Alexandr Wang, the aggressive head of Scale AI, created quite a stir last month when he purchased a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post. His message to President Trump was clear and chilling, "America needs to come out on top in the AI race."

This daring move met with a diverse range of reactions, which were prominently displayed when Wang took the stage during the kickoff night of Web Summit Qatar. His conversation with Axios’s Felix Salmon saw a surprising twist when, after asking the crowd if they agreed with Wang’s sentiment, Salmon spotted only a couple of supportive hands rise. A far larger number of attendees, in contrast, obviously disagreed.

Electrifying the room further, Salmon nudged Wang to justify his stance. With unwavering confidence, Wang averred, "AI will redefine the whole concept of national security." Reflecting on his upbringing in Los Alamos, New Mexico, famously known as "the birthplace of the atomic bomb" and his parents' professional life as physicists at the National Lab, Wang underlined the gravity of the situation.

He depicted a fierce rivalry between the United States and China and expressed his concerns about China developing AI to surpass "Western powers'" military might, which first inspired his audacious advertisement.

Wang's words mirrored the increasingly strident rhetoric that's coming from budding defense tech startups and venture capitalists. They're urging for a greater level of autonomy in AI weaponry and a broad increase in AI arms. Their primary argument is an intimidating scenario where China unveils fully autonomous AI weapons, while the U.S. lags behind due to its policy of involving a human in the decision-making process before making a strike.

Not armed with only the threat of foreign weapons, Wang further made the debate personal by emphasizing the choice between Chinese and American influence on the groundwork of LLM models. In his view, this is essentially a duel between two contenders, pushing aside considerations for other competitors, like France’s Mistral. He asserts American models emblaze the spirit of free speech, while Chinese models echo the nation's communist perspectives.

Indeed, research reveals many popular Chinese LLM models carry the mark of their government's censorship policies. Moreover, worries about stealthy paths for the Chinese government to amass data cast a shadow over these Chinese models.

The significance of Wang's talk about government influence in AI surged as it coincided with Scale AI announcing a collaboration with the Qatar government. In this major development revealed on Sunday, Wang disclosed Scale's intention to assist Qatar in creating 50 artificial-intelligence-empowered government apps, addressing domains from education to healthcare.

Scale AI is mainly recognized for utilizing plenty of contract workers, many of whom are located outside the U.S., to manually aid in training models. The company shares its work space with global giants like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta, with a majority of leading U.S. foundational models. It also delivers additional offerings like an AI data engine and AI apps, some of which are oriented towards the defense industry.

Their openly patriotic stance probably secures Scale AI good favor with its Department of Defense clientele. However, the discussion at the Web Summit hinted at a considerable number of individuals who are equally ill at ease with the concept of the U.S. wielding a powerful AI reign.