The White House's planned advisory committee on artificial intelligence may or may not help keep the country at the forefront of technological innovation, but it is another sign that the government is getting more serious about the importance of AI and the potential threats of falling behind in the "AI arms race." The Trump administration said earlier this month it will establish the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence as part of an overall effort to coordinate Federal research and development efforts with regard to AI, while working to involve industry and academia to "realize the full potential of AI," according to the White House announcement from its Summit on Artificial Intelligence for American Industry. The committee will be comprised of senior research and development officials at a range of agencies and offices, including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA). Also at the table will be the technology-focused undersecretaries of the departments of Defense, Commerce and Energy, along with representatives from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Security Council (NSC). "Our continued leadership in the field that American researchers pioneered is not just a request; it is an imperative," Michael Kratsios, deputy CTO of the White House OSTP, said at the event.

As the latest indication of this, the White House announced the creation of a Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence during an organized AI summit of industry and academic partners Thursday. "As artificial intelligence transforms everything from agriculture to manufacturing to transportation, the potential for AI remains breathtaking," Michael Kratsios, deputy CTO at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in his remarks at the event. "But we cannot be passive. To realize the full potential of AI for the American people, it will require the combined efforts of industry, academia, and government." The new committee, likewise, holds a mission "to improve the coordination of Federal efforts related to AI to ensure continued U.S. leadership in this field."

Legislators met with dozens of techies and business leaders May 10 for the White House's Artificial Intelligence for American Industry summit. They're keeping the conversation around research and development and adoption of AI alive and well, as the U.S. strives to stay on top of global innovation. The Office of Science and Technology Policy and Michael Kratsios, the president's technical adviser, welcomed executives from more than 30 major tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google for the summit. It convened more than 100 senior government officials, technical experts from academia, heads of industrial research labs and business leaders, according to the White House's summary report. OSTP also announced a Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence under the National Science and Technology Council to advise the administration on interagency AI R&D priorities going forward.

A Harvard Belfer Center study commissioned by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA), Artificial Intelligence and National Security, predicted last May that AI will be as transformative to national defense as nuclear weapons, aircraft, computers and biotech. Advances in AI will enable new capabilities and make others far more affordable – not only to the U.S., but to adversaries as well, raising the stakes as the United States seeks to preserve its hard-won strategic overmatch in the air, land, sea, space and cyberspace domains. The Pentagon's Third Offset Strategy seeks to leverage AI and related technologies in a variety of ways, according to Robert Work, former deputy secretary of defense and one of the strategy's architects. In a forward to a new report from the market analytics firm Govini, Work says the strategy "seeks to exploit advances in AI and autonomous systems to improve the performance of Joint Force guided munitions battle networks" through: "By exploiting advances in AI and autonomous systems to improve the warfighting potential and performance of the U.S. military," Work says, "the strategy aims to restore the Joint Force's eroding conventional overmatch versus any potential adversary, thereby strengthening conventional deterrence." Spending is growing, Govini reports, with AI and related defense program spending increasing at a compound annual rate of 14.5 percent from 2012 to 2017, and poised to grow substantially faster in coming years as advanced computing technologies come on line, driving down computational costs.