With the signing of an executive order, the American AI Initiative, President Trump signaled on Monday that the U.S. would not sit back and let China take the lead on artificial intelligence. That’s a great first step, but the U.S. faces a tough road ahead in keeping its technological lead.

And maintaining that lead should be a top priority. Not only does AI have military applications critical to ensuring the country has robust national security (Skynet anyone?), but it is likely to be the key economic driver of the not so distant future. Indeed everything from automated cars, to fraud detection in financial transactions, to translation, and even farming as well as other applications in most every other industry already heavily rely on machine learning.