AI Action Plan<\/a> released last year, said that \u201cit is imperative that the United States and its allies win this race.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cWhoever has the largest AI ecosystem will set global AI standards and reap broad economic and military benefits,\u201d the plan said.<\/p>\n
Stephan Lang is a former State Department career diplomat and U.S. ambassador for international communications and information policy who focused on Asia. Now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he said that AI would be a \u201ctransformative technology\u201d for the economy and national security, as well as global influence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think it\u2019s essential to our strategic national interests that we lead in the development of that technology,\u201d Lang said. \u201cAnd so I think the stakes are very high.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lang argued that exporting U.S. AI models and hardware could help spread U.S. values to those countries that adopt the American tech stack over the Chinese one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have in China, a [country] that sees data and uses data as a tool for monitoring its citizens. It sees networks as a tool for controlling speech and suppressing dissent,\u201d Lang said. \u201cAnd I believe that we should want to promote U.S. technology that is based on our own approach to privacy and the role of government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joe Khawam, former State Department attorney and current managing director of Legal and AI Policy for the Law Reform Institute, called the framing of AI as a race \u201cincomplete.\u201d The institute focuses on collaborative drafting of legislation between opposing stakeholders.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt captures the urgency around things like compute and talent and military applications and infrastructure,\u201d Khawam said. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t really sort of describe the entire scope of interest, right, in AI policies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khawam acknowledged that \u201cthe competition itself is real,\u201d but noted that the narrative is \u201cused to unlock\u201d other policies that need to be evaluated on their own merits, including \u201cthings like preemption over state laws \u2026 faster infrastructure buildouts, federal demand or procurement creation, allied market promotions, even \u2026 export controls and inbound investor controls.\u201d<\/p>\n
Partisan goals<\/p>\n
Talking points from the White House and members of Congress show the wide variety of plans an AI race can be used to justify.<\/p>\n
For Republicans, one of the most popular is advocating for less regulation.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo maintain global leadership in AI, America\u2019s private sector must be unencumbered by bureaucratic red tape,\u201d the administration\u2019s action plan said.<\/p>\n
In a hearing last September focused on broadband permitting, Guthrie used a similar argument about China when talking about speeding the review process in the U.S. He described the differing speeds at which the United States and China built high-speed rail lines, adding that \u201cWe need to make sure the permitting is right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to just do what China does. I\u2019m not suggesting that. But that\u2019s who we\u2019re competing with,\u201d Guthrie said.<\/p>\n
Guthrie made his declaration of a race at a January markup of a bill that would allow the president to waive certain environmental requirements for critical mineral refineries \u2014 part of the chip supply chain that makes AI possible.<\/p>\n
Barr advocated for more coal production to support the energy needs of data centers in order to keep pace with China.<\/p>\n
At a House Small Business Subcommittee on Rural Development, Energy and Supply Chains hearing in January on AI data center infrastructure, Chairman Jake Ellzey, R-Texas, said investments in \u201cadvanced energy solutions\u201d for data centers \u201ckeep us competitive with the AI race with China.\u201d<\/p>\n
Export policy<\/p>\n
Democrats have also used the argument that the U.S. is racing China on AI, often to criticize the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Gregory W. Meeks said at a January hearing that there \u201cseems to be an overwhelming consensus that America must lead the AI race,\u201d and that because of that he is \u201calarmed\u201d by the administration\u2019s policy, which has included allowing for the export of certain less-advanced AI chips to China.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis administration is ceding our advantages in the AI race and actively undermining our national security,\u201d Meeks, D-N.Y., said. \u201cThe administration has used our export controls, not as a vital national security tool, but as a bargaining chip in tariff negotiations with China.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meeks advocated for his bill that would restrict the sale of the most advanced AI chips to China.<\/p>\n
There is bipartisan support for some protections against diversion of AI chips. Last month, the House Foreign Affairs Committee forwarded a bill that would require that certain chips have security mechanisms to verify a chip\u2019s location in case it has been diverted from its intended export location.<\/p>\n
Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., said the bill was about \u201cwinning the AI arms race.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us to give China any capability, any inroad, any advantage in this whatsoever is nonsensical,\u201d Mast said.<\/p>\n
Lang said that finding a balance between supporting U.S. business interests and staying ahead of China is not easy and has led to a \u201ctension.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are different theories and approaches for how we should pursue that, based on whether or not we want to \u2026 focus on preventing China from developing technologies or or try to get it to depend \u2026 on U.S. technologies instead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Politics<\/p>\n
Dan Cassino, executive director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University poll and a professor of government and politics, said that so far he hasn\u2019t seen candidates \u201crunning hard\u201d on AI regulation and safety.<\/p>\n
He said that AI\u2019s impact on the midterms is more likely to be tied to affordability concerns, including the price of energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cVoters, rightly or wrongly, are blaming the increase in energy prices in part on \u2026 data centers used to power artificial intelligence,\u201d Cassino said.<\/p>\n
He added that while traditionally an issue like data centers might split voters along party lines between those wanting more economic development and those wanting to protect the environment, energy prices have brought bipartisan ire for data centers.<\/p>\n
The narrative of a race with China could help activate Republicans and \u201cpotentially make the data centers more palatable.\u201d However, he said a similar trade-off of higher energy prices in return for national security has been made with regards to the war in Iran, and \u201cvoters by and large aren\u2019t buying that.\u201d<\/p>\n
A poll<\/a> from NBC News of 1,000 registered voters conducted in late February and early March found that 33 percent of respondents said that neither party would be good at handling AI. Some 20 percent favored Republicans to react well and 19 percent favored Democrats.<\/p>\nCassino said that national security and energy are traditionally Republican issues, and that the party could find success using a similar playbook as it has with cryptocurrency in appealing to young men. But he noted voters tend to blame the president for rising prices, and that downplaying costs is \u201cnot exactly a winning argument.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said the U.S. \u201cis in an AI arms race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,2482,4443,25,4444,4445,309,2809,1670,1230,2110,980,4446,1392,1066,88,4073,1183,4447,2982,205,206,369,4448,685,208,2489,3423,2819,464,4449,1715,1228,4450,4451],"class_list":{"0":"post-4751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-american","10":"tag-andy-barr","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-brand-safety","13":"tag-brett-guthrie","14":"tag-business","15":"tag-campaigns","16":"tag-congress","17":"tag-democrats","18":"tag-department-of-state","19":"tag-economy","20":"tag-election","21":"tag-elections","22":"tag-energy","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-executive-branch","25":"tag-florida","26":"tag-gregory-w-meeks","27":"tag-house","28":"tag-infrastructure","29":"tag-intelligence","30":"tag-iran","31":"tag-kentucky","32":"tag-leadership","33":"tag-military","34":"tag-national","35":"tag-new-york","36":"tag-policy","37":"tag-politics","38":"tag-polling","39":"tag-regulation","40":"tag-republicans","41":"tag-rural-development","42":"tag-russia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}