In a bold move last month, Scale AI CEO Alexandre Wang pulled out a full page ad for the page in the Washington Post, telling President Trump, “America must win the AI war.”
The statement triggered a mixed reaction, as seen during the King’s appearance on Sunday of Web Summit Qatar’s opening night. When King’s interviewer Felix Salmon of Axios voted for the room and asked how many people agreed with that opinion, he had only two hands. When he asked how many people objected to the room, Salmon pointed out that a “overwhelming” number of hands had risen.
So Salmon asked the king to follow his opinion. “AI intends to fundamentally change the nature of national security,” Wang explained. He said he grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, “the birthplace of the atomic bomb,” and both his parents were physicists who worked at the national lab.
The King said he viewed this as a competition between the United States and China. He then expressed concern that AI would allow China to “jump” the military powers of the “western power.”
Wang reflected an increasingly coming language from defensive technology startups and VCS. They generally want more autonomy in AI weapons and more AI weapons. They point to China, and while they assume a situation where China releases fully autonomous AI weapons, the US is slowed down by demanding human decision makers in a loop before firing.
Beyond the hypothetical weapons of another country, King tried to insist on choosing between China and the US for the baseline LLM model. He believes this will also be a two-horse race, and no other players like the French Mistral have mentioned it. He argued that the US model burns with free speech, which reflects the perspective of a communist society.
It is true that researchers have discovered that many popular Chinese LLM models burn government censorship.
The King’s stated concerns about the government’s influence on AI seemed particularly timely, as his story coincided with the scale of announcing an agreement with the Qatar government. Announced on Sunday, Wang said the scale will help Qatar build government apps with 50 AIs, ranging from education to healthcare.
Size is often known primarily for employing a corps of contract workers from the United States overseas. It works with Microsoft, Openai, Meta, and most major US basic models. It also offers other products such as AI data engines and AI apps. Some are designed for the defense industry.
The obvious pro-American language may provide DOD customers and scale AI. However, Web Summit Talk shows how many people, the US, which has an AI superpower, look equally uncomfortable.