philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Discourse About the AI Race is Devolving into Clash of Civilizations Nonsense

"I think the real lesson, a more profound one, is that we are at war with China. We are in an AI arms race," said Shyam Sankar, the Chief Technology Officer at Palantir, on a call with Wall Street analysts earlier this month. But this race, it turns out for many, is not just about national security; it’s also a battle for the future of human progress, one in which the Chinese must lose. ...

Americans are urged to consider not only the consequences of Beijing achieving technological supremacy but also the influence it will gain in setting cultural norms. Somehow, the conversation has shifted from ensuring responsible oversight of AI to justifying abandoning safeguards in the name of outpacing China—whatever the cost. ...

The discussion of how AI models are trained and how their parameters reflect the values of their developers is worthwhile. It raises important questions about the perspectives and identities represented in model data and development, and the potential for culturally specific harms as well as safeguards. But when the conversation devolves into clash-of-civilizations nonsense, we’ve lost the plot. The deeper the discussion sinks into the ‘us vs. them’ framing, the more it obscures the real priority: ensuring AI development serves people—regardless of whether they are American, Chinese, or anyone else. ...

AI moguls have aligned themselves with the Trump administration, a mutually beneficial arrangement to further their own accumulation of wealth with national security priorities. ...

See the full story here: https://www.techpolicy.press/discourse-about-the-ai-race-is-devolving-into-clash-of-civilizations-nonsense/