In a letter to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, Sanders writes that almost every day brings a new story about how these companies are losing...
They discuss a lot of the same points I would, right there. The incentives of AI leaders, Chinas current position, the lies from AI companies to communities, the way their stories change, the fact that they’re the ones calling it an “arms race.”
I would alternatively ask this: what expertise claims we are in an arms race? AI companies don’t count as expertise on global arms races, in what I think is a reasonable opinion.
There are several problems here. If you address them, I’m happy to answer your question faithfully. But as it stands, I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.
First and foremost, we’re specifically discussing an “arms race,” not just a “race.” I fail to understand what qualifies an AI company to be an expert in national security, weapons, and foreign affairs. To me, an AI company is an expert in what makes them more profit. That just so happens to involve AI here, but not “arms races.”
Second, doctors are probably not necessarily experts on vaccines. They’re likely to be experts on vaccine benefits, recommendation, procurement, administering, storage, … but that’s just administration and some operational knowledge. A vaccine expert (IMO) is a specialist for vaccines. They’re probably not working in a hospital.
A pharmaceutical company might be an expert on vaccines. But what’s the parallel to AI companies? Pharmaceutical companies research and develop actual vaccines. AI companies do not research and develop arms. The only argument I understand for this would be to say that an LLM is a weapon.
I don’t buy that an LLM is a weapon. Real competition exists, and certain military applications could become arms races, but AI as a whole is not one. Building out swaths of data centers to power more AI without a concrete public benefit isn’t something we should put up with.
You don’t benefit from the narrative that this is an arms race, not as an individual or a citizen. The benefactors here are the AI companies.
The technology can certainly be used as a weapon; it can hack systems already, and defend against hacks. This capability will only increase, and logically the better AI affords a strategic benefit. Hence, an arms race.
The rest of your questions aren’t questions or presuppose that AI can’t be used as a weapon.
In case it isn’t obvious, there are experts in this field that aren’t employed by AI.
The US and China are in an economic race. We aren’t racing to develop a particular military capability. Nobody can even name what that capability would be… “mass hacking?” Is that it? Sounds scary… I don’t buy it. It gives me the impression of fear mongering.
If it were about AI driven military capabilities, we could have probably worked with the compute we had years ago.
I think what should be obvious is the fact that “can be used as a weapon” doesn’t justify it being an “arm.” The fact that they can “hack” now is largely irrelevant. It’s a nice talking point that was parroted around the AI circle jerk recently, but largely unsubstantiated. I think they all caught on to the hype Mythos was getting, so they took the narrative for another spin. But even Mythos was a load of propaganda.
How do you know it wasn’t conveniently allowed to happen, to further fuel the propaganda machine? How do you know they didn’t exaggerate or leave blank important details, particularly because they’re financially incentivized to maintain the hype?
State actors have always hacked one another. Now with a fancy tool to do automated discovery, they might be a little faster. But that speed is also arguable, because there are reports on how AI led development actually shifts the development time burden rather than resolving it.
In case it isn’t obvious, there are experts in this field that aren’t employed by AI.
Those experts in the field (that aren’t employed by AI) mostly agree with this stance, from what I can tell.
I ran the report through AI (the irony is not lost on me) and while it’s really very clear this is closer to a manifesto than a unbiased report (not that it claims to be unbiased), I don’t strictly disagree with any specific point.
I have several thoughts, however:
If you don’t think having a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep is a weapon, fine-- hell, even if you tighten your tinfoil hat and reject the claim that they can even do that, if the American government and the Chinese government both believe it has this capability, and they both believe it’s advantage to have the better technology, then this is an arms race. Even if they’re both wrong about the capabilities of AI or the plausibility of AGI, its still an arms race. If the it turned out that atomic bombs weren’t feasible or possible to create, that wouldn’t have made the race to build one less of an arms race, without hindsight.
If not clear, I don’t believe a conspiracy on this scale is a realistic assumption without more data than “I don’t believe it”. It would have to spread across several competing companies throughout most, if not all, of the employees.
Like I said in the first comment, Sanders can threaten all he wants, but I just don’t believe Congress is going to take a risk on “its not really that important” and impose restrictions on AI development. (Side note that no restrictions on AI development is not the same as no restrictions on AI use or deployment.)
