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The Sunday Paper – The Innovation Winter Is Coming: How the U.S.-China Trade War Endangers the World

Here’s the key message from the paper highlighted today:

“The U.S. is playing a game of catch-up, but rather than supporting its own tech industry it is seeking to slow down China’s progress. The U.S. cannot afford to miss out on AI’s potential to deliver $13 trillion to the global economy.The U.S.-instigated trade war not only threatens the global economy and endangers democracy, it will likely cause an innovation winter hindering future developments in AI. .. [And] if the U.S. does not learn how to exist in a world with a new balance of power, it will suffer the most from the coming innovation winter.”

In the paper, from which the above is extracted written by Kimberly A. Houser of the Oklahoma State University, a scholarly summary of where we are in terms of the development of AI, and its kissing-cousin 5G, is presented.

The researcher describes us presently as being in an AI ‘spring’, which is encouraging. Less encouraging is the prediction that if the U.S. continues to rely on their private sector to progress development and insists on pursuing a malicious trade war with China then we’re headed into an ‘Innovation Winter’.

One of the key points (of which there are many other useful zingers) is that we are where we are today in the development of AI and 5G through a long period of global collaboration and nobody is presently ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ an AI/5G ‘race’. China is ahead in the manufacture of 5G kit, in large part, because American companies sometime ago decided they couldn’t be bothered to make the stuff (Ahem!) for example.

To try and make American companies now do something they’ve hitherto regarded as uneconomic and at the same time retard the adoption of this wonder technology by the American people can only be to America and its citizens great disadvantage.

I detect a slight bias (a contained but discernible preachyness) in the work but, this minor criticism notwithstanding, it’s a very clear argument and deserves the full read if you have time.

The paper can be accessed via the following link The Innovation Winter and although it appears to be 48-pages in length when you subtract the references it ends up being a much more manageable read (half an hour?).

Happy Sunday.

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