Google CEO warns US losing AI race to China over regulations
The tech giant’s chief executive has delivered an ominous message about America’s future in the battle that will define this century.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has issued a stark warning that the United States could lose the global artificial intelligence race to China unless it gets its regulatory house in order, declaring the current patchwork of state-level rules risks crippling American innovation.
In a blunt assessment of the AI landscape, Mr Pichai told Fox News Sunday the proliferation of more than 1000 AI-related bills moving through state legislatures across America is creating a regulatory maze that could hand China a decisive advantage in the AI race that will define the 21st century.
“How do you cope with those varied regulations, and how do you compete with countries like China, which are moving fast in this technology?” Mr Pichai asked.
“I think we have to get the balance right.”
The Google boss argued the US must strike a balance between encouraging innovation and putting up guardrails, something he said would be “better done at the national level” rather than leaving individual states to craft their own conflicting rules.
His comments come at a critical juncture in the global AI arms race, with China pouring billions into artificial intelligence development.
At the same time, Western nations grapple with how to regulate the powerful technology without stifling the innovation driving their economies.
Mr Pichai stressed that both governments and technology companies must work together to strengthen their defences against AI-enabled threats, calling for international cooperation to prevent the technology from becoming weaponised.
“Part of it is us as companies making our products better,” Mr Pichai said. “Part of it is governments working together to create standards and frameworks by which we all use technology in a cooperative way.”
Countries must work together to “develop international frameworks of cooperation so that we don’t weaponise these technologies against each other,” he added.
The dual-edged nature of AI sits at the heart of Mr Pichai’s concerns. While acknowledging the technology’s “great benefits”, he warned the same tools can be turned to devastating effect by bad actors.
“Any technology has a dual side to it,” Mr Pichai said. “ … The journey of humanity is always, ‘How do you harness technology to benefit society?’ And I think this technology is no different.”
Google is already deploying AI defensively, using it to stop criminals who may weaponise the technology for scams and hacking. The company’s SynthID tool, developed by Google DeepMind, can identify AI-generated images and videos.
Mr Pichai pointed to a court ruling handed down just hours before his interview, in Google’s favour against a phishing operator that had targeted more than a million people across over 100 countries, as evidence of the company’s commitment to fighting AI-enabled crime.
“You want to use AI on the defence side too,” Mr Pichai said. “The same way bad actors can use AI, we can also use AI to better detect those operations.”
The Google chief executive also offered a glimpse into the company’s ambitious “Suncatcher” project, an initiative to build solar-powered AI data centres in outer space to powers the industry’s increasingly energy-hungry infrastructure.
“There’s no doubt to me that a decade or so away we’ll be viewing it as a more normal way to build data centres,” he said.
When questioned whether AI is undermining human thought, Mr Pichai drew parallels to early criticism of Google search itself.
“About twenty-five years ago, people were asking the same questions about Google search,” he said. “I think as a society we will adapt, and I expect our creative days are going to be even richer in the future.”
Mr Pichai’s regulatory warnings come amid growing concerns about the sustainability of the AI boom dominated by tech giants like Nvidia and OpenAI.
The Google boss himself acknowledged “irrationality” in the current investment frenzy.
In an interview with the BBC last month, Mr Pichai warned that no company, including Google, would be immune if the AI bubble were to burst.
“I think no company is going to be immune, including us,” he said, drawing comparisons to the dotcom boom and bust of the late 1990s.
Mr Pichai said while the growth of AI investment had been an “extraordinary moment”, the industry can “overshoot” in investment cycles.
“We can look back at the internet right now. There was clearly a lot of excess investment, but none of us would question whether the internet was profound,” he said. “I expect AI to be the same. So I think it’s both rational and there are elements of irrationality through a moment like this.”
Alphabet (Google) shares have doubled in value in seven months to US$3.5 trillion as markets have grown more confident in the search giant’s ability to fend off threats from ChatGPT owner OpenAI.
- with Alex Blair
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Originally published as Google CEO warns US losing AI race to China over regulations
