Reports about The AI arms race is everywhere – even in this publication. But what if such framing is fundamentally threatening?
It’s Verity Harding’s idea. From 2016 to 2020, Harding spent her days updating politicians around the world, from Barack Obama to Emmanuel Macron, on advances in artificial intelligence. As head of global public policy at Google DeepMind, Harding was responsible for identifying ethical concerns and potential risks. At the time, she told WIRED in a recent interview, artificial intelligence research “was rooted in international collaboration.” But somewhere along the way, the industry began to be shaped by competition – between individual labs like Anthropic and OpenAI, and between two global superpowers: the United States and China. The AI arms race has become the metaphor of the day.
In a fresh anthology of essays curated by Harding, Reframing the AI arms raceshe and other figures in global politics and academia, including historian Lawrence Freedman and Japanese politician Taro Kono, argue that the language used to describe artificial intelligence sets the tone for policymaking and terms of engagement between nations.
Harding believes that the employ of artificial intelligence as a lethal weapon risks closing the door to the international cooperation required to ensure the technology is protected and the benefits are distributed evenly. Meanwhile, for smaller powers that import this technology, making concessions to the arms race means falling in line with one superpower or another, potentially against their own interests.
Harding sees the Trump administration AI nationalist rhetoric and its attempt to impose export controls on domestic models as symptoms of an arms race and evidence that a worst-case scenario is taking shape.
WIRED caught up with Harding in early June to discuss where the idea for an arms race came from, how the narrative shapes geopolitics and what smaller countries can do to make sure they have a say in the development of artificial intelligence.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRE: Why do you think people are drawn to war metaphors as they relate to artificial intelligence?
VERITY HARDING: I just think it’s a sexy setting. It’s one of those things that seems very explanatory, but if you dig into the details it limits your thinking.
When I worked at DeepMind, my job was to assist political leaders understand the technology and its capabilities. This was based on the idea that the technology was really stimulating, but there were also issues to worry about that would be better addressed in an international, collaborative way. What I started to notice [over time] there was a belief that it was more of a civilizational battle: the West versus China.
What forces were behind this change?
One was the honest belief that the technology was threatening – or would end up in the wrong hands – and therefore democracies should hold the keys.
The second was the anti-regulatory trend, [for whom] it was beneficial to point to China as the bogeyman: “If you regulate us, you will let China win.”
Could you point to a specific moment as a trigger?
ChatGPT [launched in November 2022] suddenly made many people pay attention to artificial intelligence. But at the same time other things happened.
ChatGPT emerged at the same time as a global pandemic, when people were freaking out about a world without borders that would become borders again, and the war in Ukraine, when many discussions about artificial intelligence and geopolitics – but especially weapons – suddenly became very real.
The view that artificial intelligence is a fresh arms race was quickly adopted. This was related to the last arms race in living memory, the Chilly War; people talked about it as a nuclear weapon.