I think, as I said before, that we will need a global treaty on pausing development before any one country or company pauses development, or even slows it down.
If you don’t think having a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep is a weapon, fine-- hell, even if you tighten your tinfoil hat and reject the claim that they can even do that,
Let me tighten my tinfoil hat, really quickly. First and foremost, it’s great claims which require equally great evidence. The onus of evidencing (or lack thereof) “never sleeping skilled hacking machines” belongs to the AI companies, not me. So far it’s unsubstantiated. What we really ought be discussing is the plausibility of such a machine, given what we already know.
That’s a whole discussion in itself, which I’m happy to have. I digress, for now.
if the American government and the Chinese government both believe it has this capability, and they both believe it’s advantage to have the better technology, then this is an arms race.
We have not met that definition, in my opinion. I don’t believe even the US government is convinced of this. In fact, I’m doubtful anyone is fully convinced.
The Manhattan Project was an arms race between the USSR and the US, which this AI race looks nothing like. We didn’t have to rely on CEOs to tell us as much, either.
I think the US and China were once in recent time more bought into the idea that the recent LLM (and more deeply, the transformer and attention) innovations might lead to more breakthroughs with military applications. Those breakthroughs have been sparse and rather not up to par, like a theoretical never-sleeping-hacking-machine would be. I certainly don’t see any grand scale race between them, militarily speaking. So no… just as (if China were) foreign competition during combustion engine development, I wouldn’t consider that an “arms race.” Especially if the largest surface area in the field was disparate competitors in the market of business to consumer goods.
Where’s the military research programs actually treating this like a priority? DARPA for AI would be something that comes to mind, not this… would this really be the best that the US has to offer in its supposed “arms race?”
Even if they’re both wrong about the capabilities of AI or the plausibility of AGI, it’s still an arms race. If the it turned out that atomic bombs weren’t feasible or possible to create, that wouldn’t have made the race to build one less of an arms race, without hindsight.
I’m arguing that most the reasons it’s a race are political and economical. My issue is with the word “arms.” I would still say it is not an arms race.
If not clear, I don’t believe a conspiracy on this scale is a realistic assumption without more data than “I don’t believe it”. It would have to spread across several competing companies throughout most, if not all, of the employees.
I also don’t believe in a grand conspiracy. My belief is closer to cultural stupidity having gone “off the rails.”
It’s propaganda, CEOs hemorrhaging cash, people buying into the propaganda, every small win gets exacerbated while loses ignored.
My position isn’t unconventional or all that unreasonable, really. It’s a growing position, per my own observations. What’s happening isn’t right.
I think, as I said before, that we will need a global treaty on pausing development before any one country or company pauses development, or even slows it down.
I still say we should worry about ourselves first. That narrative only benefits the tech CEOs. Slowing down now means we can preserve livelihood, plan better, not blow trillions more dollars, and eventually speed back up without risk of crashing.
Right now, the current trajectory causes harm in people’s lives. I don’t buy the argument that this is acceptable without discussion, and that AI companies should get to pick that for us through their pushed narratives.
I also don’t buy that our current trajectory is optimal for arriving at some grander finish line. If you stop and readjust, you might actually “beat China” (for whatever that’s worth).
The onus of evidencing (or lack thereof) “never sleeping skilled hacking machines” belongs to the AI companies, not me. So far it’s unsubstantiated.
What, hypothetically, would that look like?
We have not met that definition, in my opinion. I don’t believe even the US government is convinced of this. In fact, I’m doubtful anyone is fully convinced.
Based on what? They’re certainly behaving in that manner.
I certainly don’t see any grand scale race between them, militarily speaking.
This should make a global treaty relatively easy, if, as you say, no party actually believes there is a threat.
Where’s the military research programs actually treating this like a priority?
You’d expect to know about them if they existed?
I’m arguing that most the reasons it’s a race are political and economical. My issue is with the word “arms.” I would still say it is not an arms are.
Are the specific semantics important?
I also don’t believe in a grand conspiracy. My belief is closer to cultural stupidity having gone “off the rails.”
You do if you are claiming that the known hacks from AI companies aren’t real, and that LLMs don’t even have that capability. Consider how many people would have to be in on it to sustain that fabrication.
My position isn’t unconventional or all that unreasonable, really. It’s a growing position, per my own observations.
