January 18, 2025

ARTIFCIAL INTELLIGENCE

Axios - Jake Sullivan — with three days left as White House national security adviser, with wide access to the world's secrets — called us to deliver a chilling, "catastrophic" warning for America and the incoming administration:

  • The next few years will determine whether artificial intelligence leads to catastrophe — and whether China or America prevails in the AI arms race.

Sullivan said in our phone interview that unlike previous dramatic technology advancements (atomic weapons, space, the internet), AI development sits outside of government and security clearances, and in the hands of private companies with the power of nation-states...

Somehow, government will have to join forces with these companies to nurture and protect America's early AI edge, and shape the global rules for using potentially God-like powers, he says.U.S. failure to get this right, Sullivan warns, could be "dramatic, and dramatically negative — to include the democratization of extremely powerful and lethal weapons; massive disruption and dislocation of jobs; an avalanche of misinformation."

Staying ahead in the AI arms race makes the Manhattan Project during World War II seem tiny, and conventional national security debates small. It's potentially existential with implications for every nation and company.

To distill Sullivan: America must quickly perfect a technology that many believe will be smarter and more capable than humans. We need to do this without decimating U.S. jobs, and inadvertently unleashing something with capabilities we didn't anticipate or prepare for. We need to both beat China on the technology and in shaping and setting global usage and monitoring of it, so bad actors don't use it catastrophically. Oh, and it can only be done with unprecedented government-private sector collaboration — and probably difficult, but vital, cooperation with China. More

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