China and the U.S. have been developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems at a rapid pace that has evolved into a race for dominance, but should China surpass the U.S. in its technological capability, experts warn of dire consequences for America.
If China does win an AI race, its actions would impact the U.S. societally, militarily and culturally, putting Americans at their mercy as they shape free speech and power in modern society.
"If you are the one that cracks that glass ceiling, if you will, and breaks through in AI, you get to go and also set what the rules of the road look like for that technology for quite some time," James Czerniawski, a senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity, told Fox News Digital.
"If China is the one that's able to do that, I think they've kind of made it pretty clear where they stand when it comes to AI," he added. "Particularly, they want to use it to control the dissemination of information online, so I think that that's something that we have to be very cognizant of and very concerned about."
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He explained that China has made significant AI investments using state capital to get ahead of the U.S., which he said might not be immediately obvious to Americans especially as it relates to the distribution of information.
"When we're looking at the dissemination of information online, if China's leading that conversation in AI … then that's really the biggest threat to Americans … it might be a little bit more difficult to get a full breadth of information available on any given topic, and particularly if the CCP would prefer to go and see a particular narrative out there," he said. "I think that that's really the biggest risk to Americans is that China could export its suppression of speech and information to the United States indirectly because of its dominance if it were to go and take advantage."
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In the U.S. right now, he explained that our tech companies empower a lot of speech and information to be disseminated online that is not found anywhere else in the world.
"I think that that's the real big thing here is like, 'Hey, how is China going to sit there and try to control the dissemination of information and how are they going to try to leverage their very aggressive foreign policy here to try to have other nations take on a similar model to them?'" he asked.
Dr. Michael Capps, the CEO of Diveplane, told Fox News Digital that it is hard to predict what the world would look like five, ten or fifteen years from now should China get ahead in the AI race.
"It's hard to not get excited slash very, very worried," he said. "The good thing is that China has generally focused on its own borders and less about projection of power. The bad thing is that, of course, over the last few years they've been projecting power. The Belt and Road Initiative is them building power bases outside of the Chinese borders as a way to protect their way of life."
Capps used TikTok as an example of a Chinese product that he said does an excellent job of maintaining an audience's attention to collect data and learn about people with the help of AI, which he said would be co-opted by other companies and products should China lead the world in AI. If Netflix was operated by a Chinese company he said certain movie themes, for example, would be prohibited.
"Organizations like the NBA or Hollywood are catering to Chinese interests because they don't want to upset the biggest market," he said. "It's going to be really hard for us to see freedom of speech … and I don't think anybody wants to go that direction."
Christopher Alexander, the CCO of Liberty Blockchain, said the U.S. and other private companies need to be aware of the possibility of China stealing industrial secrets related the AI technology so they can beat competitors to market saturation.
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"Who's going to develop something if they're going have to give it away and show you all the inner workings as soon as they create it?" he asked. "That's actually a massive problem in China right now. They'll steal your your industrial secrets in China or outside in a heartbeat."
He also emphasized the importance of hardware, like semiconductor chips, that are required to power AI and are primarily made in Taiwan.
"The fact that we've shipped them off to China and they sort of perilously dangle off the edge of the Chinese mainland is not ideal particularly looking at how aggressive the Chinese are," he said. "If the Chinese can take Taiwan, they will do it without any question."
"The Chinese plan in 50 year planning cycles and I wouldn't be too shocked if they [China] imagine in 30 years they've gotten, I won't say a majority, but a group of Taiwanese that are going to support them," he added.
Gordon Chang, the author of "The Coming Collapse of China," warned of dire consequences if China overtook the U.S. in the AI race.
"A world dominated by China is not a world that most people want to live in," he said. "It's a world where China rules the entire planet and they've made it clear that that's their goal."
"It's a world where there's no freedom, where there's no representative governance," he added. "It is a world ruled by one person in Beijing. That's not a world that we want to be in."
