AI Is a Matter of Survival

But if companies and governments shy away from investing in and developing AI technologies, then they could face a worse fate: obsolesce, or even annihilation. At Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo. on Tuesday, a panel of executives and leaders from GM, Intel, Slack, and the U.S. Navy discussed a coming wave of AI automation--and why neglecting this tech revolution could spell doom for laggards. Naveen Rao, who leads AI products at Intel, compared the situation to a dog-eat-dog, Darwinian model of the natural world. "AI recapitulates what happens in evolutionary systems," he said. Animals use their senses, brains, and bodies to acquire food and other necessities, Rao said.