A new Cold War has broken out between the U.S. and China over artificial intelligence.

The U.S. and China are locked in a competition, but there are some really striking similarities

to the tech races between the U.S. and Soviet Union that we saw during the Cold War.

That's my colleague Josh Chin.

In the sense that you have two rival superpowers who are competing in technologies with really,

really broad potential applications.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the U.S. were the two strongest countries in the world,

and they were racing against each other to create transformational technologies,

like nuclear weapons, rockets and satellites, and advanced computing.

Josh says that history is repeating itself with AI.

You know, this is the first general use technology we've seen come along since the internet,

and so it affects potentially everything.

There are people in both Washington and Beijing who see this competition over AI having similar consequences.

Whichever country manages to run away with

the lead stands that reap just humongous advantages and economic and military and scientific

power as well as like global influence.

And like with the Cold War, the AI race also has the potential to accelerate a technology that many fear could have dire consequences.

What happens if we create a superintelligence that doesn't have humanity's best interests at heart?

There's a lot of people in government and industry and the military who worry that this

race dynamic is actually leading both sides to sort of downplay safety concerns, which

are really significant with the technology this powerful.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

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