Researchers, companies and countries around the world are racing to explore — and exploit — the possibilities of artificial intelligence technology. China is working on an extremely aggressive multi-billion-dollar plan for government investment into AI research and applications. The U.S. government has been slower to act.
The Obama administration issued a report on AI near the end of its term. Since then, little has happened — until a Feb. 11 executive order from President Donald Trump encouraging the country to do more with AI.
The executive order has several parts, including directing federal agencies to invest in AI and train workers “in AI-relevant skills,” making federal data and computing resources available to AI researchers and telling the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create standards for AI systems that are reliable and work well together. These are all good ideas, but they lack funding and bureaucratic structure. So after researching how large organizations use AI for the past five years, in my view the executive order alone is not likely to transform the American approach to AI.
The AI gap is more potentially dangerous than the old Cold War missile gap was. To read more, click here.