Washington's AI plan creates battlefield

US PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP signed a presidential decree on Feb 11 requiring the federal government to put more resources and funds into the artificial intelligence research and promotion. Li Zheng, a US studies researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, commented in an article for Beijing News:

The decree is tantamount to a master plan for the development of AI in the United States, as it sets out the government should support fundamental research, resource sharing, rules making, talent cultivation and international promotion.

Yet, to make it work, the US government has to overcome not a few practical obstacles. As some US media have observed, the presidential order is short on details and operability, as it does not delegate powers and autonomy to other relevant parties that are crucial to AI development, instead it concentrates power with the government. But it does not promise any concrete inputs.

What it promised is that the White House will mete out a detailed enforcement regulation in half a year to translate the decree into actions. But given that the Trump administration has made such promises on quite a few administrative orders that have yielded few true results, no wonder such a high-profile plan－which directly concerns whether the US can be made great again－has been met with doubts at home.

It is hard to say whether it is China's robust catch-up momentum in AI in recent years that has prompted the push to consolidate the advantages the US has in the field. The administration has avoided mentioning how the federal government will find the funds to invest in the expensive fundamental research related to AI, which entails long-term inputs without necessarily producing measurable outputs.

Given its protectionist stance, the US government's involvement may, to some extent, affect the AI market's innovation vitality that is based on the comparatively free flow of ideas, technology, talents and capital, especially among the main players in the field. This flow is often blocked by the administration under the name of national security.

A direct concern is the administration will take the presidential decree as a pretense to draft new market entry conditions for foreign companies. The shortsighted practice, if the US embraces it, will turn an otherwise emerging cooperation platform into a new technology battlefield.