Gary Rivlin joins Elizabeth Spiers to discuss his book on Silicon Valley's race to capitalize on AI. Please enable javascript to get your Slate Plus feeds. If you can't access your feeds, please contact customer support. Check your phone for a link to finish setting up your feed. Please enter a valid phone number.

In July, some of the brightest minds in American technology descended on Washington to celebrate a major milestone: the launch of President Donald Trump's bold initiative to ensure the United States remains the world's unrivaled leader in artificial intelligence (AI). Let me be blunt: the AI arms race is no longer theoretical. And we cannot afford to come in second place. In business, if you don't constantly adapt and innovate, you lose. If we fail to lead in AI, we risk surrendering our economic and national security edge to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) -- a regime that seeks to challenge American technological supremacy and reshape the global order in its authoritarian image.

AI investor Arnie Bellini predicted that future battles will be fought by robots, and that the U.S.'s cyber and AI capabilities might be able to prevent a war with China before it starts. From drone swarms to gene-edited soldiers, the United States and China are racing to integrate artificial intelligence into nearly every facet of their war machines -- and a potential conflict over Taiwan may be the world's first real test of who holds the technological edge. For millennia, victory in war was determined by manpower, firepower and the grit of battlefield commanders. However, in this ongoing technological revolution, algorithms and autonomy may matter more than conventional arms. "War will come down to who has the best AI," said Arnie Bellini, a tech entrepreneur and defense investor, in an interview with Fox News Digital.

"It shouldn't take longer to approve an [energy] project than it takes to build it," said National Governors Association Vice Chair Kevin Stitt at Friday's conference in Washington. That, the Oklahoma Republican said, is the collective picture painted of all the problems with government bureaucracy at all levels that imperils the U.S.' ability to stay ahead of China in terms of cyberthreat-prevention and energy dominance. Permitting reform is one of the most important things to address with a new administration and new state government sessions beginning, the governors collectively expressed. There was bipartisan consensus at the NGA that America must move responsibly toward a future secure from malign foreign actors in both cybersecurity and energy development. "Permitting reform is one of those issues where both Republicans and Democrats recognize the problem, we largely agree on solutions," Stitt said, adding it is a national security issue that the U.S. must streamline permitting.

While it remains to be seen whether or not they've got AGI in a pear tree up their sleeve, and maybe putting aside whether or not Sam Altman is your true love, the man can ship. OpenAI has been a monster when it comes to actually getting new products out the door and into the hands of users. It's hard for me to believe that it was just two years ago, almost exactly, that it released ChatGPT. That was a world-changing release, but was also just one of many. The company has been on an absolute tear: Since 2022, it's shipped DALL-E 2, DALL-E 3, GPT-4, ChatGPT Plus, a realtime API, GPT-4o, an advanced voice mode, a preview version of a new model called o1, and a web search engine. When it kicked off its 12-days shenanigans on Thursday, it was with an official roll out of OpenAI o1 and a new, 200-per-month service called ChatGPT Pro.

OpenAI is testing a new search engine that uses generative artificial intelligence to produce results, raising the prospect of a significant challenge to Google's dominance of the online search market. SearchGPT will launch with a small group of users and publishers before a potential wider rollout, the company announced on Thursday. OpenAI ultimately intends to incorporate the search features into ChatGPT, rather offer a standalone product. OpenAI said SearchGPT is a temporary prototype that will combine the company's AI models, such as ChatGPT, with the ability to search the internet. It will respond conversationally to searches, while providing up-to-date information with "clear links to relevant sources".

A recent UK government-backed report on AI safety said that the carbon intensity of the energy source used by tech firms is "a key variable" in working out the environmental cost of the technology. It adds, however, that a "significant portion" of AI model training still relies on fossil fuel-powered energy. Indeed, tech firms are hoovering up renewable energy contracts in an attempt to meet their environmental goals. Amazon, for instance, is the world's largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy. Some experts argue, though, that this pushes other energy users into fossil fuels because there is not enough clean energy to go round. "Energy consumption is not just growing, but Google is also struggling to meet this increased demand from sustainable energy sources," says Alex de Vries, the founder of Digiconomist, a website monitoring the environmental impact of new technologies.

At the same time, the deal could bring Apple new scrutiny from regulators. The Cupertino, Calif., company is already battling a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit that alleges it wields an illegal smartphone monopoly. Antitrust enforcers have been wary of the ways that tech companies use their deep war chests to strike deals that threaten innovation. Apple's massive deal with Google -- where the search giant pays to give its search engine prime placement in Apple's Safari web browser -- has been a key part of a government lawsuit, which claims Google has used the arrangement to squeeze out competitors.

Here's how it worked during a demo at Amazon's launch event: Say, "Alexa, let's chat," and an Echo smart speaker enters a special conversational mode. Amazon showed people asking it for advice about travel and to write stories and emails, with people able to interrupt and redirect the AI mid-sentence.

A larger-than-life Michelle Donelan beams on to a screen in Google's London headquarters. The UK science and innovation secretary is appearing via video to praise the US tech behemoth for its plans to equip workers and bosses with basic skills in artificial intelligence (AI). "The recent explosion in the use of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's Bard show that we are on the cusp of a new and exciting era in artificial intelligence, and it is one that will dramatically improve people's lives," says Donelan. Google's "ambitious" training programme is "so important" and "exceptional in its breadth", she gushes in a five-minute video, filmed in her ministerial office. Welcome to the AI arms race, where nations are bending over backwards to attract cash and research into the nascent technology.