Paul Scharre in Foreign Policy:
New technologies can change the global balance of power. Nuclear weapons divided the world into haves and have-nots. The Industrial Revolution allowed Europe to race ahead in economic and military power, spurring a wave of colonial expansion. A central question in the artificial intelligence revolution is who will benefit: Who will be able to access this powerful new technology, and who will be left behind?
Until recently, AI has been a diffuse technology that rapidly proliferates. Open-source AI models are readily available online. The recent shift to large models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is concentrating power in the hands of large tech companies that can afford the computing hardware needed to train these systems. The balance of global AI power will hinge on whether AI concentrates power in the hands of a few actors, as nuclear weapons did, or proliferates widely, as smartphones have.
More here.