The Morning: A.I. nationalism

Plus, the 2024 election, extreme heat and "romantasy" books

View in browser|nytimes.com August 14, 2024 Good morning. We're covering the global race to control A.I. — as well as the 2024 election, extreme heat and "romantasy" books. At a chip factory in Dresden, Germany. Sean Gallup/Getty Images National tech By Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur We've reported on this topic for a year from seven countries. As artificial intelligence advances, many nations are worried about being left behind. The urgency is understandable. A.I. is improving quickly. It could soon reshape the global economy, automate jobs, turbocharge scientific research and even change how wars are waged. World leaders want companies in their country to control A.I. — and they want to benefit from its power. They fear that if they do not build powerful A.I. at home, they will be left dependent on a foreign country's creations. So A.I. nationalism — the idea that a country must develop its own tech to serve its own interests — is spreading. Countries have enacted new laws and regulations. They've formed new alliances. The United States, perhaps the best positioned in the global A.I. race, is using trade policy to cut off China from key microchips. In France, the president has heaped praise upon a startup focused on chatbots and other tools that excel in French and other non-English languages. And in Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pouring billions into A.I. development and striking deals with companies like Amazon, I.B.M. and Microsoft to make his country a major new hub. "We must rise to the challenge of A.I., or risk losing the control of our future," warned a recent report by the French government. In today's newsletter, we'll explain who is winning and what could come next. ChatGPT's impact The race to control A.I. started, in part, with a board game. In 2016, computers made by Google's DeepMind won high-profile matches in the board game Go, demonstrating a breakthrough in the ability of A.I. to behave in humanlike ways. Beijing took note. Chinese officials set aside billions and crafted a policy to become a world leader in A.I. Officials integrated A.I. into the country's vast surveillance system, giving the technology a uniquely authoritarian bent. A high-school ChatGPT workshop in Walla Walla, Wash. Ricardo Nagaoka for The New York Times Still, China's best firms were caught off guard by OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in 2022. The companies raced to catch up. They've made some progress, but censorship and regulations have hampered development. ChatGPT also inspired more countries to join the race. Companies in the United Arab Emirates, India and France have raised billions of dollars from investors, with varying degrees of state aid. Governments in different nations have provided subsidies, bankrolled semiconductor plants and erected new trade barriers. America's advantage The U.S. has advantages other countries cannot yet match. American tech giants control the most powerful A.I. models and spend more than companies abroad to build them. Top engineers and developers still aspire to a career in Silicon Valley. Few regulations stand in the way of development. American firms have the easiest access to precious A.I. chips, mostly designed by Nvidia in California. The White House is using these chips to undercut Chinese competition. In 2022, the U.S. imposed new rules that cut China off from the chips. Without them, companies simply cannot keep pace. The U.S. is also using chips as leverage over other countries. In April, Microsoft worked with the U.S. government to cut a deal with a state-linked Emirati company to give it access to powerful chips. In exchange, the firm had to stop using much of its Chinese technology and submit to U.S. government and Microsoft oversight. Saudi Arabia could make a similar deal soon. What comes next Looming over the development of A.I. are lessons of the past. Many countries watched major American companies — Facebook, Google, Amazon — reshape their societies, not always for the better. They want A.I. to be developed differently. The aim is to capture the benefits of the technology in areas like health care and education without undercutting privacy or spreading misinformation. The E.U. is leading the push for regulation. Last year, it passed a law to limit the use of A.I. in realms that policymakers considered the riskiest to human rights and safety. The U.S. has required companies to limit the spread of deep fakes. In China, where A.I. has been used to surveil its citizens, the government is censoring what chatbots can say and restricting what kind of data that algorithms can be trained on. A.I. nationalism is part of a wider fracturing of the internet, where services vary based on local laws and national interests. What's left is a new kind of tech world where the effects of A.I. in your life may just depend on where you live. More on A.I. Saudi Arabia is spending billions on computing power and A.I. research. Several Chinese companies have unveiled A.I. technologies that rival leading American systems. Scammers are using A.I.-generated videos of Elon Musk and other billionaires to trick people into buying sham investments. A bill to regulate A.I. is winding its way through the California Legislature. THE LATEST NEWS 2024 Election Gov. Tim Walz  Mark Abramson for The New York Times At a campaign event, Tim Walz, Kamala Harris's running mate, defended his Army National Guard service. JD Vance, Donald Trump's running mate, has accused Walz of misrepresenting parts of his military background. Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has faced renewed scrutiny over whether he was too slow to deploy troops during riots after George Floyd's murder in 2020. In an interview on X, Trump praised Musk for suppressing employees' efforts to unionize. The United Automobile Workers union, which has endorsed Harris, filed federal labor charges against them both. Democrats hope that abortion measures — which will be on the ballot in Arizona, Nevada and other states this fall — will boost turnout. New voter registration figures in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, two swing states, suggest that Harris's candidacy is energizing Democrats. A man broke into a Trump campaign office in Virginia over the weekend. The police are investigating it as a burglary. More on Politics Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a progressive member of the "squad" who has criticized Israel, beat a more moderate Democrat to win her primary. Eric Hovde, a Trump-endorsed businessman, won the Republican nomination for Senate in Wisconsin. He'll face Senator Tammy Baldwin, a second-term Democrat. President Biden, whose son Beau died of aggressive brain cancer, announced $150 million in funding for cancer surgery research. While Biden was vice president, his son Hunter asked the U.S. ambassador to Italy for a meeting on behalf of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company whose board Hunter sat on. Biden's lawyer said nothing came of the request. Middle East In Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. Ramadan Abed/Reuters A Hamas official said that the group would not attend cease-fire talks scheduled for Thursday. The representative said Hamas leaders did not think Israel was negotiating in good faith. Iran criticized the leaders of Britain, France and Germany for urging restraint following the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran, saying it had the right to defend its sovereignty. A growing number of security officials and politicians in Israel believe it is the right time for an offensive against the Lebanese group Hezbollah, The Wall Street Journal reports. More International News Fumio Kishida will step down as Japan's prime minister next month. He's unpopular, and others in the governing party had pressured him to quit. British counterterrorism police charged pro-Palestinian activists with violent disorder for breaking into an Israeli arms manufacturer in England. Tanzanian police arrested over 500 people across the country ahead of a banned anti-government youth rally. U.S.-backed talks for a cease-fire in Sudan begin today in Switzerland, as civil war pushes the country deeper into famine. Sudan's military said it would not attend. Extreme heat is closing schools around the world for days or weeks at a time, threatening global education gains. Business Starbucks ousted its C.E.O. and replaced him with the chief executive of Chipotle, Brian Niccol. The free streaming service Tubi has exploded in popularity in the past 18 months, drawing even with Disney+ in total viewing time. Overseers of the Panama Canal want to store more water after a drought forced them to limit shipping last year. Their plan could threaten farmers' livelihoods. Other Big Stories A candlelight vigil for Ta'Kiya Young in Columbus, Ohio. Courtney Hergesheimer/The Columbus Dispatch, via Associated Press An Ohio police officer was charged with murder in the fatal shooting last year of a pregnant Black woman. Hot weather in the U.S. is melting mail-order medicines inside delivery trucks. A brain disease is affecting the people of New Brunswick, Canada. Despite years of research, no one knows why. Opinions Vance converted to Catholicism in his 30s. His rise shows the influence that Catholic thought still wields in politics, Matthew Schmitz writes. Here are columns by Bret Stephens on Israel and Lydia Polgreen on trans health care. Subscribe Today The Morning highlights a small portion of the journalism that The New York Times offers. To access all of it, become a subscriber with this introductory offer. MORNING READS In Canada.  Bryan Denton for The New York Times Wildfires: Parts of Canada's boreal forest are burning faster than they can regrow. Washed ashore: While cleaning up after Hurricane Debby, a woman found a message in a bottle from 1945. Medical language: Abortion wasn't always considered a loaded term. Need a hero? The American left has, for years, been wary of charismatic figureheads. A movement without leaders has its limits. Lives Lived: The model Peggy Moffitt helped define the look of the 1960s, but she was best known for one image: a 1964 shot, taken by her photographer husband, in which she posed in a topless bathing suit. She died at 86. SPORTS Sean Stellato: The sports agent found fame thanks to his outlandish clothes, outsize personality and embrace of the N.F.L.'s underdogs. N.F.L.: The Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy needs knee surgery. M.L.B.: The Houston Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez appeared to break the Tampa Bay Rays' scoreboard with a batting practice home run. The player joked he's "not paying that bill." ARTS AND IDEAS With a robot server.  Maggie Shannon for The New York Times We live in an age when robots are more than capable of flipping burgers and pouring coffee. So why haven't more restaurants embraced automation? The reasons are not technological but emotional, Meghan McCarron writes: "People come to restaurants to feel connected to other humans. They want to encounter people, not a chatbot, kiosk or mechanical arm." More on culture Haley Joel Osment  Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times Haley Joel Osment had his breakthrough in the 1999 hit "The Sixth Sense." Since then, he's worked steadily, finding a balance that has eluded some former child stars. A new crop of books embraces the fantasy of falling for an older crush — like, 500 years older. "A big night for weird old rich guys with no friends": Stephen Colbert recapped Musk and Trump's interview on "The Late Show." THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Bryan Gardner for The New York Times Toss a fleshy white fish in tikka marinade and scatter over a bed of spinach. See the best white T-shirts. Revitalize a vintage rug. GAMES Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangrams were nonviolent and violent. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. 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