The other day, a US “tech giant” called Nvidia saw its market value drop by almost US$600 billion, a sum that comes near to recent estimates of Argentina annual gross domestic product. This was not due to the firm’s shortcomings but to the sudden appearance of a Chinese outfit, DeepSeek, that could perform Artificial Intelligence (AI) tasks on a shoestring budget and did not need the expensive computer chips that had made Nvidia, a company only specialists knew about until it came a cropper on the New York Stock Exchange, so impressively rich.
This was not the first time that a bright idea has had dire consequences for an established business. What made this one different was the speed with which it all happened and the fears it inspired. As we were immediately reminded, advances in this particular field can have serious geopolitical implications, which was why some alarmed commentators assumed that DeepSeek’s achievement could mean that China was overtaking the United States in the great Artificial Intelligence race.
To many people’s surprise, Donald Trump did not seem to be particularly rattled by what some said was a “Sputnik moment,” like the original in 1957 when the Soviet Union took what turned out to be a brief lead in the “space race” by sending an artificial satellite into orbit – a blow to US pride that led to its government investing more money in scientific research and sending out astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the moon. Instead, Trump suggested that his country, weakened as he thought it had been by all that DEI nonsense under the Biden-Harris administration, needed a “wake-up call” and that in any case the availability of cheap substitutes for items it had been assumed would always cost a great deal of money was a good thing that would benefit US consumers.
The Chinese, who are the world’s most dedicated control freaks and make so secret of their desire to keep tabs on every sentient biped in the country they rule and, presumably, in the rest of the world, have long been keen on AI. Rightly or wrongly, Xi Jinping and his henchmen believe it holds the key to hegemony over the planet, much as industrial prowess did when the Europeans emerged from their once unprepossessing corner of the Eurasian landmass to dominate entire continents because they were richer and far better equipped than their inhabitants.
As DeepSeek has just reminded us, new and unexpected developments in AI are becoming increasingly frequent. Hardly a day goes by without something allegedly extraordinarily important happening, but there is no agreement as to what it all means. While some take an apocalyptic view of what is going on and warn us that before we know it AI will be in charge of the world and wondering whether to reduce its human population to serfdom or remove it entirely because it could be superfluous to its requirements, others think it will usher in utopia by bringing about cures for a multitude of ailments and making all economies boom as never before after eliminating the need for anyone to work. Some even tell themselves that, thanks to AI, immortality will soon be in our grasp.
Perhaps DeepSeek, or one of the US chatbots, will tell us which group has it right but, alas, none of them can be trusted. When users of the Chinese answering machine started asking it loaded questions about Xi’s approach to Taiwan, Hong Kong, democracy, respect for human rights and other sensitive issues, it began by reeling out the standard political boilerplate favoured by Westerners but then suddenly erased it and obediently toed the Communist Party line.
Though US chatbots are notably more broadminded than their Chinese rival, they too tend to reflect the prevailing wisdom in their country of origin, which is not surprising because they feed on what has already been said or written and sent into cyberspace before regurgitating it in accordance with whatever algorithm is deemed relevant.
Long before the spectre of Artificial Intelligence arrived on the scene, technological progress had been hard at work fashioning what may be described as an Artificial Reality by herding people towards “echo chambers” in which they will presumably feel at home. Strange as it may seem, in the pre-Internet age you were rather more likely to come into contact with a fairly wide range of different opinions and attitudes than would later become the case.
By offering many different options they think will appeal to subscribers, entertainment companies and news outlets made it easier, and far more tempting, for people to restrict themselves to those they found congenial. This helps explain the widening gulf between “progressives” and “reactionaries” that can be found in all democratic countries, where those who favour a certain approach feel they have no need to communicate with individuals who do not share their often trenchant views. As far as Trump’s supporters are concerned, their Democrat foes – who for their part find what MAGA enthusiasts go on about incomprehensible or downright evil – might as well come from a different planet. Much the same is happening in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, where it is taken for granted that the political and cultural “elites” have lost touch with the bulk of the population.
Is Artificial Intelligence likely to become just an extremely useful tool or, as pessimists predict, could it become something terribly dangerous, which is why some say research should be put on hold for a while to give sensible folk time to devise safeguards that will prevent it from going on a rampage? Though such doubts may seem reasonable, it would appear that so much is at stake that even slowing AI’s development, let alone bringing it to a halt, has become impossible.
For good or ill, AI is the philosopher’s stone of the age we are living in and hordes of well-financed and highly talented men and women are frantically pursuing it. Perhaps they are fooling themselves when they attribute supernatural, or at least superhuman, powers to what they looking for, but no matter what happens they will continue on their quest if only because they fear that it would be disastrous to see what they are after fall into the hands of people who do not share their opinions, values or objectives.
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