When Silicon Valley executives and federal lawmakers gathered at the Hill and Valley Forum on Tuesday,, a conference designed to bridge the gap between Big Tech and Washington, artificial intelligence dominated the whole event.
Despite their historically rocky relationship over tech regulation, executives and lawmakers were aligned that the AI race has become an existential battle, and one source of anxiety came up in nearly every session: China.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who spoke during the session “The Operating System for
Institutions: Money, Workflows, and AI,” framed winning the race as a matter of life and death.
“We are competing against China. The government of China wants to destroy our way of life. When they wake up every day [they think], ‘how can the American way of life be destroyed?’” Scott said, adding he believes that Iran and Russia think the same way. “We got to put ourselves in a position that we can outcompete, especially China, with regard to AI.”
