White House no longer wants to rely on Google & IBM to weaponize AI – and it’s ready to spend money to poach top talent

Plans to increase the AI and quantum computing budget shows that the Pentagon will no longer be a backseat driver in the development of cutting-edge military tech. Expect US capabilities to grow rapidly and in greater secrecy. The announcement last week that more money of the Trump administration’s proposed $4.8 trillion budget would be earmarked for the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation is a significant step in the ongoing Artificial Intelligence arms race. Fearful that the US is falling behind China in this race, many technologists have urged the Trump administration to back research on AI-based weapons and transportation and on quantum computing, which harnesses quantum mechanics to reach potentially vastly faster processing speeds and stronger encryption capabilities than existing supercomputers.