I mean absolutely no disrespect or insult, but an antivaxxer could say that same exact thing. They likewise do not think their stance is unconventional or unreasonable, and, to our sorrow, it is a growing position.
I still say we should worry about ourselves first.
Yes, but there’s a subtle begging the question in this statement. If it is an arms race, “worrying about ourselves” would be continuing on developing AI at a breakneck speed. Only if we assume your stance is correct does that sentence mean slowing down.
Right now, the current trajectory causes harm in people’s lives. I don’t buy the argument that this is acceptable without discussion
Without discussion, or without coming to the conclusion you want? I think there’s quite a bit of discussion.
Evidence of a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep would look like repeatable, preferably independently verified demonstrations that an AI system can:
Find previously unknown vulnerabilities in real, unfamiliar software;
Construct and execute working exploits;
Chain multiple vulnerabilities across systems;
Adapt when an attack fails;
Maintain access and pursue objectives over long periods;
Do this end-to-end with minimal human direction;
Perform at approximately the level of skilled human penetration testers. Not merely solve capture-the-flag exercises or reproduce known exploits.
Those reports deserve independent scrutiny, particularly because some originate with interested companies. But the unresolved questions concern its reliability, generality, scalability and degree of autonomy. These are the important factors, of which most sources are silence.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that (1) they financially benefit from the hot air around AI, (2) something interesting happens with AI, (3) they speak only on the points that promote hot air, while (4) leaving out the important details. That’s not a conspiracy any more than you going to the bathroom would be, once you need to piss. These CEOs don’t deserve the credit they’re given as benevolent, honest actors. They’re money hungry and will do as their interests suggest.
That is different from alleging that the incidents were fabricated. No conspiracy is required for real demonstrations to be surrounded by exaggerated extrapolation. A model can perform an impressive autonomous exploit while still being far from a dependable, infinitely scalable army of expert hackers. Both things can be true.
Based on what? They’re certainly behaving in that manner.
You’re right that my statement that the US government probably isn’t convinced was a strong one. I can dial it back.
The government’s public behavior clearly demonstrates that it considers AI strategically and militarily important. DARPA says it has invested more than $2 billion in AI for national security. The White House explicitly published a plan titled “Winning the AI Race”. The Defense Department’s current strategy explicitly describes military AI as a race and calls for “Military AI Dominance”.
So, yes: there are military research programs, substantial spending, official doctrine and concrete efforts to integrate AI into warfighting. Asking “where is DARPA for AI?” was a bad rhetorical question. It exists.
Consequently, I’ll revise my position:
It is defensible to describe the narrower US-China competition in military AI autonomous weapons, cyber operations, intelligence, targeting and command systems as an potential emerging arms race. What remains inadequately established is the much broader claim that all frontier-model development constitutes one unified, winner-take-all arms race.
My disbelief is that we’ll ever graduate from “potential emerging” to “actual” arms race. Therefore, I also believe there is better ways to invest our time and resources. Not to mention the humanitarian concerns.
This should make a global treaty relatively easy, if, as you say, no party actually believes there is a threat.
Not necessarily. States resist agreements because they are uncertain about future capabilities and want to preserve their options. Verification would also be extremely difficult; the same model, compute cluster and vulnerability research can support both defensive and offensive purposes.
Still, I think your larger point stands: if governments genuinely believe uncontrolled military AI is dangerous, they should be willing to negotiate reciprocal limits.
I would support targeted agreements covering things such as autonomous nuclear-launch decisions, fully autonomous lethal targeting, attacks on civilian infrastructure and particular forms of autonomous cyber operation. A treaty pausing “AI development” generally would be much harder to define and verify.
I would also support a local measure to slow AI development while we find a better set of training wheels. I don’t buy the concerns of an “arms race” here. In my eyes, we have much better chances of benefiting from the ordeal if we slow down. If we don’t, the benefactors are the AI companies (particularly, at our loss too).
You’d expect to know about [military programs] if they existed?
Not all of them. Classified programs obviously exist, and absence of public evidence is not evidence of absence.
But that principle cuts both ways: secrecy cannot serve as positive evidence for any particular claim either. A public argument that an arms race exists must ultimately rely on observable budgets, doctrine, procurement, deployments, research programs and demonstrated capabilities. As noted above, some of it exists but its details are all too conveniently sparse.
