Bruin AI Current Events
Bruin AI Current Events
Intel Falls Behind in AI Race | Biden’s AI Guardrails for National Security
Good morning Bruin Bots 🤖
Welcome back!
This week, we look into the events that led Intel to fall behind in the AI race.
We’ll also explore President Biden’s recent national security memorandum on AI, sparking questions about whether the U.S. is putting enough guardrails in place for this rapidly advancing technology.
We are glad you are here with us!
Here’s a run down👇
📣 Announcement
💸 Economy
🧭 Ethics
-Karen
Announcement:
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How Intel Fell Behind
Intel has long been a household name when it comes to computer technologies, but why has it been so rarely mentioned when discussing AI? This problem has been so large that even the difficulties in the company have translated into its stock price. After plummeting to a nearly ten-year low this summer, Intel had to lay off 1,300 employees in Oregon due to its struggles in the AI race.
Just last week we saw the continuation of Intel’s apparent inability to compete in the AI space as they announced that they are shifting away from competing with Nvidia. Rather than compete based on the computing power of products, Intel says that it wants to focus on small-scale startups through an emphasis on cost-effectiveness and “Industry-Leading Performance-Per-Dollar Value.”
The mistakes that brought Intel to where it is today go as far back as 2005, when they passed up on purchasing Nvidia as an acquisition for the firm. After rejecting Nvidia, Intel focused on its own project called “Larrabee” to get ahead of competitors on graphics cards. This project aimed to combine Intel’s PC-style chip design with that of a graphics card. Despite 4 years of labor and hundreds of millions of dollars invested, the project fell behind schedule and proved to be fruitless.
Following this foray into the graphics card market, Intel remained persistent in its goals to expand beyond PC chips but missed what may have been a golden opportunity between 2017 and 2018 when they were offered “a 15% stake in OpenAI for $1 billion, with the potential for an additional 15% stake in exchange for producing hardware.” Instead, they acquired Nervana Systems and Habana Labs to aid them in developing AI systems. However, Intel’s leadership fell prey to a self-destructive “corporate ethos” under which it would lose patience and pull the plug on projects too soon in the cycle or see projects fall short due to rushed development times. Projects were further hampered by “corporate curbs on hiring engineers” and manufacturing troubles which made the development of a competitive AI chip all the more difficult.
Worst of all, while Intel used to be the clear leader in technological development, the company’s leaders failed to adequately prepare for the AI transition and functionally “missed the AI transition” according to experts such as Daniel Newman.
Intel is likely to continue working to win back a strong standing in the AI market, but for now the company has been forced to shift its strategy to focus on cost-cutting measures rather than ambitiously scaling up development of chips.
-Tobin
US Government Guardrails for AI
After seeing the EU, UK, Canada, Brazil, Switzerland, and other countries pass laws regulating the use of AI, many have been waiting for a unified plan for AI in the US. Although recent proposals from the Biden administration will not regulate most commercial applications of AI, they represent an important step forward for the integration of AI into governmental operations.
Last Thursday, President Biden signed the first national security memorandum on AI. However, because deadline for an application of orders in the memorandum will not be during Biden’s presidency, it has raised questions as to whether or not his eventual successor will follow through on the policies that have now been put out.
For the most part, the policies only aim to establish guardrails for AI systems in critical areas for the government, hopefully making the adoption process somewhat more standardized. Nevertheless, the memorandum takes the more conservative approach one would expect of government policies. Within the memorandum, it warns of the risks of misuse and the resulting threats to national security, empowerment of authoritarianism, undermining of democratic processes, and possible facilitation of human rights abuses.
The most critical rulings made in this policy include the prohibition of AI systems from making decisions on asylum processing and nuclear weapon launches, as well as a mandate for annual reports covering AI's implications for radiological, chemical, and biological risks. The banning of AI decision-making in the context of Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) is particularly key as researchers such as Matthijs Maas & Di Cookie have detailed how the inclusion of AI in NC3 would increase the pace of conflict due to more efficient processing and decision making which would, therefore, increase the likelihood of inadvertent or accidental escalation due to speed.
While this memorandum provides an important step forward for the nuclear component of America’s military, it takes a far less clear stance on AI in the context of conventional arms. Because of this, we still have no certainty regarding the future of lethal autonomous weapons in the US military arsenal or AI in a vast number of other applications within the government.
Hopefully, this security memorandum can function as more than just a stepping stone for US policy, also aiding the US in keeping pace with global AI developments and setting standards for AI internationally.
-Tobin
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All the best,
Tobin Wilson, Editorial Intern
Karen Harrison, Newsletter Manager
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