Countries that invest in widespread broadband access and internet connectivity will gain an edge in AI technology, a financial tech director told Fox News.
"We have an issue right now with broadband access," Nicole Valentine, the fintech director of the Center for Financial Studies at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank, said. "If we open up this divide of broadband, we open up the opportunities, then we can bring more people to the table, more solutions to the table, more ideas to the table."
AI programs such as ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and AutoGPT require a stable internet connection to analyze data and create information for users. However, 19 million Americans — or 6% of the population — have below average speeds, according to a report from the Federal Communications Commission.
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Increasing internet accessibility with consistent speeds can effectively broaden the number of people who use AI, Valentine told Fox News. Making the technology more widely available within the U.S. means more consumers can become fluent with it, allowing for more innovation — and will ensure America has an "edge" in the space as other countries adopt machine learning, she said.
"What I love about generative AI is its ability for us to actually look at all of this data and create a big application on top of it," Valentine told Fox News. "So the fact that we can take platforms, we can take datasets, we can make it all smarter, that's what's most important."
"AI has had the highest adoption rate, higher than the Internet, faster than the Internet," she said. "It's one of those applications that if put into the hands of platform owners, retail consumers, businesses, it's going to basically increase productivity."
The Milken Institute, an independent economic think tank, hosted a summit this week where speakers and atendees were widely supportive of the expansion of AI in the U.S.
Other countries have also been quick to embrace AI.
China has a robust AI sector and is a key competitor in the race for dominance over the technology, China researcher Gordon Chang told Fox News last month. And from 2015 to 2021, U.S. firms invested over $40 billion in Chinese AI companies, according to a Georgetown University study.
In an effort to keep an advantage regarding AI, the White House is mulling an executive order keeping technology-related investments out of China.
Valentine said the U.S. should look to bolster domestic AI accessibility.
"We have all of this technology in areas that are more concentrated," Valentine said. Investing in expanding AI access will help the country "deal with the biggest issues of our time," she said.
"AI is going to be a great tool," Valentine told Fox News. "It's a tool that we all need to know how to use."
To watch the full interview with Valentine, click here.
