Sam Altman's Four-Point Plan to Keep US Ahead in AI Race Against China

Sam Altman says the US has to do 4 things to prevent China from taking the AI throne | Business Insider India

Altman emphasized the need for AI safeguards, infrastructure, and global coalition leadership. 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.

Sam Altman urges formation of US-led AI freedom coalition

Sam Altman has called for a US-led coalition of nations to ensure AI remains a vehicle for freedom and democracy, and not a tool for authoritarians to keep themselves in power and dominate others. Altman - the billionaire off-again, on-again CEO of OpenAI - wrote in a Washington Post op-ed today that the question of "who would control AI" is "the urgent question of our time." Not climate change, which his and others' AI buddies are undoubtedly contributing to, nor political misinformation enabled by the technology. He argues we need to ensure the Western world - led by the United States - are the ones who dominate the space. Only the uncharitable would interpret Altman's call to action as him simply wanting to protect his California-based OpenAI from Chinese competition. "There is no third option -- and it's time to decide which path to take," Altman said. "The United States currently has a lead in AI development, but ... authoritarian governments the world over are willing to spend enormous amounts of money to catch up and ultimately overtake us." Altman believes such regimes will use AI's potential scientific, health, and educational benefits to maintain a grip on power, specifically naming Russia and China as threats. If allowed to do so, he warns, "they will force US companies and those of other nations to share user data ... spy on their own citizens or create next-generation cyberweapons to use against other countries." (Because a democratic nation would never do such a thing - right?) "The first chapter of AI is already written," Altman said, referring to "limited assistants" such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. "More advances will soon follow and will usher in a decisive period in the story of human society. "If we want to ensure that the future of AI is a future built to benefit the most people possible, we need a US-led global coalition of like-minded countries and an innovative new strategy to make it happen," Altman added. That strategy, the CEO said, needs to involve four things: Improving AI security; the government building out the infrastructure needed to power the latest, greatest AI models; developing a "diplomacy policy for AI;" and ensuring there's a set of new norms established around developing and deploying AI. Altman said he sees a future AI freedom force playing a role akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Alternatively, he said, an ICANN-style body might also work. Naturally, Altman sees this as a job for US policymakers working in close collaboration with private sector AI businesses - his, in all likelihood. Altman and OpenAI's record is hardly spotless, however. Altman is no stranger to begging the government to regulate AI startups, but that call for control is frequently undercut by his other actions. He's signed an open letter, alongside other industry heavyweights, warning of apocalyptic threats triggered by rogue models, but when some of those same leaders called for a moratorium on training powerful AIs, Altman's name was conspicuously absent from the list. Altman's also gone before Congress to tell members how much the AI industry needs to be regulated, while at the same time lobbying other lawmakers to exclude OpenAI from stricter regulations. All the while, OpenAI has chosen to not report security problems that it didn't consider critical enough to mention, and has been accused of being a bit authoritarian itself, while seemingly violating Europe's GDPR rules, by not allowing EU citizens to request corrections of their own personal data. One former OpenAI board member Helen Toner even said in a recent interview that Altman, on multiple occasions, "gave us inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place." That meant "it was basically impossible for the board to know how well those safety processes were working or what might need to change," Toner said. When confronted on the matter, Altman reportedly tried to push Toner out of the super lab while continuing to shield the reality of the safety of OpenAI products from the rest of the board. Whether Altman or OpenAI should be influencing the future of international AI policy raises a lot of questions at the very least. We've reached out to OpenAI and Altman for comment. ®