Pair that with the financial incentives, that’s what I call a cultural driver for propaganda. Propaganda can boom organically just like any other movement, which doesn’t require a conspiracy.
Are the specific semantics important?
Yes, the label smuggles in policy conclusions. It also smuggles in a the rhetoric that we can’t slow down, must win, because there’s some kind of existential threat.
Calling something an “arms race” suggests that falling behind creates an intolerable security risk, speed is inherently protective, restraint is dangerous, and ordinary regulation benefits the enemy. That is precisely how the term is being used politically.
Nevertheless, I was treating one narrow academic definition as though it controlled ordinary language. Under the broader Oxford definition, the military-AI competition may arguably qualify. I will argue that it doesn’t.
The semantic distinction still matters when someone moves from:
The US and China are competing in consequential military-AI capabilities
to:
Therefore, every restriction on American commercial AI companies threatens national security.
That conclusion does not follow automatically. General frontier-model development overlaps some with military capability, but the two are not identical.
You do if you are claiming that the known hacks from AI companies aren’t real.
That is not the claim I was trying to make. My claim is that real capabilities and incidents exist, but companies have incentives to present the strongest results as representative, extrapolate from demonstrations to future dominance, and characterize policies benefiting them as national-security necessities. All while none of it is necessarily qualifying as the risk they present it to be. Meanwhile, you take on the responsibility of paying out of your livelihood to support their endeavors — because of the supposed risks. Well, if the risks are overplayed, then what?
That requires no coordinated conspiracy. It requires ordinary institutional incentives, selective emphasis and mutually reinforcing beliefs. Most employees would not need to deceive anyone or even agree about the geopolitical implications.
An antivaxxer could say that same exact thing.
Fair. Saying my position is “growing” does not make it correct.
If it is an arms race, “worrying about ourselves” would be continuing to develop AI at breakneck speed.
Agreed: I begged the disputed question with that wording.
But even accepting that a military-AI arms race exists does not establish that breakneck, minimally regulated commercial development is the optimal response. It could favor:
Concentrated investment in defensive cybersecurity;
Hardened critical infrastructure;
Carefully tested military systems;
Limits on publishing or exporting dangerous capabilities;
Mandatory security evaluations;
Counterintelligence and model-weight protection;
Arms-control negotiations;
Slower deployment of unreliable systems.
…all while more so maintaining our homes, sanctity, budgets, and privacy.
An arms race creates an argument for maintaining capability. It does not prove that maximum aggregate speed is safer than targeted development, testing and regulation.
So, why do we entertain the narratives pushed primarily by tech CEOs when it creates exactly the difference which we should seek not to create?
Without discussion, or without coming to the conclusion you want?
There is clearly substantial discussion. My complaint should have been more precise: the existence of public discussion does not mean the public has meaningful influence over the decisions, nor that the costs and benefits are distributed democratically.
I do have a preferred conclusion, and disagreement with it is not evidence that discussion is illegitimate. The question is whether “China” is being used to foreclose ordinary evaluation of labor displacement, energy use, surveillance, market concentration and safety—as though the arms-race premise settles every downstream policy question.
I don’t believe this social and economical pain is worthwhile. The narrative is overblown to justify it. That doesn’t require a conspiracy.
Here’s a really good podcast on the subject: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000779843294
They discuss a lot of the same points I would, right there. The incentives of AI leaders, Chinas current position, the lies from AI companies to communities, the way their stories change, the fact that they’re the ones calling it an “arms race.”
I would alternatively ask this: what expertise claims we are in an arms race? AI companies don’t count as expertise on global arms races, in what I think is a reasonable opinion.
Do doctors and pharmaceutical companies count as experts when discussing vaccines?
There are several problems here. If you address them, I’m happy to answer your question faithfully. But as it stands, I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.
First and foremost, we’re specifically discussing an “arms race,” not just a “race.” I fail to understand what qualifies an AI company to be an expert in national security, weapons, and foreign affairs. To me, an AI company is an expert in what makes them more profit. That just so happens to involve AI here, but not “arms races.”
Second, doctors are probably not necessarily experts on vaccines. They’re likely to be experts on vaccine benefits, recommendation, procurement, administering, storage, … but that’s just administration and some operational knowledge. A vaccine expert (IMO) is a specialist for vaccines. They’re probably not working in a hospital.
