OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sits down with Shannon Bream to discuss the positives and potential negatives of artificial intelligence and the importance of maintaining a lead in the A.I. industry over China. OpenAI has announced a new "ChatGPT for Gov" product that the company says will provide U.S. government agencies an additional way to access their frontier large language models (LLMs) while maintaining internal security standards. "We believe the U.S. government's adoption of artificial intelligence can boost efficiency and productivity and is crucial for maintaining and enhancing America's global leadership in this technology. This includes making our models available to support public sector work that benefits society – such as public health, energy and the environment, transportation and infrastructure, consumer protection, and national security," OpenAI wrote in a Tuesday press release. The company believes that partnering with the U.S. government is key to ensuring rapidly developing AI capabilities are well understood by policymakers and responsibly integrated to deliver services to American citizens.

Over 50 countries have announced national strategies on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Many others are rushing to do so. AI holds great potential as a key driving force for the next phase of economic growth led by technological innovation and no nation wants to be left behind. Which are the countries that are early movers in the global AI sweepstakes and where does India stand in the race for global AI leadership?

The Biden administration has followed through on a Congressional mandate to create a National AI Research Resource Task Force. With top experts from the federal government, higher education, and private organizations, the task force is dedicated to strengthening America's foundation and spurring advances in artificial intelligence (AI). As a computer scientist, AI researcher and educator, co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, and a major supporter of the bipartisan legislation that authorized this endeavor, I am honored to have accepted an offer to serve as a member of the task force. The time has never been more critical for us to come together and cement America's leadership in AI -- a technology that has the potential to drive innovation in every industry, from manufacturing and healthcare to transportation and defense. Like all technologies human civilization has built, AI is a tool that is as good or as bad as those who make and use it.

The U.S. government announced on May 27 that it was joining the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), a group launched by the G7 to provide cooperation between nations on artificial intelligence. This is a sharp change of course for the United States which had held out on joining the group initially out of concern that its European allies would use the forum to push for aggressive regulation of the technology without clear evidence of harms. Instead, the group is now set up to focus on the responsible development of AI, including by developing research agendas, promoting AI workforce development, and spurring AI innovation and commercialization, while ensuring these uses align with shared democratic values.

The following article was written by Gediminas Pekšys, CEO and Co-Founder at Oxipit. The original was published at "Verslo žinios". The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is growing exponentially. AI innovations are expected to contribute a significant share of the future global economy. The USA, China and the EU are fiercely competing for the global leadership in this field.

U.S. President Donald Trump's broadside against the World Health Organization is another blow to international institutions designed to help nations confront global crises -- and may leave countries even less prepared for the next one. Trump's move on Tuesday to suspend WHO funding amid a pandemic that has cost at least 130,000 lives is the latest salvo in a broader struggle between the U.S. and China over global leadership. Both countries are courting other nations and public opinion as they cover up their own shortcomings in the pandemic and position themselves for the post-virus world. China -- widely criticized for missteps early in the outbreak -- has ramped up efforts to send medical supplies to hard-hit nations, even as reports emerged that much of that gear was faulty or expired. The U.S., meanwhile, announced $300 million in aid to countries fighting the virus but rebuffed requests for the most essential gear while receiving donations from the governments of Egypt, Taiwan and Vietnam among others.

Davos, Switzerland – "Has China Won?" Kishore Mahbubeni, the Singaporean author and intellectual, greets me warmly in a conference lounge here and hands me a card promoting the March release of his new book, bearing that provocative question as its title. The cover blurb announces that he will explain "how, while America became arrogant and distracted, a three-thousand-year-old civilization is well on the way to becoming the number one power in the world." The year ahead is likely to provide the most profound trial yet for that thesis and for the durability of China's rise. Several new shocks and challenges, ranging from a potential pandemic to slowing growth, will test the resilience of China's authoritarian leadership and the state-run capitalist system that has provided the country four decades of record growth. It thus also could mark a significant year for the emerging, generational clash, not of civilizations as Samuel Huntington had argued, but rather of economic and political systems, between democratic and authoritarian capitalism.

Can Japan compete in the global battle for dominance in artificial intelligence and robotics that is under way? A long-standing strength in AI research gives the United States an advantage that is reinforced by the deep bench of AI talent at its numerous universities and tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. China's government incentives and growing leadership in the mobile economy has led to a data advantage -- its e-commerce giants like Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and DiDi have an unparalleled view into the minutiae of everyday economic activities across hundreds of millions of consumers, data that feeds into increasingly sophisticated deep learning systems that power AI-native applications ranging from news filtering to medical diagnostics. Japan does not have to be left behind as the U.S. and China race ahead of the rest of the world. But building dominance in this new generation of technologies will require change and planning.

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence -- which is tasked with researching ways to advance the development of AI for national security and defense purposes -- released its initial report to Congress July 31. The group was established under the fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The legislation required the commission to release an initial report to Congress within 180 days of the NDAA's enactment. The panel has 15 members, led by Chairman Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google's parent company Alphabet, and Vice Chairman Robert O. Work, a former deputy secretary of defense who served in the Obama administration. The initial report provided a summary of the group's activities and its plans for the future but did not offer any recommendations to Congress.

"The fourth industrial revolution is unlike anything humankind has previously experienced. New technologies are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds in ways that create both huge promise and potential peril. The speed breadth and depth of this revolution is forcing us to rethink how countries develop, how organizations create value and even what it means to be human." We are living in an increasingly complex and uncertain world of constant change unlike anything in history. Advances in technology are outpacing implementation and these emerging technologies whilst presenting brilliant opportunities for a more positive world also present potentially detrimental threats.