AI is not a luxury, is a must-have for those seeking global dominion

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Apr 18, 2023

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2023-ai-is-not-a-luxury-is-a-must-have-for-those-seeking-global-dominion

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Meta

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China

Europe

AI regulation

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Artificial intelligence is the battleground for money, minds and hearts of our generation, and there is none in this fight to be the custodian of public interests.

After a few years of uncertainty over the next tech war scenario, artificial intelligence emerged as the clear winner, forcing all major tech players to acknowledge its potential to shape the industry's next development cycle. The question now is: how will the godfathers of technology fare in the next war?

ChatGPT, the latest industry trendsetter, has captured the hearts and minds of users worldwide. While it may not be perfect, it is, to use an expression coined by MIT professor Clayton Christensen, "good enough" to do the job of the average Joe. All forthcoming products, such as Google's Bert (later rebranded as Gemini), will need to accept the terms of engagement imposed by OpenAI, especially when ChatGPT 4 is released on a massive scale.

Google knows they made a mistake. Bert’s launch timing was off, and it seems they will have to drop it in the jungle earlier than planned, which usually spells trouble. They are - and should be - concerned. OpenAI's disruptive AI crusader is the first serious threat to Google's money-making machines, the search-driven apps under the Google Search umbrella. As General William Garrison, the prime commander of US forces in Mogadishu portrayed in "Black Hawk Down," says, "We have just lost the initiative." That's exactly Google's case. If you still don't see it, try searching on both to spot the difference.

But Google isn't the only one who dropped the ball. Mark Zuckerberg did too. Meta's CEO had already admitted the then-Facebook error regarding video in social media a few years ago. Now, after a couple of years of pouring money into the metaverse and making his shareholders uneasy, the Meta CEO finally admitted that AI is the new black, and it will be the main focus of Meta too. Meta, however, explores a different spin on search and is less vulnerable than Google, thanks to the immense walled gardens of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The question is: will the metaverse project become Zuckerberg's Google Plus failure, or can he buy his way back in with a major acquisition? OpenAI is hardly for sale when it's riding a tsunami-like wave, but its theoretical US$30 billion market valuation shows that startups with an AI B2C edge are still a toy the big kids can think about buying.

Then there is Twitter. Once Elon Musk no longer receives the Goebbels-like amount of attention he had after acquiring Twitter, his new plan is to make Twitter a giant troll similar to Chinese WeChat, where users barely leave the app due to the abundance of features it offers. Such a venture has the potential to give him the exposure he craves, but in the short-term, it's a risky bet. Amazon, IBM, and Apple will fight with AI a bit away from ChatGPT's hit-zone. Microsoft, the least trendy of the tech megacorps, remains silent because it has a significant stake in OpenAI, making it hard to imagine Satya Nadella rushing anything out of the oven.

One penultimate thought: what about China? Chinese capabilities in the AI world are not lagging. About four years ago, Amy Webb predicted the rise of the "Big Nine" (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple). The three Chinese companies are set to stay away from Europe and the US due to protective (or abusive, depending on your POV) regulation, but they hold a card up their sleeves. China does not have any protection against privacy, data safety, intellectual property rights, and human rights issues, and therefore, their products can be developed much faster, tested on a massive audience with no restraints. The full capabilities of Chinese AI are set to be discovered only in a dystopian scenario where the battle between West and East becomes a belligerent one.

The final thought is about Europe. The continent and the European Union are set to be observers of the AI wars. The absence of major players in the dispute is partly because of the much more robust safeguards regarding privacy, labor laws, welfare state, and others. But it says a lot about the failure of the world-class institutions researching the subject to have an impact in the real world. Theoretical discussions and academic-only outputs (or almost that) are far less urgent than things to help citizens now. The academy must have independence, of course, but it cannot rest in their ivory towers just to satisfy the vanity of its researchers.

The intelligence to be artificially generated is only limited by the intelligence of those who create them, so the Skynet danger is real, and a situation where things get out of control is no longer a 1980s movie script's sci-fi. But the immediate concern is more pressing because AI is completely under private control outside China, which makes it much harder to stop risky projects conducted by megalomaniac CEOs who can hardly be controlled by their own board members. Safety regulation measures must be deployed now. Fighting against bureaucracy and partisan fiefdoms' interests is the first major battle to be won.