Israel Update – Week of February 5, 2023
Artificial Intelligence (continued): A few weeks ago, we discussed the “United States–Israel Artificial Intelligence Center Act,'' introduced as bill S.2120 by a bi-partisan group of Senators, seeking to “require the Department of State to establish the United States–Israel Artificial Intelligence Center to leverage the experience, knowledge, and expertise of institutions of higher education and private sector entities in the United States and Israel to develop more robust research and development cooperation in specified areas (e.g., machine learning, object detection, and speech recognition).”
This begs a question: Why Israel?
The U.S. is in a de facto war with China over world leadership in Artificial Intelligence (AI). An article that recently appeared in Time Magazine called “The Only Way the U.S. Can Win the Tech War with China” clearly states that the only way to prevent China from dominating the world technology economy is through U.S. dominance in AI. According to the article, the way the U.S. is currently trying to win the AI battle is via preventive efforts, “not only blocking the sale of U.S. [AI technology] chips, but also preventing China from making such chips themselves or buying them elsewhere.” There is another way ahead. In September, 2020, Congressmen Kelly and Hurd introduced the Bipartisan Resolution to Create National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. The resulting strategy paper clearly stated that in order to maintain world leadership in AI, the U.S. must collaborate with its allies. Enter Israel. Israel’s AI ecosystem is undergoing explosive growth, characterized by a major influx of research centers, establishments and talent. Israel is a hotbed for AI talent, tracking at nearly 4000 developers, engineers and data scientists working on AI-related research, development and integration. All of this in a country of less than 8 million. The 2017 Israeli National Security Strategy identified a need to “establish strategic partnerships to align private sector R&D resources to priority national security applications.” It identified AI as a high-potential area for joint U.S. – Israeli cooperative research. The Israeli Ministry of Science has designated AI as a “vital area of research” and in 2019 began offering financial incentives to encourage academic AI research. Israeli-U.S. collaboration and cooperation in AI can help propel the U.S. to world AI leadership. The U.S. and Israel collaboration would enable sharing of technology and data. Such collaboration will not only lock in Israeli technology but it will simultaneously prevent its spread to other countries such as China or Russia. This will go a long way in addressing the American perception that Israeli technology is leaking to China. Note that Israel and the U.S. need be the only collaborators. One can imagine a collaboration framework for the express purposes of AI development that includes countries from the Abraham Accords, NATO or even Australia – UK – U.S. (AUKUS).
AI development is dependent upon three primary ingredients:
[1] Hardware, such as computer chips,
[2] software and algorithms, and
[3] large amounts of data.
Data is critical because AI algorithms learn from experience. The more data available, the better they can learn. Israel can provide tremendous benefit in hardware development, software, and data. Indeed, one of the reasons that Intel acquired the Israeli “Mobileye” company for 15.3 billion dollars in 2017 was to gain access to the data Mobileye had collected as part of its algorithm development.
USIEA is taking Congress by the hand and showing them the marvels of Israeli AI technology. On the upcoming 2023 Congressional tour, Members of Congress will see first-hand two Israeli AI firms, both in the biotech sphere:
BrainQ: BrainQ is developing a cloud-based platform to map brain network activity using AI Deep Learning algorithms to extract biological insights that translate into precision therapies. The therapies are delivered via an investigational non-invasive portable medical device that creates a frequency-tuned low-intensity electromagnetic field. The device, which is worn as a hood, will be demonstrated to the members on the tour.
Biolojic Design: Biolojic Design is pioneering the design of fully human antibodies. Using AI Deep Learning algorithms, Biolojic learns to understand which antibodies are more effective against which diseases. Biolojic’s computational technology mimics the way the immune system makes antibodies. Trained on all known antigen-antibody pairs and vast data sets of human antibody repertoires, the AI algorithms rationally design specific, highly selective, and effective functional antibodies that can execute new biological programs.
USIEA is continually working to educate Members of Congress on the benefits of working with Israel towards a better, safer, and more secure AI ecosystem. AI collaboration with Israel meets a key American need and cements a key American alliance.
Wishing you a quiet week,
Ari Sacher
