The challenge is a lot bigger than they think

Last week, the White House released its long-awaited AI Action Plan. The product of six months of work by some of the brightest minds in the Trump administration, the plan is an impressive document, built around three pillars—accelerating innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading in international diplomacy and security. It has already been accompanied by three executive orders relating to each of these pillars, with several more soon to come, representing a significant shift of direction from the caution that characterized the Biden administration’s approach to AI. Describing itself as “America’s roadmap to win the [AI] race,” the plan may soon be seen as inaugurating an effort comparable to a new Manhattan Project. 

The advent of artificial intelligence already represents a technological breakthrough at least on par with the harnessing of nuclear energy nearly a century ago. Like nuclear energy, it is a technology clearly capable of doing extraordinary good for humanity or extraordinary harm. And like nuclear energy, its breakneck development is happening in the midst of tense international competition between superpowers—although since we are thankfully not in open conflict with China, the current AI race more closely resembles the post-1945 nuclear race with the Soviet Union than the Manhattan Project’s race against Nazi Germany.