Early in the 2020 presidential campaign, Democratic candidates Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang tried to build political momentum around the claim that the United States is losing ground in a new arms race with China -- not over nuclear missiles or conventional arms but artificial intelligence, or AI. Around the same time, former President Trump launched the American AI Initiative, which sought to marshal AI technologies against "adversarial nations for the security of our economy and our nation," as Trump's top technology adviser put it. Buttigieg, Yang and Trump may have agreed about little else, but they appeared to go along with the nonpartisan think tanks and public policy organizations –– many of them funded by weapons contractors –– that have worked to promote the supposedly alarming possibility that China and Russia may be "beating" the U.S. in defense applications for AI. Hawkish or "centrist" research organizations like the Center for New American Security (CNAS), the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation, despite their policy and ideological differences in many areas, have argued that America must ratchet up spending on AI research and development, lest it lose its place as No. 1. Just last week, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) published a sweeping 756-page report, culminating two years of work following the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, asking Congress to authorize a $40 billion federal investment in AI research and development, which the NSCAI calls "a modest down payment."

An artificial intelligence commission led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is urging the U.S. to boost its AI skills to counter China, including by pursuing "AI-enabled" weapons – something that Google itself has shied away from on ethical grounds. Schmidt and current executives from Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon are among the 15 members of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which released its final report to Congress on Monday. "To win in AI we need more money, more talent, stronger leadership," Schmidt said Monday. The report says that machines that can "perceive, decide, and act more quickly" than humans and with more accuracy are going to be deployed for military purposes -- with or without the involvement of the U.S. and other democracies. It warns against unchecked use of autonomous weapons but expresses opposition to a global ban.

The largest technology companies in the world, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, all have contracts with the American government and federal law enforcement agencies that had gone previously unreported. Research from the non-profit Tech Inquiry has found that these companies have thousands of deals with the Department of Defense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The revelation comes as workers from Google and Microsoft are asking executives to take action and end contracts with the police and other law enforcement organisations as Black Lives Matter protests continue across the country. An analysis of over 30 million government contracts signed over the past five years found that many of these large companies use subcontracts to fulfil government requests. "Often the high-level contract description between tech companies and the military looks very vanilla and mundane," Jack Poulson of Tech Inquiry told NBC. "But only when you look at the details of the contract, which you can only get through Freedom of Information [Act] requests, do you see the workings of how the customisation from a tech company would actually be involved."

This short week was filled with tough ethical debates at two of the top AI institutions in the United States. A petition and letter of support circulating at MIT is calling Media Lab director Joi Ito courageous for his public apology in the wake of the Epstein sex trafficking scandal and asking Ito to remain in his position following public pressure to resign. Ito took funding for the MIT Media Lab, and startups he backs, from the now-deceased billionaire and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, years after Epstein was accused of running an extensive sex trafficking network, accusations that led to a controversial federal plea deal. In response to Ito's admission, MIT Center for Civic Media director Ethan Zuckerman resigned his post, a position he had held since 2012. Shortly after, MIT Media Lab visiting scholar and Cornell University assistant professor J. Nathan Matias also resigned, saying he could no longer in good conscience stay at the school.

Eric Schmidt, former CEO and chairman of Google, has donated money to Stanford University, and taught at its business school. But a group of current and former Google employees, academics, and human rights activists wants the university to cancel a talk he is scheduled to give next month at a conference on ethics and artificial intelligence. They say Schmidt is a poor ethical role model. In a letter to the conference organizers, the group says Schmidt's appearance would be inappropriate given "serious and credible" questions over his ethical conduct. Their petition was publicly released Tuesday with more than 40 signatories, including 20 current Google employees, but first sent to Stanford Sunday.

Employees of tech companies should have the right to know when they are working on projects they may find ethically unacceptable, a former Google whistleblower has said. In 2018, Jack Poulson hit headlines after he resigned from his job at Google over the company's (now-scrapped) plan to build a censorship AI for the Chinese search market. Now, he wants to make sure that other tech workers can fight for what's right without having to put their livelihood on the line. Poulson has started Tech Inquiry, a non-profit that aims to make it easier for coders with a conscience to speak out inside their companies when they feel ethical boundaries are being crossed. Just as importantly, he's pushing for greater transparency to prevent workers simply being tricked into doing work that they would never take on voluntarily.

Google has'no plans' to relaunch a search engine in China though it is continuing to study the idea, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told a U.S. congressional panel on Tuesday amid increased scrutiny of big tech firms. Lawmakers and Google employees have raised concerns the company would comply with China's internet censorship and surveillance policies if it re-enters the Asian nation's search engine market. Google's main search platform has been blocked in China since 2010, but the Alphabet Inc unit has been attempting to make new inroads into the country, which has the world's largest number of smartphone users. Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told a U.S. congressional panel Google had over 100 people working on the project at one point. 'Right now, there are no plans to launch search in China,' Pichai told the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has acknowledged publicly for the first time that the tech giant is considering a search engine for China, saying it could offer'better information' to people than rival services. Speaking at the Wired 25th anniversary conference late Monday, Pichai said Google leaders'feel obliged to think hard' about China despite criticism over the possibly of cooperating with Chinese censorship. 'We are always balancing a set of values,' he said, while adding that'we also follow the rule of law in every country.' Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed questions about China and the company's work with the US military at the Wired 25th anniversary conference in San Francisco Pichai described Project Dragonfly, which has drawn criticism from Google employees, lawmakers and human rights activists, as an effort to learn about what Google could offer if it resumed its search operations in China. 'It turns out we would be able to serve well over 99 percent of the (search) queries,' he said onstage in a question-and-answer session.

A senior Google research scientist has quit the company in protest over its plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China. Jack Poulson worked for Google's research and machine intelligence department, where he was focused on improving the accuracy of the company's search systems. In early August, Poulson raised concerns with his managers at Google after The Intercept revealed that the internet giant was secretly developing a Chinese search app for Android devices. The search system, code-named Dragonfly, was designed to remove content that China's authoritarian government views as sensitive, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest. After entering into discussions with his bosses, Poulson decided in mid-August that he could no longer work for Google.

A former employee of Google has warned of the web giant's'disturbing' plans for a search engine in China which could help Beijing monitor its citizens online. Jack Poulson wrote in a letter to the US Senate's commerce committee that the proposed Dragonfly website was'tailored to the censorship and surveillance demands of the Chinese government'. In his letter he also claimed that discussion of the plans among Google employees had been'increasingly stifled'. Mr Poulson was a senior research scientist at Google until he resigned last month in protest at the Dragonfly proposals. A former employee of Google has warned of the web giant's'disturbing' plans for a search engine in China which could help Beijing monitor its citizens online While China is home to the world's largest number of internet users, a 2015 report by US think tank Freedom House found that the country had the most restrictive online use policies of 65 nations it studied, ranking below Iran and Syria.