A pharmaceutical company might be an expert on vaccines. But what’s the parallel to AI companies? Pharmaceutical companies research and develop actual vaccines. AI companies do not research and develop arms. The only argument I understand for this would be to say that an LLM is a weapon.
I don’t buy that an LLM is a weapon. Real competition exists, and certain military applications could become arms races, but AI as a whole is not one. Building out swaths of data centers to power more AI without a concrete public benefit isn’t something we should put up with.
You don’t benefit from the narrative that this is an arms race, not as an individual or a citizen. The benefactors here are the AI companies.
The technology can certainly be used as a weapon; it can hack systems already, and defend against hacks. This capability will only increase, and logically the better AI affords a strategic benefit. Hence, an arms race.
The rest of your questions aren’t questions or presuppose that AI can’t be used as a weapon.
In case it isn’t obvious, there are experts in this field that aren’t employed by AI.
The term “arms race” has a definition and I’m pretty sure this still doesn’t apply. So in my opinion, even at best, this is political propaganda.
The US and China are in an economic race. We aren’t racing to develop a particular military capability. Nobody can even name what that capability would be… “mass hacking?” Is that it? Sounds scary… I don’t buy it. It gives me the impression of fear mongering.
If it were about AI driven military capabilities, we could have probably worked with the compute we had years ago.
I think what should be obvious is the fact that “can be used as a weapon” doesn’t justify it being an “arm.” The fact that they can “hack” now is largely irrelevant. It’s a nice talking point that was parroted around the AI circle jerk recently, but largely unsubstantiated. I think they all caught on to the hype Mythos was getting, so they took the narrative for another spin. But even Mythos was a load of propaganda.
How do you know it wasn’t conveniently allowed to happen, to further fuel the propaganda machine? How do you know they didn’t exaggerate or leave blank important details, particularly because they’re financially incentivized to maintain the hype?
State actors have always hacked one another. Now with a fancy tool to do automated discovery, they might be a little faster. But that speed is also arguable, because there are reports on how AI led development actually shifts the development time burden rather than resolving it.
Those experts in the field (that aren’t employed by AI) mostly agree with this stance, from what I can tell.
I linked a paper in one of my earlier replies. Here’s another by a different author: https://tnsr.org/2021/06/debunking-the-ai-arms-race-theory/
… and, I just found a table. Here’s 7 more I guess.
I ran the report through AI (the irony is not lost on me) and while it’s really very clear this is closer to a manifesto than a unbiased report (not that it claims to be unbiased), I don’t strictly disagree with any specific point.
I have several thoughts, however:
If you don’t think having a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep is a weapon, fine-- hell, even if you tighten your tinfoil hat and reject the claim that they can even do that, if the American government and the Chinese government both believe it has this capability, and they both believe it’s advantage to have the better technology, then this is an arms race. Even if they’re both wrong about the capabilities of AI or the plausibility of AGI, its still an arms race. If the it turned out that atomic bombs weren’t feasible or possible to create, that wouldn’t have made the race to build one less of an arms race, without hindsight.
If not clear, I don’t believe a conspiracy on this scale is a realistic assumption without more data than “I don’t believe it”. It would have to spread across several competing companies throughout most, if not all, of the employees.
Like I said in the first comment, Sanders can threaten all he wants, but I just don’t believe Congress is going to take a risk on “its not really that important” and impose restrictions on AI development. (Side note that no restrictions on AI development is not the same as no restrictions on AI use or deployment.)
I think, as I said before, that we will need a global treaty on pausing development before any one country or company pauses development, or even slows it down.
Let me tighten my tinfoil hat, really quickly. First and foremost, it’s great claims which require equally great evidence. The onus of evidencing (or lack thereof) “never sleeping skilled hacking machines” belongs to the AI companies, not me. So far it’s unsubstantiated. What we really ought be discussing is the plausibility of such a machine, given what we already know.
That’s a whole discussion in itself, which I’m happy to have. I digress, for now.
We have not met that definition, in my opinion. I don’t believe even the US government is convinced of this. In fact, I’m doubtful anyone is fully convinced.
The Manhattan Project was an arms race between the USSR and the US, which this AI race looks nothing like. We didn’t have to rely on CEOs to tell us as much, either.
