The U.S. government, long a proponent of advancing technology for military purposes, sees artificial intelligence as key to the next generation of fighting tools. Several recent investments and Pentagon initiatives show that military leaders are concerned about keeping up with – and ahead of – China and Russia, two countries that have made big gains in developing artificial-intelligence systems. AI-powered weapons include target recognition systems, weapons guided by AI, and cyberattack and cyberdefense software that runs without human intervention. The U.S. defense community is coming to understand that AI will significantly transform, if not completely reinvent, the world's military power balance. The concern is more than military.

Two years ago, the emergence of autonomous driving technologies led Intel CEO Brian Krzanich to declare that data is the new oil. If that's true, then artificial intelligence is the new oil refinery. AI is rapidly becoming a globally valued commodity. And nations that lead in AI will likely be the ones that guide the global economy in the near future. That's according to a recent report released by the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on Information Technology. The report--the result of a series of subcommittee hearings on AI with members of academia, the technology industry, and government--outlines a need for the US to secure its position in AI research and make further investments into the technology.