The unspoken global race for artificial intelligence

Two men walk into a bar, the first one says: “robots will conquer our civilisation and make us their servants within ten years”, the second one responds: “No, the principle of artificial intelligence (AI) is a far-fetched goal that will never see light”. The bartender smiles, analyses their facial expressions, assigns a sentiment score to their sentences, evaluates their historical drinking trends, and decides to pour the first one a glass of gin and tonic, and the second one a glass of Scotch. Here is the spoiler: both men are lying; and the bartender is a robot. Not a funny joke, but a reality that is shadowing all conventional discussions about the future prospects of AI. In order to avoid such binary discussions about the goodness and possibilities of machine intelligence, and to eliminate the ‘hype’ surrounding the topic, this article aims to unveil the slowly cooking, quietly simmering, unspoken truths of the inevitable global arms race of AI.