I think the US and China were once in recent time more bought into the idea that the recent LLM (and more deeply, the transformer and attention) innovations might lead to more breakthroughs with military applications. Those breakthroughs have been sparse and rather not up to par, like a theoretical never-sleeping-hacking-machine would be. I certainly don’t see any grand scale race between them, militarily speaking. So no… just as (if China were) foreign competition during combustion engine development, I wouldn’t consider that an “arms race.” Especially if the largest surface area in the field was disparate competitors in the market of business to consumer goods.
Where’s the military research programs actually treating this like a priority? DARPA for AI would be something that comes to mind, not this… would this really be the best that the US has to offer in its supposed “arms race?”
I’m arguing that most the reasons it’s a race are political and economical. My issue is with the word “arms.” I would still say it is not an arms race.
I also don’t believe in a grand conspiracy. My belief is closer to cultural stupidity having gone “off the rails.”
It’s propaganda, CEOs hemorrhaging cash, people buying into the propaganda, every small win gets exacerbated while loses ignored.
My position isn’t unconventional or all that unreasonable, really. It’s a growing position, per my own observations. What’s happening isn’t right.
I still say we should worry about ourselves first. That narrative only benefits the tech CEOs. Slowing down now means we can preserve livelihood, plan better, not blow trillions more dollars, and eventually speed back up without risk of crashing.
Right now, the current trajectory causes harm in people’s lives. I don’t buy the argument that this is acceptable without discussion, and that AI companies should get to pick that for us through their pushed narratives.
I also don’t buy that our current trajectory is optimal for arriving at some grander finish line. If you stop and readjust, you might actually “beat China” (for whatever that’s worth).
deleted by creator
What, hypothetically, would that look like?
Based on what? They’re certainly behaving in that manner.
This should make a global treaty relatively easy, if, as you say, no party actually believes there is a threat.
You’d expect to know about them if they existed?
Are the specific semantics important?
You do if you are claiming that the known hacks from AI companies aren’t real, and that LLMs don’t even have that capability. Consider how many people would have to be in on it to sustain that fabrication.
I mean absolutely no disrespect or insult, but an antivaxxer could say that same exact thing. They likewise do not think their stance is unconventional or unreasonable, and, to our sorrow, it is a growing position.
Yes, but there’s a subtle begging the question in this statement. If it is an arms race, “worrying about ourselves” would be continuing on developing AI at a breakneck speed. Only if we assume your stance is correct does that sentence mean slowing down.
Without discussion, or without coming to the conclusion you want? I think there’s quite a bit of discussion.
Evidence of a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep would look like repeatable, preferably independently verified demonstrations that an AI system can:
We have evidence meaningfully approaching parts of that. DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge demonstrated autonomous vulnerability discovery and remediation. OpenAI reported that models conducting an evaluation escaped the intended research environment, chained vulnerabilities, and accessed Hugging Face’s production infrastructure. Anthropic and Meta have also reported “agentic” cyberattacks.
Those reports deserve independent scrutiny, particularly because some originate with interested companies. But the unresolved questions concern its reliability, generality, scalability and degree of autonomy. These are the important factors, of which most sources are silence.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that (1) they financially benefit from the hot air around AI, (2) something interesting happens with AI, (3) they speak only on the points that promote hot air, while (4) leaving out the important details. That’s not a conspiracy any more than you going to the bathroom would be, once you need to piss. These CEOs don’t deserve the credit they’re given as benevolent, honest actors. They’re money hungry and will do as their interests suggest.
That is different from alleging that the incidents were fabricated. No conspiracy is required for real demonstrations to be surrounded by exaggerated extrapolation. A model can perform an impressive autonomous exploit while still being far from a dependable, infinitely scalable army of expert hackers. Both things can be true.
You’re right that my statement that the US government probably isn’t convinced was a strong one. I can dial it back.
The government’s public behavior clearly demonstrates that it considers AI strategically and militarily important. DARPA says it has invested more than $2 billion in AI for national security. The White House explicitly published a plan titled “Winning the AI Race”. The Defense Department’s current strategy explicitly describes military AI as a race and calls for “Military AI Dominance”.
So, yes: there are military research programs, substantial spending, official doctrine and concrete efforts to integrate AI into warfighting. Asking “where is DARPA for AI?” was a bad rhetorical question. It exists.
