Putin, China, USA see Artificial Intelligence as key to future geopolitical power

Putin addressed 16000 Russian Schools with the following statement:

“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind,” he said, via live video beamed to 16,000 selected schools. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

There is an intensifying race among Russia, China, and the US to accumulate military power based on artificial intelligence. All three countries have proclaimed intelligent machines as vital to the future of their national security. Technologies such as software that can sift intelligence material or autonomous drones and ground vehicles are seen as ways to magnify the power of human soldiers.

There is a 132 page report from the Harvard University Belfer Center – Artificial Intelligence and National Security. by Greg Allen and Taniel Chan. A study on behalf of Dr. Jason Matheny, Director of the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)

Researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have demonstrated significant technical progress over the past five years, much faster than was previously anticipated.
− Most of this progress is due to advances in the AI sub-field of machine learning.
− Most experts believe this rapid progress will continue and even accelerate

Existing capabilities in AI have significant potential for national security.
−For example, existing machine learning technology could enable high degrees of automation in labor-intensive activities such as satellite imagery analysis and cyber defense.
• Future progress in AI has the potential to be a transformative national security technology, on a par with nuclear weapons, aircraft, computers, and biotech.
− Each of these technologies led to significant changes in the strategy, organization, priorities, and allocated resources of the U.S. national security community.
– We argue future progress in AI will be at least equally impactful

Advances in AI will affect national security by driving change in three areas: military superiority, information superiority, and economic superiority.
− For military superiority, progress in AI will both enable new capabilities and make existing capabilities affordable to a broader range
of actors.
■ For example, commercially available, AI-enabled technology (such as long-range drone package delivery) may give weak states and non-state actors access to a type of long-range precision strike capability.
■ In the cyber domain, activities that currently require lots of high-skill labor, such as Advanced Persistent Threat operations, may in the future be largely automated and easily available on the black market.
− For information superiority, AI will dramatically enhance capabilities for the collection and analysis of data, and also the creation of data.

■ In intelligence operations, this will mean that there are more sources than ever from which to discern the truth. However, it will also be much easier to lie persuasively.
■ AI-enhanced forgery of audio and video media is rapidly improving in quality and decreasing in cost. In the future, AI-generated forgeries will challenge the basis of trust across many institutions.
− For economic superiority, we find that advances in AI could result in a new industrial revolution.
■ Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has predicted that advances in AI and related technologies will lead to a dramatic decline in demand for labor such that the United States “may have a third of men between the ages of 25 and 54 not working by the end of this half century.”

In July, China’s State Council released a detailed strategy designed to make the country “the front-runner and global innovation center in AI” by 2030. It includes pledges to invest in R&D that will “through AI elevate national defense strength and assure and protect national security.”