'This is our space race': Meta CTO says AI is a modern-day moonshot that the US should pour 'as much fuel on as we can'

• Meta's CTO said the push toward advanced AI is the modern equivalent of the space race.
• In a podcast interview, Andrew Bosworth said the biggest risk associated with the tech is being outpaced by competitors.
• He said the US should engage in the race "seriously as a nation."

One of Meta's top execs believes that the international push to reach advanced AI systems is the current equivalent of the moonshot.

"The people we're discussing, especially China, are highly capable," Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said on a recent episode of the podcast Possible. "They have a tremendously talented pool of engineers. They're looking at the same thing we're looking at."

"You got to engage in the race. It is the race," he added. "It is, you know, this is our space race. This is what it looks like in our era."

Rather than slow down and take a step back to mitigate the risks associated with AI, Bosworth suggests pouring "as much fuel on it as we can." Far greater than any of the potential problems associated with the technology, he said, is the risk of being eclipsed by competitors.

"You have to try to handcuff yourself to slow the progress of your enemies," Bosworth said on the podcast. "The far bigger risk is that you just get lapped by your enemies."

Part of the concern with artificial intelligence is access to information that could enable malicious actors to cause large-scale harm. Bosworth said that current AI presents no greater risk than a standard search engine.

"You know, the ones that come up most often are bio, cyber, and nuclear," Bosworth said. With biology in particular, he added — "the knowledge exists, and a lot of times, the threats that I hear ascribed to AI fail 'the Google test.' Can I Google for this thing? And very often I can, in which case the AI isn't really the threat."

The real danger lies, he added, not in the availability of knowledge but the ability to physically obtain hazardous products. The information itself, Bosworth said, "isn't the threat."

"You can mail order these things," Bosworth said. "And I have some friends and family who work in bio who are pretty consistently alarmed at what they're able to acquire for their labs without any kind of control. So, I think there are regulatory solutions in the bio space."

In the realm of cybersecurity, despite concerns that it could help bolster attacks, Bosworth believes AI could serve as a powerful defensive tool.

"I think on the cyberspace, I actually feel way more optimistic about AI's ability to detect cyber attacks than to generate them," he said. "Of course, it will generate more, but I actually think we have been struggling on the detection side."

Bosworth said that the US as a whole should truly home in on AI and "race this one to the top."

"It's a thing that we've got to engage in seriously as a nation," he said. "I think the CHIPS Act is a good start, but we need a lot more of that to bring domestic manufacturing to the forefront, to reduce the tension that we're all feeling in the South China Sea."

For Bosworth, there's "no way out" of the AI race "but through."