US will also suffer from its control of technology export
That the US stock market dropped sharply immediately after the US government put forward the proposal on Tuesday to tighten the control on exports of various artificial intelligence technologies indicates what the market thinks of the move. The down vote is recognition that the flow of capital in pursuit of innovations and their commercialization has been a driving force for economic globalization, which has been highly profitable for tech companies and those countries in the vanguard of science and technology developments.
Multinational corporations have led the way in the profound compressing of time and space that has flattened and changed the world over the last couple of decades, and the overwhelming majority of international technological transfers have been conducted among multinational companies in pursuit of profits.
Thus the proposal the US government put forward on Tuesday to tighten the control to “avoid negatively impacting US leadership in the science, technology, engineering and manufacturing sector” is being viewed not only as a brake on the US economy but also as a hindrance to maintaining that leadership since it will reduce cooperation with the rest of the world and shrink the market for US companies de-incentivizing them to invest in R&D.
The bigger its market, the more profits a technology company can earn, and the more money it then has to invest in developing even more advanced technologies. This is as true for US companies as it is for others.
Behind the proposal is the narrow-mindedness of policymakers in the US administration, who choose to ignore the fact that the United States would not have become the world leader in science and technology if it had kept its doors closed.
If such controls are intended to contain China’s development, they will certainly fail.
It is true that China has a lot to do to catch up with the US and other developed countries. Yet it has made great steps forward by opening its doors and cooperating with other economies.
As it opens its door wider, it will have even more opportunities to cooperate with other countries in science and technology.
The dematerialization of economic activities — with economic output and income generation increasingly reliant on information rather than inputs of raw materials — only increases the need for cooperative agreements and a cross-disciplinary approach to enhance the capabilities of AI and advance its application.
By trying to enforce and exploit an invented-here ideal that is untenable, the US will undoubtedly undermine the leadership in science and technology to which it has become accustomed, and impede the progress of both humans and machines.