Beijing is ready for a potential ‘high-tech Cold War’ with the United States after Donald Trump ordered the US administration to give greater priority to artificial intelligence earlier this week, Chinese state media have claimed.
Quoting experts, Global Times, a state-run news outlet, warned that Trump’s order on Monday ‘may represent the formal launch of a new high-technology Cold War’.
In the article published on Tuesday, the newspaper also claimed that the ‘American AI Initiative’ executive order signed by the US President had sparked debates over a possible AI arms race, in which the US may lose to China.
China’s state-run news outlet Global Times says Beijing is ready for a potential ‘high-tech Cold War’ after Trump signed an executive order to prioritise AI research. Chinese President Xi Jinping is pictured reviewing the country’s Navy fleet in South China Sea on April 12, 2018
The Chinese article claimed that the ‘American AI Initiative’ executive order signed by Trump had sparked debates over a possible AI arms race, in which the US may lose to China
The American AI Initiative executive order calls for the US administration to ‘devote the full resources of the federal government’ to help fuel AI innovation.
The move comes amid growing concerns that China will overtake the United States in key areas of artificial intelligence, helped by a broad national strategy and accelerating investment.
Global Time’s commentary also came as the US Department of Defense released on the same day a lengthy, 17-page strategy on artificial intelligence, which claims that the US military wants to expand its use of AI in warfare.
The report, named ‘Harnessing AI to Advance Our Security and Prosperity’, says machines will ‘impact every corner’ of the military and has been viewed as the Pentagon’s effort in keeping up with Russia and China in a potential AI arms race.
But it says the US will take care to deploy the technology in accordance with the nation’s values.
Max Tegmark, the President of Boston-based Future of Life Institute, told MailOnline that a new AI-fuelled Cold War between the United States and China would have no winners ‘no matter who starts it’. The volunteer-run organisation has been endorsing a ban on lethal autonomous weapons.
Tegmark, who is also a professor of physics at MIT, said: ‘AI has the opportunity to eradicate disease, eliminate poverty, and make everyone on earth dramatically better off – as long as we don’t let outdated cold-war thinking ruin things for everyone with a destabilising new arms race.’
On Tuesday, the Pentagon released a lengthy, 17-page strategy on artificial intelligence, which claims that the US military wants to expand its use of AI in warfare. This 2013 handout released by the U.S. Navy features an X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator
AI weapons, called by some as ‘killer robots’, generally mean automated weapons which select, engage and eliminate human targets without the involvement of other humans.
It has been described as the third revolution in warfare – after gunpowder and nuclear arms – and has been a controversial topic due to the ethics behind them.
China is among the 26 countries in the United Nations which have endorsed the call for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems; while the U.S. and Russia are among a handful of nations that have blocked the efforts for the international ban.
The Pentagon defines AI in its report as the ability of machines to perform tasks that typically require human oversight, like detecting patterns or ‘learning from experience.’
According to professor Tegmark, the Pentagon has a policy which requires a human controlling any AI-powered weapon, but ‘the US hasn’t yet pushed for an international treaty requiring everyone to set that same high bar’.
The plan released by the Pentagon calls for accelerating the use of AI systems in military, from intelligence-gathering operations to predicting maintenance problems in planes or ships
China will invest $150 billion (£117 billion) by 2030 in developing AI technology with the goal of becoming ‘the preeminent AI country in the world’, according to Darrell West, head of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation.
AI innovation was listed by Beijing as a national strategy in 2017. A directive issued by the State Council of China at the time and handed to all regional governments set the target for China to become a global leader in AI innovation by 2030.
Last year, China started grooming its smartest teenagers to develop AI-powered weapons to help the Asian superpower ‘lead the game of modern wars’.
Some of China’s brightest high school graduates were recruited to study the manufacturing of AI weaponry at Beijing Institute of Technology to keep China ahead of the war game.
The class, unveiled last October, comprises 31 students who were selected based on their academic achievements and their level of patriotism, according to the school.