It’s common to talk about China and the US being in an “AI arms race,” as each country races to be the first to develop and commercialize deep learning and other AI technologies. Now a new report suggests that a more literal AI arms race is also underway, as China pushes to use the technology in its military systems.
The report comes from a think tank called the Center for New American Security, and it offers an unusual level of access. It draws on various conferences as well as meetings with officials in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide an insider’s view of the nation’s AI strategy and how it relates to its military ambitions.
Senior AI editor Will Knight and I read through the 20-page analysis. Here are our five key takeaways:
#1 Military use of AI is integral to China’s geopolitical strategy. The report confirms that the country’s leaders see emerging technologies, including AI, as a way to catch up with rival nations in the West—both in military and economic might. Therefore, its leaders see military AI as inevitable, the reports says.
#2 Its military is investing heavily in autonomous technology. Drones, military robots, and long-range unmanned submarines are all to be expected in the future. In fact, “Chinese weapons manufacturers already are selling armed drones with significant amounts of combat autonomy,” the report says. In early 2018, China set up two new research organisations: one to look at advanced unmanned systems, another focused on advancing AI military applications. Both of them have become two of the largest and fastest-growing government AI research organizations in the world.
#3 It believes it can leapfrog the US in military AI technology. The Pentagon is, of course, also rushing to make use of artificial intelligence, in both non-weapons and weapons systems. But it has faced challenges because the relevant technology increasingly comes from the private sector—and those firms are often wary of an employee backlash. There are fewer barriers to such collaborations in China. Additionally, the US has to spend time and money on maintaining and upgrading its existing mature systems, while China can focus instead on wielding AI to build entirely new systems.
#4 There are some still some glaring weaknesses hampering China’s ambitions. China boasts that it has largely caught up with the US in research and development and commercial AI products. That may be so, but much of that research has been enabled by international collaboration. For example, a study from a leading Chinese university of the country’s AI ecosystem found that non-Chinese researchers helped work on more than half of China’s published AI research papers. China is also still dependent on US-designed semiconductors, which are the essential hardware for applying and advancing AI. The government is now throwing an immense amount of resources at reducing, and eventually eliminating, this dependence so its military and broader ambitions can’t be throttled by foreign adversaries.
#5 There is some hope of checking the march of autonomy. China’s leaders are concerned about the “arms race” rhetoric surrounding the country’s AI rivalry. Even as it moves quickly to use AI in military applications, China is keen to collaborate internationally on AI arms control. This seems an especially good thing considering how relations between the US and China have deteriorated in recent months.
