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Jeffrey Ding in Iowa City: Diffusing AI across the economy, not just chasing breakthroughs
Summary
At an Iowa City Foreign Relations Council event, Jeffrey Ding argued that the long-term advantage in AI will belong to countries that diffuse AI widely through their economies — by widening engineering training and industry–academia links — rather than only those that pioneer frontier models.
Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor of political science at George Washington University, told an Iowa City audience that the strategic competition over artificial intelligence will hinge less on who first creates frontier models and more on which countries can embed AI broadly across industries.
Ding laid out a contrast between two accounts of technological competition. "Leading sector" theory focuses on a country's ability to monopolize a new, fast-growing industry. By contrast, his research centers on general purpose technologies — innovations that spread across many sectors. "I think this image illustrates that we have a pretty confused ... understanding of what US China competition and AI would even look like," he said, arguing that AI resembles historical GPTs such as electricity and the steam engine.
Ding said GPTs require different institutional responses because they depend on a broad base of applied engineering skills and coordination…
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