London, October 11 (BNA) The former Pentagon chief of software said that the United States has already lost the battle of artificial intelligence to China, which is moving towards global dominance due to its advances in emerging electronic capabilities.
China, the world’s second largest economy, is likely to dominate several major emerging technologies, notably artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics within a decade or so, according to Western intelligence estimates.
The failure to respond puts the United States at risk, said Nicholas Chailan, the Pentagon’s first software official, who resigned in protest of the slow pace of technological transformation in the US military.
“We don’t have a competitive fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s a really done deal; it’s already over in my opinion,” he told the newspaper.
“Whether it takes war or not is kind of a story,” he said, noting that China was poised to dominate the world’s future, controlling everything from media narratives to geopolitics.
He said that US cyber defenses in some government departments were at the “kindergarten” level.
Chaillan criticized Google’s reluctance to work with the US Department of Defense on artificial intelligence, and intense discussions about the ethics of artificial intelligence, for slowing the United States. Google was not immediately available for comment outside of business hours.
He said Chinese companies are obligated to work with their government and make “huge investments” in AI without regard to ethics.
HF