US v China: The AI race

Americast

The episode explores the intensifying artificial intelligence arms race between the United States and China and its profound political implications. Hosts

Key takeaways

• Donald Trump views the AI competition as an arms race, stating 'whoever wins AI wins' while dismissing regulation concerns as a conspiracy.
• Tech executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, and XAI have expressed concerns regarding the need to slow down development to ensure safety.

Main topics

• US-China AI competition
• AI regulation and guardrails

Notable quotes

Whoever wins AI wins.

Conclusion

The episode underscores the high stakes of the AI race, suggesting tha

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Speaker 5 (0:06) It's late 2007, and while attending a Christmas party, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg meets a woman who would change the course of his company forever. Speaker 8 (0:14) She joined Facebook as chief of operations in 2008 and has been credited for making the company profitable. And Speaker 5 (0:21) herself enormously rich. Speaker 8 (0:22) On Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of billionaire tech leader Sheryl Sandberg. Speaker 5 (0:27) Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Speaker 7 (0:39) Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (1:08) America, it is fair to say, is freaking out about AI. It's suddenly become the hottest of political topics. Silicon Valley tech bosses are calling for the development of AI, their own development of it, to be slowed down. Everyone seems to be worried. Everyone except one person, Donald Trump, who's not worried at all. He dismisses worries about AI as what he calls a sick conspiracy. Whoever wins AI wins, he says. Is he right? And what happens if the US does fall behind China as he warns that it might? Welcome to AmeriCast. Speaker 1 (1:45) AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league. The Speaker 8 (1:53) tide is coming, and this time we intend to win it all. Speaker 1 (1:59) See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about Speaker 6 (2:17) anybody else. Speaker 3 (2:22) Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. Speaker 6 (2:26) And it is Marianna sitting next to Justin in the worldwide headquarters. And Speaker 4 (2:30) it's Anthony holding down the fort here in Washington, D.C., which is the American headquarters of AmeriCast. Speaker 3 (2:35) And we're going to be joined later on by a fantastic guest. Chris McGuire is going to join us, who is a former senior advisor at the State Department. for Donald Trump in both his first and his second terms. But really interestingly, he also served under President Biden. And he also has links with China, is a US-China technology expert now at the Council of Foreign Relations. In other words, he is the ideal guest to talk about our subject today, which is artificial intelligence and specifically this suddenly looming political issue. about what to do about it, basically, what to do about making it safe, what to do about controlling it, if controlling it is what we want to do, but also what the threat properly is assessed to be to all of us, whether we're in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in England or in Washington, D.C., or anywhere in the world, because it is that kind of thing that we're talking about. And people are talking about it, aren't they, Anthony, in kind of worried terms, except... One person who doesn't seem worried at all. Yeah, Speaker 4 (3:42) Donald Trump. Donald Trump seems to be an AI evangelist. He took to Truth Social earlier this week after about a week of all of these concerns bubbling around and then spilling over into American politics. concerns being raised by AI executives themselves, politicians, policymakers. Well, Donald Trump on Truth Social said, yeah, that's all bunk. And he said that AI was actually going to be a great thing, maybe even bigger than diamonds or oil or even the Internet. He said the only control or guardrails that AI needs is a strong and smart, high IQ president. And the USA has that in spades. Donald Trump, I guess, talking while I'm definitely talking about himself there. He went on to say that there is a sick conspiracy going on against AI and data centers. And the only one that is happy about it is China. Whoever wins AI wins. So, you know, Trump is one. centralizing control into his own hands, which he does all the time, talking about how he's the one who should control this and we should trust his judgment, but also framing this, Justin and Marianna, as a competition with China, the idea of this is an arms race. And if you don't win it, you're going to lose. And if you lose, then you're going to be in serious trouble. I Speaker 6 (4:57) guess what has felt different, aside from how vocal he's been, has been the comments been made by people within the industry who are in charge at the companies. And a lot of the big... tech bosses, AI bosses have been talking about this concept of a slowdown