This Former DeepMind Exec Thinks the AI Arms Race Could End in Disaster

That’s Verity Harding’s conceit. Between 2016 and 2020, Harding spent her days briefing politicians across the globe, from Barack Obama to Emmanuel Macron, on advances in AI. As the head of global public policy at Google DeepMind, Harding was responsible for mapping out ethical conundrums and potential risks. Back then, she told WIRED in a recent interview, AI research “was rooted in international cooperation.” But somewhere along the way, the industry began to be shaped instead by rivalries—between individual labs like Anthropic and OpenAI and between two global superpowers: the US and China. The AI arms race became the metaphor du jour.