Over-regulation of artificial intelligence could lead to Chinese dominance, experts warn: 'They want to win'

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AI competition between the United States and China will 'define the 21st Century': Gordon Chang

Experts discuss what is at stake in the AI race between the United States and China, warning it could 'dictate the future of humanity.'

The United States government and private sector should strike a balance between regulation and investment in artificial intelligence in order to retain a technological edge over China, experts advised.

Gordon Chang, the author of "The Coming Collapse of China," advised a prohibition on investment into Chinese companies, given the country's government-down approach to military and technological developments.

"We have to recognize the comprehensiveness of the Chinese system and cut trade and investment with China," Chang said. "If we do that, China does not have a chance of competing with the United States because we're a far stronger society."

Unlike China, in the United States, artificial intelligence developments are driven by the private sector, leading to some advantages, but also resulting in a lack of political investment in the technology, he said.

"There are private companies that are involved like Baidu, but for the most part, the U.S. model is decentralized, which is the way that we handle most everything in our country," he told Fox News Digital. "In the U.S., we're handling it in a very different way than China, but I think that gives us some critical advantages … one thing we don't have is a political decision at the top to promote various technologies, including AI." 

"That's not to say that the [U.S.] federal government is hostile to it, it's not, but it doesn't look at this with the same determination and the same relentlessness as the Chinese government approaches things, which is generally the Communist Party's top-down system," he added. 

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"What we lack, of course, is political will to have those determinations made where we have decided we will win," he added. "We haven't made that determination yet."

Experts argue difference between AI investment in China and the U.S. is the fact that the American model is driven by private companies whereas China takes a government approach.  (JOSEP LAGO/AFP via Getty Images)

Despite Congress' lack of investment in AI, there have been talks of regulating the technology, which Liberty Blockchain COO Christopher Alexander said may be premature. 

"We probably need a lot more federal guidance, which is not to say that we need the federal government regulating it, but we need to have a commitment that we will win," he said.

"I don't know that there's a good policy consideration to the outcomes of the regulation in either direction, but I can say regulating something because you're scared of what it might become rather than considering what it did when it arrives is a little disconcerting," he added. 

Alexander also noted that China is not likely to regulate AI, so any restrictions imposed in the United States could lead to a technological disadvantage.

"They want to win, and they are willing to go to any lengths to do that," he said. "There are a lot of complicated issues with regard to regulation and AI is extremely dangerous and could take us places where humanity doesn't want to go."

"I'm not against regulation, but of course, if we were to regulate it, that would put us at a disadvantage with anyone who didn't regulate it," he added. 

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One expert said conversations surrounding U.S. investment to prevent China from gaining a technological advantage are difficult as the country is running on a budget and everyone is arguing about where to cut spending. (Fox News)

Dr. Michael Capps, the CEO of Diveplane, was also wary of regulating AI, and encouraged more government investment, touting potential savings in the long run. 

"Some people say a digital Bill of Rights is the way to go, some basic standards of this is what's appropriate for us to be able to do with AI, but getting specific is where it's going to break down, because we can't set specific rules for regulation and have them work because it's too late already," he said. "By the time you wrote it down, somebody came up with something new."

Instead of focusing on regulating the technology, the United States should dedicate spending and investment in artificial intelligence, in order to match China, Capps said.

"I'm a big fan of tripling down on AI spending because that's how you get savings in the future," he said. "[For example], better AI investment now is going to reduce health care costs in three years or five years rather than just spending more on entitlements programs."

"The Chinese have been doubling AI spending every year, and that's just the public spending that they do," he added. "They also have a private military budget, which is almost as large."

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The United States is not the only country debating a regulation on artificial intelligence. Laws have been proposed across Europe to limit the technology. If the United States were to mimic the same top-down approach, it could lead to Chinese dominance, James Czerniawski, a senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity, said. 

"I don't think that you want to emulate Europe, particularly when we're thinking about this race with China," he said. "If we start becoming more top down, highly prescriptive in terms of the regulatory model that Europe has typically had over the last 30 years, then yeah, I think that you actually pose the risk of China being able to close that gap at a much more significant pace than what is currently happening right now."

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Instead, Czerniawski reccomended an approach similar to early regulations of the internet. 

"It's one thing if we're simply saying, we're going to go and try to emulate what we did in Web 2.0, which was a very light touch regulatory model to the Internet and that actually was a huge difference maker in the United States becoming the innovation king of the Web," he said. "I would like to hope that we would maintain something similar when it comes to AI." 

Czerniawski also promoted continued investment in AI research and development in order to develop more use cases for the technology.

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"If we're able to go and invest in R&D and do that further, we'll see how it can go and unlock more capacity for people and really put the United States over the edge there," he said. "But that also means that the United States has to be very aggressive in attracting the smartest and brightest people in the field to come and work here in the United States."