Consequently, I’ll revise my position:
It is defensible to describe the narrower US-China competition in military AI autonomous weapons, cyber operations, intelligence, targeting and command systems as an potential emerging arms race. What remains inadequately established is the much broader claim that all frontier-model development constitutes one unified, winner-take-all arms race.
My disbelief is that we’ll ever graduate from “potential emerging” to “actual” arms race. Therefore, I also believe there is better ways to invest our time and resources. Not to mention the humanitarian concerns.
Not necessarily. States resist agreements because they are uncertain about future capabilities and want to preserve their options. Verification would also be extremely difficult; the same model, compute cluster and vulnerability research can support both defensive and offensive purposes.
Still, I think your larger point stands: if governments genuinely believe uncontrolled military AI is dangerous, they should be willing to negotiate reciprocal limits.
I would support targeted agreements covering things such as autonomous nuclear-launch decisions, fully autonomous lethal targeting, attacks on civilian infrastructure and particular forms of autonomous cyber operation. A treaty pausing “AI development” generally would be much harder to define and verify.
I would also support a local measure to slow AI development while we find a better set of training wheels. I don’t buy the concerns of an “arms race” here. In my eyes, we have much better chances of benefiting from the ordeal if we slow down. If we don’t, the benefactors are the AI companies (particularly, at our loss too).
Not all of them. Classified programs obviously exist, and absence of public evidence is not evidence of absence.
But that principle cuts both ways: secrecy cannot serve as positive evidence for any particular claim either. A public argument that an arms race exists must ultimately rely on observable budgets, doctrine, procurement, deployments, research programs and demonstrated capabilities. As noted above, some of it exists but its details are all too conveniently sparse.
Pair that with the financial incentives, that’s what I call a cultural driver for propaganda. Propaganda can boom organically just like any other movement, which doesn’t require a conspiracy.
Yes, the label smuggles in policy conclusions. It also smuggles in a the rhetoric that we can’t slow down, must win, because there’s some kind of existential threat.
Calling something an “arms race” suggests that falling behind creates an intolerable security risk, speed is inherently protective, restraint is dangerous, and ordinary regulation benefits the enemy. That is precisely how the term is being used politically.
Nevertheless, I was treating one narrow academic definition as though it controlled ordinary language. Under the broader Oxford definition, the military-AI competition may arguably qualify. I will argue that it doesn’t.
The semantic distinction still matters when someone moves from:
to:
That conclusion does not follow automatically. General frontier-model development overlaps some with military capability, but the two are not identical.
That is not the claim I was trying to make. My claim is that real capabilities and incidents exist, but companies have incentives to present the strongest results as representative, extrapolate from demonstrations to future dominance, and characterize policies benefiting them as national-security necessities. All while none of it is necessarily qualifying as the risk they present it to be. Meanwhile, you take on the responsibility of paying out of your livelihood to support their endeavors — because of the supposed risks. Well, if the risks are overplayed, then what?
That requires no coordinated conspiracy. It requires ordinary institutional incentives, selective emphasis and mutually reinforcing beliefs. Most employees would not need to deceive anyone or even agree about the geopolitical implications.
Fair. Saying my position is “growing” does not make it correct.
Agreed: I begged the disputed question with that wording.
But even accepting that a military-AI arms race exists does not establish that breakneck, minimally regulated commercial development is the optimal response. It could favor:
…all while more so maintaining our homes, sanctity, budgets, and privacy.
An arms race creates an argument for maintaining capability. It does not prove that maximum aggregate speed is safer than targeted development, testing and regulation.
So, why do we entertain the narratives pushed primarily by tech CEOs when it creates exactly the difference which we should seek not to create?
There is clearly substantial discussion. My complaint should have been more precise: the existence of public discussion does not mean the public has meaningful influence over the decisions, nor that the costs and benefits are distributed democratically.
I do have a preferred conclusion, and disagreement with it is not evidence that discussion is illegitimate. The question is whether “China” is being used to foreclose ordinary evaluation of labor displacement, energy use, surveillance, market concentration and safety—as though the arms-race premise settles every downstream policy question.
I don’t believe this social and economical pain is worthwhile. The narrative is overblown to justify it. That doesn’t require a conspiracy.