been surprisingly absent from the public debates.  How AI could affect the Sino-Western relations and, more specifically, the Sino-American relations, the major determinant of today’s international order? For decades, nuclear weapons stood as the frightening symbols of the Cold War, will AI become the mark of a 21st century Sino-Western strategic antagonism?

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