In 1949, the United States began a nuclear arms race against Russia at the height of the Cold War. The next craze was going to space. And now, it appears to be artificial intelligence.
As far as the history books go, innovation has gone hand in hand with competition, with the United States always racing to be at the forefront of the next technological breakthrough.
Christopher Bell, AP Computer Science teacher and Career Technical Education Instructional Lead, said the creation of AI can be traced back to California.
“We started it all here in the Silicon Valley, and it would be nice for us to continue being the go-to places for artificial intelligence and just computer science innovation in general,” Bell said.
However, as the United States led advances in AI technology, its rivals on the international stage, like China, have also invested more into research and development.
Over the past five years, the United States has invested $12 billion into AI technology, mainly dedicated to research and development.
Furthermore, China created a $8.2 billion AI investment fund in January in response to recent U.S. trade restrictions that barred Chinese companies from using U.S. semiconductors.
Sophomore Ayaan Nagrani, president of the Code Crusaders club, said this arms race demonstrates the cyclical nature of technological competition in international relations.
“It kind of shows how history kind of repeats itself,” Nagrani said. “With the Cold War, many years ago, the new technology was nuclear weapons, and it was just a really big race surrounding who can be better than the other person. It’s happening again with AI now.”
Instead of competing with countries like China, Bell said collaborating would be more beneficial.
“Putting up barriers and walls and just trying to stop others from achieving doesn’t really help us all,” Bell said. “It only helps one subsection, and we move slower.”
But Nagrani said this constant competition is simply part of how people behave.
“It shows human nature,” Nagrani said. “When two groups of people get their hands on the same thing, they’re consistently going to try to be better than the other person. If one person improves, the person will keep developing.”
Junior Duncan Sego, the president of the Current Events club, said advancements in Chinese AI challenges American companies to innovate. He cites DeepSeek AI as a Chinese large language model that competes with ChatGPT.
“It’s really funny that DeepSeek AI came out at a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the time, with a roughly equal product compared to a lot of the American companies who are demanding billions and billions of dollars from the U.S. government,” Sego said.
As a result, Nagrani said he thinks this race will push AI companies to sacrifice quality for speed.
“I don’t think that there’s going to be a clear winner in the long term for the AI arms race,” Nagrani said. “People are just going to keep developing and getting better than the other, which I don’t think is really a good thing, because competition fuels corporations to cut corners and develop inadequate AI models that might be inaccurate or might have biases.”
Sego also said he was also concerned about the loss of human labor due to AI development.
“I don’t think (the benefits of AI) outweigh how important it is to have enough jobs in the country and definitely in the world,” Sego said. “Regardless of whether it’s most efficient, people need to be working. They need to generate income, and they need to be able to spend income for this economy to work. AI is trying to get in the way of that without even progressing society.”
And Nagrani said he was concerned about the privacy trade-offs of AI.
“The competition between governments is somewhat scary because whoever wins probably won’t,” Nagrani said. “I question their ethics to protect the data of users.”
Moreover, Bell said concerns about data privacy can also be applied to other forms of technology.
“Any advancements, especially in technology, are way faster than our government because it takes a long time to see if there are positive or negative effects that should then be regulated,” Bell said. “Does that mean that we should slow down? Maybe. But at the same time, data privacy and data concerns are a very big issue, and we have not had comprehensive legislation passed at all in this country in regards to our data protections.”
However, junior and president of the AI Club David Wu said it’s important to recognize that AI is not inherently bad.
“I think safety is definitely very important when developing AI technology, but I think it’s also important to realize that AI is just a tool,” Wu said. “Every tool can be used for good or for bad, just like electricity or cameras. I don’t think we should be limiting our development of AI just because we have some unknown fear.”
In the end, Nagrani said AI has great potential to improve life if developed correctly.
“I think it’s definitely a worthy investment,” Nagrani said. “Significant research and funding should be put into it, and corners should not be cut there. I’m just curious to see the future of the AI arms race and the developments that’ll come from it.”
