South Dakota’s congressional delegation offers artificial intelligence as the future of U.S. defense, health, and welfare. The three spoke at an Inside Washington forum in Sioux Falls.
They said China is the country's largest threat, already surpassing the U.S. in AI development.
U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (R) serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services committees. He said the development of AI is imperative for us as a country for national defense.
“In the past, we haven’t had huge databases, now we do. And with a computer that can look through lots of them, and if it can also understand, using a formula, basically, of what we are asking it to understand," said Rounds. "That formula incorporated with these very very fast-moving computers actually project forward, based upon what has happened in these databases in the past.”
Rounds says AI is used to predict certain outcomes which he said can become incredibly powerful for national defense and healthcare applications.
U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson (R) serves on the select committee on China. He said China is a major threat to our national security.
“China’s navy is larger than ours, not as good, but its bigger. They have hypersonic and energetic technologies we can’t match, and we have no defenses for. China is a bigger trading partner with every country in South America than we are. In 27 of 31 emerging technologies, they are ahead of us,” said Johnson.
Johnson said a survey of Africa shows the public sees China as a leader of the world more than America. He said we must be concerned with stability and safety.
U.S. Senator John Thune (R) is a member of the committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
“Cyber is one of the worlds, and Mike alluded to it, where China is just so aggressive. And I talked about precision agriculture and one of the things we are worried about is them hacking into our, even to that, but if you talk about financial services or healthcare or data privacy, they are constantly on the attack on a daily basis,” said Thune.
Thune said the mixture of AI and the constant threat of China means the federal government needs to make the proper investments and create AI ‘guardrails.’
