The AI Challenge for National Technology Strategy

The rise of national AI strategies is examined. AI is increasingly accepted as a potentially disruptive “general purpose technology.” As such, AI prowess is viewed worldwide as an essential-if not fundamentalingredient for a country's overall innovation and competitiveness capacity, for heightening geopolitical influence, and for enhancing international prestige. National AI strategies, by encouraging “responsible AI,” are also designed to mitigate AI risk and to leverage AI to meet societal ends. A diverse set of the national AI strategies are analyzed and compared, including those of the US, the EU, China, Australia, Singapore, and Bangladesh. Three sets of national AI strategy dualities are then applied to understand and assess national AI strategies. These dualities are: (1) a specific objectives/broad objectives duality, (2) a distributed/centralized structure duality, and (3) an overarching aims duality, which encompasses (a) enhancing competitiveness-geopolitical influence-international prestige, (b) risk mitigation-achieving societal purpose, and (c) a blend of both of these two latter components of the third duality. Implications for managing such national AI strategies are addressed and general implications for national AI strategies and modern macro-innovation generally are discussed.