and should we sort of put the brakes on a bit. Sometimes it feels a bit ironic given that they are sort of the people in charge of the brakes. But nonetheless, here they are talking about their concerns. You've got Dario Amadei of Anthropix, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of XAI. It's Speaker 8 (5:29) a warning sign. It's a warning sign that we need to slow down. We need to make this technology carefully, and we need to make sure that our safeguards, our ability to understand it, our ability to control it keeps up with the pace at which the technology is happening. I think the world is right to be afraid of this. So we have these two big challenges. We have the potential of a loss of control accident or some other serious thing that could go wrong. We have the potential of way too much power concentration and people fear that those developing AI could exert their worldview. And there is a sort of narrow path we have to navigate with pragmatism, with steadiness, with the ability for the world to trust that we will make dependable decisions, consistent decisions through this. And I think people are saying, well, this now seems pretty important. let's get it right you know when a lot of people from anthropic and any from open ai um are telling you that their models are very dangerous. I think we should believe them. Speaker 3 (6:40) On the other hand, if you're selling chips to these people, you might feel differently. And here is the CEO of the most valuable AI tech company in the world. So this is Jensen Huang. His company makes the US chips that power AI, NVIDIA. Let's listen to what he says. Speaker 8 (6:56) We don't need any new laws. We don't need new regulations. We just need companies to decide that when it's... Run as fast as they can. I think innovation, speed, and safe products are not, it's a false choice. You could definitely have both at the same time. So run as fast as you can. But if you feel at any given point in time the company's out of control or the product's not going to be safe, take a pause and make sure you get it right. Speaker 6 (7:24) I think it's quite notable that when we heard from the different tech bosses there, they tended to be criticizing. other companies, not their own, and or sort of talking about it in AI in a kind of conceptual way. But this is the problem with this discussion, right? And to some extent, the issue with the original post that was shared on X by this person who had worked for both Anthropic and OpenAI, who said, I'm worried about the end of humanity because of this technology. It's all quite vague. and not very transparent about what exactly we mean when we say this could kill everyone and or this is all getting a bit out of control and moving at a rate where perhaps we're not thinking about the unintended or intended consequences. Yeah, Speaker 4 (8:10) when people talk about this, they think about Skynet. You remember the Terminator movies, the AI that gained self-awareness and then took over the world and crushed humans beneath their metallic boots. Speaker 4 (8:22) How we get from where we are now to Skynet is kind of a big question. And you're right, Mariana, they don't really spell out how we get there. I think there's a couple of ways of looking at this. One is that these warnings are real, that this could be something that we have to take seriously. And I've spoken with tech executives who... do very much feel like things are kind of spinning out of control and there needs to be a slowdown. On the other hand, you could see this, as you mentioned, this could be internal divisions within an industry where everyone is jostling to try to gain the upper hand, and they are now using levers of politics and trying to influence regulations and set the playing field in order to advantage them. And so this is really just a competition from the... the big players who want to keep out the smaller guys by new regulations, make the barriers of entry higher and to disadvantaged people who are also right there neck and neck with them. So, you know, pick which way you think this is going to go. But I think there are arguments to be made for both sides. Speaker 6 (9:24) One of the reasons why there's this feeling of urgency and panic and distrust and. anger and frustration in some cases around AI, which is different to how people responded to, say, the rise of the social media companies over the past 15 years, I think is for several reasons. One is obviously that the AI companies have grown at a speed and the technology has developed at a speed which is certainly faster, I think, than we found with the social media companies. It's taken the best part of 10 years for people to say, oh, maybe algorithms might be negative. What can we do about that? But... Crucially, even if you don't use AI, you could be impacted by AI, whether it's that you lose your job or whether it's that you get hunted down by a killer robot, whatever format it takes, or affected by a virus or affected by some kind of nuclear code or whatever it is, everybody and humanity. And