How AI will determine the next world SuperPower

Empires and Countries have emerged out of nowhere as the world’s most powerful concentrations of people with a single denominator, the use of technology.

The most powerful countries today emerged mainly after the Second World War, and not long ago, China was attached to this list, the main reason being its accelerated growth in terms of technology.

What is technology?

Many people associate technology with computers, electronic devices, and concepts that are far from the understanding of the general public.

The reality is that technology is any man-made object that makes life easier.

The first technological tool was the tip of a spear thousands of years ago, this simple technological advance allowed the human being to make the change from being within the food chain to being on the top of it.

Since the invention of the wheel, the steam engine, the printing press, the internet, or artificial intelligence, technology has been in a constant revolution almost since the beginning of humanity.

Technology and power in the world

In the same way that technology can be used to make human activities simpler and more productive, technology throughout history has had an important place in warfare.

Taking the example of the spear, the technology eventually led to the arrow and bow, in the metallurgy for the manufacture of swords and armor, until reaching the atomic bomb.

There is an important correlation in history between the dominant country or empire in the world, with the technology available to them, especially for use in war and conflicts with adversaries.

In a clear definition, technology gives a competitive advantage over the important aspects of power over any other person, group, or country.

The rise of artificial intelligence

From my point of view, the technology that is going to make a marked difference in power in the world is artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence has long been present in our daily lives, perhaps even without realizing it. Since the 1990s, computers or equipment existed that somehow applied artificial intelligence algorithms to perform different tasks better than a human.

However, today it is globally known that artificial intelligence is present in more and more hardware and software around us, from our cell phones, our refrigerator to even our clothes.

The expansion of the internet in all devices has provided the possibility of having enormous amounts of information so that, with this information, entities that use reinforcement learning can be created.

We live in the information age and it is this same information that provides artificial intelligence with the necessary database to learn and deduce everything it needs today.

What does power look like in the future?

Since 2000, power in the world has been decentralized from a single country, which was once the United States, to a greater number of countries.

Beyond generating a balance of power, it has created a gap in the capacity of a country or group of countries to carry economic, social, and technological leadership in the world.

The evolution in human and technological capacities is required at a speed millions of times of what could naturally happen, which leads to looking for shortcuts in this process to find these results.

This is where artificial intelligence and its different disciplines come in.

Artificial intelligence in the future will have the following impacts:

Expansion of reasoning capacity

Either within a human being or in an external entity.

Beyond data processing, data reasoning means drawing conclusions from it and obtaining valuable information.

The human being has a marked limit to be able to carry out this process, however, the creation of entities that carry out this process will have an important competitive advantage in obtaining information.

War Technology (Hardware)

Weapons have gradually incorporated artificial intelligence.

Currently, it is present in drones, satellites, and even firearms to increase the capabilities that a human can have in his deployment in a war.

There are many examples, which have even reached the cinema, of what can happen with the combination of artificial intelligence with weapons, and this will be one of the main triggers in the balance of power worldwide.

War Technology (Networks and Software)

In the same way that every day, more general-purpose devices in the world are connected to the network, government information, weapons, and automated control systems are also connected to this network.

This opens the possibility that wars are not only carried out in person, but a new type of war is also being carried out with cyberattacks, to obtain information or disable functionalities of an opponent.

Artificial intelligence comes at this point, as it is much more efficient in being able to generate this type of attack, it can be much more consistent and requires less time to find access to a secure system.

More futuristically, it is believed that a point can be reached where artificial intelligence could program or generate code in a much more efficient and secure way than a human.

Currently, Where are we?

There is currently a major research and development race in artificial intelligence issues.

However generally known, a tipping point has not yet been reached where a discovery leads to complete dominance over another country or group.

I consider that a country that has implemented an important strategy to position itself on this issue is China.

From the government to private industry, there is a huge investment to enable small, medium, and large companies focused on the development and research of different artificial intelligence tools.

If we follow a constant path, the domain of artificial intelligence will give global power to whoever generates this technology, however, the precautions and agreements that must be taken at a global level to safeguard the interests of humanity in the face of extinction risks, AI being a possible risk in the future.