The United States and China are often said to be in a “race” with one another with respect to artificial intelligence. In a sense this is true, but the metaphor manages to miss almost all that is interesting about US-China dynamics in emerging technology. Today I’d like to offer some brief thoughts about how I see this “race” and where it might be headed.

All metaphors are lossy approximations of reality. But “race” is an especially inapt metaphor for this context. A race is a competition with clear boundaries and a clearly defined finish line. There are no such luxuries to be found here. Beyond the rhyme, “the Space Race” made intuitive sense because the objective was clear: landing humans on the Moon.

Stating that there is an “AI race” underway invites the obvious follow-up question: the AI race to where? And no one—not you, not me, not OpenAI, not the U.S. government, and not the Chinese government—knows where we are headed. — Read More