The news about AI is skewed.
Speaking as an EU-citizen, the market looks US-sided with China as the adversary. I feel a need to bring EU and the rest world into the light that shines on my particular spot on the globe.
With OpenAI, Google and Anthropic getting most of the attention and praise, they are also getting the money and the data. I watched the video linked to AI 2027 1 (it was suggested to me on YouTube). The website is a war-game exploration of the alignment problem with Artifical General Intelligence (AGI), and the story is a great starter for more fruitful conversations about what possible futures we might look into with the emergence of AI. I really liked it!
However, now I hope to see creative alternatives to this very US-based doomsday view of the world.
My main issue with this scenario is that this assumes that the world is bipolar, US vs. China. It is not.
The AI tools developed in US and China, will be used to develop and test AI tools in the rest of the world.
I am always ready to redefine my stands as a dedicated democrat (original meaning of this term).
My current notion is that the real revolution will happen in local models and IoT. Areas where the US is not necessarily going to be leading in the coming decade. I would to explore this hypothesis in the coming month, by dedicating an blog post a day for research or thought trains. It seems to me, that one of the key areas of AGI enabling technologies and the promises and dangers of it, is what is happening in and has been happening with IoT (Internet Of Things). Perhaps we can challenge the bipolar tech-war image of AI-development, and look at how IoT is developing in world. This might include a look at:
- Europe’s plans for IoT in a stable and well-established market 2
- Rapid and Dynamic adoption in Africa, especially in digital finance as they have pioneered before with mobile payment systems.
- Rapid and Dynamic adoption in South America.
- Rapid and Dynamic adoption in the India and other parts of South-East Asia.
Other topics I might explore:
- What gets lost in the average persons view on the emergence of this new technology.
- EU’s AI Act, and how it interplays with the policies for IoT.
- Europe’s new found incentives to build own tech infrastructure.
- The concept of the Splinternet, an internet affected by increasing regional wall and silo-development, heavily motivated by national security and protectionist concerns.