China Gains on the U.S. in the Artificial Intelligence Arms Race

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Sat, Feb 4, 2017 at 8:05 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] China Gains on the U.S. in the Artificial
Intelligence Arms Race
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


China Gains on the U.S. in the Artificial Intelligence Arms Race
By JOHN MARKOFF and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
Feb 3 2017
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/technology/artificial-intelligence-china-united-states.html
>

Robert O. Work, the veteran defense official retained as deputy secretary
by President Trump, calls them his “A.I. dudes.” The breezy moniker belies
their serious task: The dudes have been a kitchen cabinet of sorts, and
have advised Mr. Work as he has sought to reshape warfare by bringing
artificial intelligence to the battlefield.

Last spring, he asked, “O.K., you guys are the smartest guys in A.I.,
right?”

No, the dudes told him, “the smartest guys are at Facebook and Google,” Mr.
Work recalled in an interview.

Now, increasingly, they’re also in China. The United States no longer has a
strategic monopoly on the technology, which is widely seen as the key
factor in the next generation of warfare.

The Pentagon’s plan to bring A.I. to the military is taking shape as
Chinese researchers assert themselves in the nascent technology field. And
that shift is reflected in surprising commercial advances in artificial
intelligence among Chinese companies.

Last year, for example, Microsoft researchers proclaimed that the company
had created software capable of matching human skills in understanding
speech.

Although they boasted that they had outperformed their United States
competitors, a well-known A.I. researcher who leads a Silicon Valley
laboratory for the Chinese web services company Baidu gently taunted
Microsoft, noting that Baidu had achieved similar accuracy with the Chinese
language two years earlier.

That, in a nutshell, is the challenge the United States faces as it embarks
on a new military strategy founded on the assumption of its continued
superiority in technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence.

First announced last year by Ashton B. Carter, President Barack Obama’s
defense secretary, the “Third Offset” strategy provides a formula for
maintaining a military advantage in the face of a renewed rivalry with
China and Russia.

Well into the 1960s, the United States held a military advantage based on
technological leadership in nuclear weapons. In the 1970s, that perceived
lead shifted to smart weapons, based on brand-new Silicon Valley
technologies like computer chips. Now, the nation’s leaders plan on
retaining that military advantage with a significant commitment to
artificial intelligence and robotic weapons.

But the global technology balance of power is shifting. From the 1950s
through the 1980s, the United States carefully guarded its advantage. It
led the world in computer and material science technology, and it jealously
hoarded its leadership with military secrecy and export controls.

In the late 1980s, the emergence of the inexpensive and universally
available microchip upended the Pentagon’s ability to control technological
progress. Now, rather than trickling down from military and advanced
corporate laboratories, today’s new technologies increasingly come from
consumer electronics firms. Put simply, the companies that make the fastest
computers are the same ones that put things under our Christmas trees.

As consumer electronics manufacturing has moved to Asia, both Chinese
companies and the nation’s government laboratories are making major
investments in artificial intelligence.

The advance of the Chinese was underscored last month when Qi Lu, a veteran
Microsoft artificial intelligence specialist, left the company to become
chief operating officer at Baidu, where he will oversee the company’s
ambitious plan to become a global leader in A.I.

And last year, Tencent, developer of the mobile app WeChat, a Facebook
competitor, created an artificial intelligence research laboratory and
began investing in United States-based A.I. companies.

Rapid Chinese progress has touched off a debate in the United States
between military strategists and technologists over whether the Chinese are
merely imitating advances or are engaged in independent innovation that
will soon overtake the United States in the field.

“The Chinese leadership is increasingly thinking about how to ensure they
are competitive in the next wave of technologies,” said Adam Segal, a
specialist in emerging technologies and national security at the Council on
Foreign Relations.

In August, the state-run China Daily reported that the country had embarked
on the development of a cruise missile system with a “high level” of
artificial intelligence. The new system appears to be a response to a
missile the United States Navy is expected to deploy in 2018 to counter
growing Chinese military influence in the Pacific.

Known as the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, or L.R.A.S.M., it is described
as a “semiautonomous” weapon. According to the Pentagon, this means that
though targets are chosen by human soldiers, the missile uses artificial
intelligence technology to avoid defenses and make final targeting
decisions.

The new Chinese weapon typifies a strategy known as “remote warfare,” said
John Arquilla, a military strategist at the Naval Post Graduate School in
Monterey, Calif. The idea is to build large fleets of small ships that
deploy missiles, to attack an enemy with larger ships, like aircraft
carriers.

“They are making their machines more creative,” he said. “A little bit of
automation gives the machines a tremendous boost.”

Whether or not the Chinese will quickly catch the United States in
artificial intelligence and robotics technologies is a matter of intense
discussion and disagreement in the United States.

[snip]

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