K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
ORACLE, GOOGLE, MICROSOFT, and Amazon are archenemies in the competitive cloud computing market. But in late 2018, top executives from the four companies, including future Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, teamed up on an unpaid side gig: advising the president and US Congress on how artificial intelligence can bolster national security.
The executives were named to the National Security Commission on AI, created by Congress. Its chair was Eric Schmidt, previously CEO of Google, who later said it would help the US “harness this transformative technology to benefit both our economic and national security interests.”
Schmidt, Jassy, and the other commission members from Big Tech also had an economic interest in the topic. Their companies compete for Pentagon contracts, like the $10 billion JEDI project that is now being reworked after a lawsuit from Amazon. Schmidt sat on the board of Google parent Alphabet until 2019 and has since invested in Pentagon contractor Rebellion Defense.
The NSCAI completed its three-year mission and shut down on October 1. But fans of the body say—and critics fear—its legacy will live on. Both point to how the group’s recommendations, some of which steer the Pentagon to work more closely with the tech industry, have already been written into law. The US has few laws specifically concerned with AI, and the commission shaped a significant chunk of those on the books.
NSCAI says 19 of its recommendations to Congress were included in the defense budget approved in December 2020. One directs the Pentagon to use an existing industry exchange program to bring in more AI talent from tech companies. Another promoted the director of the Pentagon’s Joint AI Center, which aims to expand military use of AI by tapping commercial AI providers, including Google, to report directly to the deputy secretary of defense.
Other recommendations from the group include having the Pentagon create an internal platform for current and future AI projects that draws on “computing and storage services from a pool of vetted cloud companies." Another calls for a department-wide push to use “commercial AI solutions” to automate its many administrative processes.
Continue reading: https://www.wired.com/story/group-pushed-ai-us-security-boosted-tech/
The executives were named to the National Security Commission on AI, created by Congress. Its chair was Eric Schmidt, previously CEO of Google, who later said it would help the US “harness this transformative technology to benefit both our economic and national security interests.”
Schmidt, Jassy, and the other commission members from Big Tech also had an economic interest in the topic. Their companies compete for Pentagon contracts, like the $10 billion JEDI project that is now being reworked after a lawsuit from Amazon. Schmidt sat on the board of Google parent Alphabet until 2019 and has since invested in Pentagon contractor Rebellion Defense.
The NSCAI completed its three-year mission and shut down on October 1. But fans of the body say—and critics fear—its legacy will live on. Both point to how the group’s recommendations, some of which steer the Pentagon to work more closely with the tech industry, have already been written into law. The US has few laws specifically concerned with AI, and the commission shaped a significant chunk of those on the books.
NSCAI says 19 of its recommendations to Congress were included in the defense budget approved in December 2020. One directs the Pentagon to use an existing industry exchange program to bring in more AI talent from tech companies. Another promoted the director of the Pentagon’s Joint AI Center, which aims to expand military use of AI by tapping commercial AI providers, including Google, to report directly to the deputy secretary of defense.
Other recommendations from the group include having the Pentagon create an internal platform for current and future AI projects that draws on “computing and storage services from a pool of vetted cloud companies." Another calls for a department-wide push to use “commercial AI solutions” to automate its many administrative processes.
Continue reading: https://www.wired.com/story/group-pushed-ai-us-security-boosted-tech/
