Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to be the biggest change of our lives. It will have exponential effects that will be both horrific and amazing, and the seats on the rocket ship are occupied by the United States and China. However, the countries are battling one another to be the world provider for AI solutions, and I argue that they must work together. A US-China partnership is critical to the future of producing economically viable products, that also bear in mind pressing ethical questions.
 
At its core, AI is the process of building models for a particular outcome. A great incentive to introduce AI into society is its ability to predict. AI can offer a signal from the noise and gain some knowledge or insight into massive data sets. At the moment, artificial intelligence is not yet intelligent, still with primitive prediction capabilities; however, models are being constructed and humans are discovering how to train the models to think for themselves.
 
While AI is about prediction, its applicability requires real-life tests. The US and China are split, with China leading in the wild and the US prevailing in the lab. China’s lax privacy laws and siloed servers create a powerful platform to utilize massive amounts of data and test algorithms in real-time. China is pioneering the future of customer service with AI-powered delivery, relying on algorithms that prioritize hotspots with a likelihood to buy. Then by preloading vehicles with orders, a company is able to deliver its customer an iPhone from the placing of the order to her door in 7 minutes. In another case, China has applied its data collection to surveillance drones, allowing the technology to identify violence from the sky as it happens. Meanwhile, the US houses the world’s best scientists and is promoting efforts to democratize data science and machine learning, aiming to offer tools that will breed future applications. The US is also identifying potential issues surrounding the Ethics of AI. Microsoft provided a worthy example in 2016, through the release of the “TayTweets” on Twitter. The chatbox was fed catered input to yield racist, biased, and aggressive output. The proof that biased data could result in damaging effects led the bot to be swiftly removed after 16 hours, with its intention achieved.
 
Aside from the many areas to which AI may be applied, intense focus must be placed on how models will be built. It is important to be clear about the origin of inputted data and transparent about the reasons for the creation of particular models. Are the right arguments in place to support the conclusion that one can draw? Bias and fairness are the most dominating questions right now. To predict a credit score, are you allowed to use the gender of a person?
 
China and the US must work together to create AI. The quality of the machines’ inputs and outputs all rely on the ways in which the countries design the models and the intentions of those models. Yet this freedom to create must also have its frontiers, to curtail the possibility of harmful products.