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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a four-point plan to help the United States retain its dominance in the global AI arms race.
Altman's goal is to ensure the "future of AI is a future built to benefit the most people possible," he wrote in an editorial published by the Washington Post on Thursday. He called on the United States to lead a "global coalition of like-minded countries" to "make it happen."
Here's the TLDR, according to Altman's ChatGPT: "The urgent question of our time is whether the US and its allies will lead the global AI future to benefit democracy or let authoritarian regimes shape it for their own power."
To this end, the first step in Altman's plan is to ensure proper safeguards around AI technology. "American AI firms and industry need to craft robust security measures to ensure that our coalition maintains the lead in current and future models and enables our private sector to innovate," he wrote. These measures should include "cyber defense and data center security innovations" that would "prevent hackers from stealing key intellectual property," he added.
Next up: Build the right infrastructure. Altman urged American policymakers to "work with the private sector to build significantly larger quantities of the physical infrastructure — from data centers to power plants — that run the AI systems themselves."
He said that would help create more jobs and establish AI as a "new industrial base" in the United States. He also said the United States needs to invest in developing a new generation of AI innovators, researchers, and engineers. "They are our true superpower," he wrote.
Third, the United States should establish more regulations around trade and the transmission of information across borders. That includes "clarity around how the United States intends to implement export controls and foreign investment rules for the global build out of AI systems," he wrote. That also means establishing rules for where materials — like training data, chips, and code — are stored worldwide. It's "not just about exporting technology," he wrote. "It's about exporting the values that the technology upholds."
And finally, Altman suggested that the United States needs to develop a global strategy for AI so that developing nations aren't left behind. Altman proposed several solutions, including creating something similar to an International Atomic Energy Agency for AI, which would help promote peaceful use of the technology.
He suggested establishing an investment fund that would pool resources from countries committed to safely developing AI. Another option, he wrote, would be to build a nonprofit similar to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, which would be dedicated to "maximizing access to the internet in support of an open, connected, democratic global community."
Altman's editorial comes as the threat from China to US AI dominance grows. Last year, the United States took the lead in global AI investment, pouring over $67 billion into the technology, according to Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. China came in second, investing close to $8 billion. But most analysts expect that number to rise quickly.
"We need the democratic — small 'd' democratic — world to win here, and we have the opportunity to do it," Altman told Axios.
