The U.S. has no responsibility to keep its allies on the \u2018cutting edge\u2019 of artificial intelligence (AI) development \u2014 unless it is a matter of national security, a former CIA director and retired Army officer tells Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n
\u2018First and foremost is to ensure that we are on the cutting edge,\u2019 retired four-star Gen. David Petraeus said during a recent Zoom interview.<\/p>\n
\u2018Certainly, we should share to varying degrees with our closest partners, and they share with us \u2014 again, no one of us is smarter than all of us together in these kinds of endeavors \u2014 but it\u2019s not our job entirely to ensure that they are proceeding along these lines, unless it\u2019s, of course, in our national interest to do so, and it is in a number of different cases,\u2019 he explained.<\/p>\n
The pace of AI development has dominated conversation since public access to ChatGPT in November 2022, particularly with concerns over who will stay at the top of the game \u2014 a race that drove countries to reassess their investments in the burgeoning field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
China and the U.S. in particular have focused on developing AI as much as possible in different fields, though the U.S. has discussed a far more regulated approach, as opposed to China\u2019s more hands-free environment, as long as the AI passes certain reported threshold tests for reflecting socialist values.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The U.K. over the summer announced that it would invest $125 million in computer chips to keep pace with the AI development from nations like the U.S. and China, but experts and officials argued even that significant investment was not nearly enough to stay at the top of the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cooperation has therefore remained a key point of the discussion, especially when the U.S. has certain bilateral intelligence agreements, such as the Five Eyes Alliance with the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The White House\u00a0touted one such agreement, the \u2018Atlantic Declaration,\u2019 signed in June of this year,\u00a0as something that would ensure that the \u2018unique alliance is adapted, reinforced and reimagined for the challenges of this moment,\u2019 including the \u2018handful of critical and emerging technologies\u2019 such as AI that are \u2018forming the backbone of new industries and shaping our national security landscape.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Petraeus highlighted \u2018interoperability\u2019 as one of the chief reasons the U.S. might look to keep allies at the \u2018bleeding edge\u2019 of development, saying that in those cases, \u2018it\u2019s incumbent on us to share together,\u2019 because any such agreement is a \u2018two-way street.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The closer you are as a partner, the more we should be focused on that, but it\u2019s not our job to ensure that everybody is making the most of any more than it is that we ensure that they\u2019re doing well in all the other areas,\u2019 he argued, noting that uneven development of technology and weapons has remained a challenge \u2018for decades\u2019 and that a gap in AI development does not present \u2018a massive issue.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Such shortcomings in the past have required the U.S. at times to figure out how to compensate and help a country deal with \u2018lack of certain capabilities,\u2019 which Petraeus acknowledged often required the U.S. to share what it had or link the country into the larger American mechanisms, as in the case of air support or drones or aerial medevac.<\/p>\n
\u2018Some countries in NATO were on the cutting edge, the bleeding edge of technological advances, [with] the U.S., of course, leading the way and then others are well behind, but we\u2019ve always had this in some respects,\u2019 he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018That\u2019s the job of the country that leads coalitions, and in the most important cases, that is going to be in the United States.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Petraeus served 37 years in the military, achieving the rank of four-star general and overseeing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan before taking over as director of the CIA \u2014 a post he left in late 2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n
AI at the time remained in a nascent stage and did not have much integration: Petraeus said the most he saw was machine learning and that development \u2018galloped ahead\u2019 in more recent years, which he has witnessed through his work at an investment firm.<\/p>\n
That pace of development has been \u2018nothing short of breathtaking,\u2019 the general said, stressing that it is \u2018incumbent on all of us\u2026 certainly incumbent on those in the defense world, but also the business world, in the intelligence world, all the other worlds\u2026 to identify how this can be employed in ways that improve productivity, efficiency, effectiveness.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n