Pentagon’s former chief software officer Nicholas Chaillan has said that he resigned because he was frustrated by China’s rapid advancement in artificial intelligence, while the US trailed very slowly behind.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Chaillan said that China was not bogged down by ethical considerations around AI research as US tech giants like Google were. For this reason and other slow technological developments, Chaillan said China was almost 15-20 years ahead of US. Chaillan was bothered that China was leap years ahead in cyberattack potential and machine learning as well.
Chaillain, who stepped down from his position in September, gave a scathing critique of technological advancements in the US. He berated cybersecurity in some departments of the US government as ‘kindergarten level’ and felt he was wasting his expertise by simply troubleshooting laptops.
The former software developer said that China’s dominance of prominent technologies put the US at risk. The US could not compete with China and as far as Challain was concerned, the race to develop technology was already over, with China emerging supreme as the winner.
