It would be irresponsible for intelligence agencies NOT to involve themselves in AI. LLMs have the capabilities to catalyze economic shockwaves on the same magnitude of the internet itself.
Out of the BRICS, Brazil, India, and South Africa are there. Russia and China aren’t, but that’s not really an issue of “competitive challengers” so much as dictatorships who are invading or threatening to invade democracies
Realise that America has invaded plenty of countries, overthrown leaders, been a huge driver of claimed change and oil industries, basically done whatever it wants and continues to do so, pretty much based on being able to print as much money,as it likes and if you don’t like that, you’ll face the full force of the military industrial complex.
Look at Snowden and Assange. They tried to show us what’s behind the curtain and their lives were wrecked.
The rhetoric on here about Russia and China = ”bad guys”, no questions asked is overly simplistic. Putin is clearly in the wrong here. But what creates a person like that? I believe we are somewhat responsible for it.
People cite possible atrocities of Xinjiang, but what about Iraq and Siria, North Korea, Vietnam whole entire countries destroyed. Incredible loss of life.
American attitudes are a huge source of division in the world. Yes so are China and Russias.
We cannot only see one side of a story anymore, it’s just too dangerous. As we have more powerful weapons and we do, we have to, absolutely have to learn to understand each other and work through diplomacy with a more open mind and peaceful outcomes which are beneficial for all.
No I’m not advocating for dictators, but you cannot pretend that Americans invasions have been always positive or for good intention, or that American interests are always aligned with the rest of the worlds.
Why wouldn't the US Government invest billions of dollars in a technology that it sees as essential? What's FUD-y about that? Most of our industry itself is the result of the US Government's past investments for military-related purposes.
Later edit: Also, article from 2016 [1]
> There’s more to the Allen & Co annual Sun Valley mogul gathering than talk about potential media deals: The industry’s corporate elite spent this morning listening to a panel about advances in artificial intelligence, following sessions yesterday dealing with education, biotech and gene splicing, and the status of Middle East.
> Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen led the AI session with LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Y Combinator’s Sam Altman. The main themes: AI will affect lots of businesses, and it’s coming quickly.
> Yesterday’s sessions included one with former CIA director George Tenant who spoke about the Middle East and terrorism with New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counter-terrorism John Miller and a former chief of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
So, yes, all the intelligence agencies are pretty involved in this AI thing, they'd be stupid not to be.
Now seven years later Will Hurd and George Tenet are currently the managing director and chairman respectively of Allen & Co! More facts worth considering are in the mysterious hacker news comment from the other day:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35366484
Allen & Co was also the “boutique investment bank” (as the media was calling them back then) that was involved in the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook. Archived WSJ source for it [1]
Notice how OpenAI is open to many Western friendly countries but not certain competitive challengers? https://platform.openai.com/docs/supported-countries