As business people and others look at the delicate interplay of the AI market, the word “geopolitical” gets thrown around a lot– why is that?
People are interested in which countries are going to have the edge when it comes to tech development. And it could make a lot of difference in how the world looks. I’ve heard people at panels and conferences talking about whether democratic societies will have the edge with AI, or not. But beyond that, there are also just some economic aspects to consider, too, and the idea of how AI will impact national and international growth.
So some of us are becoming rather philosophical about the future of AI, and how it plays out across national borders.
International AI Habits
One way to analyze this is to see which country’s populations have the most interest in AI per capita.
There’s actually a great article here at PCMag that breaks down user results per hundred thousand people for different countries (circa September 2023) in terms of different kinds of AI – text based model results, image creation, and audio, to name a few.
For example, at the time of data collection, you can see that Uruguay led the field when it comes to searches for audio AI. However, as I documented the quick emergence of Sesame earlier this week, we might see a lot more interest invoice models around the world in the weeks to come.
You can also see that Israelis, as a whole, like to create images with AI, and that Singapore is a place where people have a lot of interest in AI video.
The U.S., for its part, is pretty far down the list on almost all of these categories, suggesting that, although we have a big country with a lot of investment in innovation, the citizens might not be matching the levels of interest of those in other places in the world.
Discussing the Future
Here’s more from a panel that I saw at our Imagination in Action event at Davos this year. This was really illuminating in terms of geopolitical outcomes and the impact on business across borders.
Sandy Pentland interviewed a number of people close to these phenomena, and ask them about how they view AI changing the world.
A lot of the conversation was around geopolitical boundaries.
Dr. John Sviokla, a colleague of mine, talked about new forms of capital – behavioral capital, network capital, and cognitive capital, and panelists talked about where those would emerge in the most robust ways. Ben Moskowitz of Consumer Reports talked about agentic AI and how to make agents accountable to the people they represent.
My colleague Ramesh Raskar also spoke up: he runs a group for decentralized AI, and he talked about citizen responses to AI in the context of game theory.
“Decentralized AI is when these (AI) agents are across disconnected, disinterested and distrusting entities, the way we work, pretty much,” he said. “I’m glad to use the analogy of nations and citizens. You’re able to work across entities where we may not trust each other, but we know that we work together. It will get better together. So the promise of decentralized AI is agentic AI, where agents are in disparate entities.”
Sviokla addressed the idea of a “learning curve” in economies, citing the work of Bruce Henderson in the 1940s.
“Basically, you’re making stuff cheaper because of capital efficiency, but also …. there’s going to be a massive learning effect,” he said. “And … there’s going to be this notion of intelligence leverages. So doing the work is the arithmetic, and AI is the algebra, intelligence leverages are the calculus. And that is a combination of an organizational and technological thing, and that will be very hard to catch. The practical implication of this is you need to start learning and implementing now, because catching someone who’s constantly running faster is very, very difficult, and the scale economies of knowledge are not clear at all.”
Business and the Consumer
In terms of people being impacted, and communities integrating AI, the panel thought about how consumers can win out. Moskowitz said we need a “counterbalance” in which consumers get empowered.
Journalist Krystal Hu has been asking fortune 500 companies about their strategies. Less hiring, she said, is one outcome.
“On a personal level, I think learning how to use the agent or interact with (an) agent kind of requires a content update, to understand where the skill is needed, and how to talk those systems,” she said. “Because you remember when ChatGPT first came out, the hottest AI course was about prompt engineering, and everyone thinks that’s the most important thing, but now, because we have better AI systems and better products, maybe that’s less important.”
Keith Strier of AMD theorized about changes in global competition, saying the “geopolitical map is being rewritten.” He urged analysts not to count out countries like Vietnam and Serbia, and others where the economic threat is, in his words, “existential.”
“(The gains of AI) will (not) be evenly distributed at the country level, at the company level, at the community level, or the individual level, right?” he said. “Obviously, you’ll have winners and losers, but, but clearly, those that understand those layers will make a difference, and you can see those early winners already.”
The Urge to Improve
Concluding the talk, Raskar mentioned some of the overarching goals that should be on people’s minds.
“It’s about humans,” he said. “It’s about unleashing human potential. And finally, we’ll have a way to have you know a level playing field.”
Some of these thoughts, I think, will help guide us along when it comes to trying to make sure that AI gains are equitable at all of those different levels. It’s a big set of changes, to be sure, but we have a lot of people working hard to anticipate how this will look. Keep an eye on the blog and I’ll keep bringing insights and new ideas from all over the world when it comes to the promise of AI.
