alt Hacker NewsHow do you know that? How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability and feel locked into the race because they think that the US will race ahead if they stop?
During the Cold War the nuclear arms race was brought under control gradually, because it was mutually beneficial, but it took time to build trust. This is no different. Nobody wins from the race.
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The "race" has multi-dimensional impacts. This story parallels only some of them. "Nobody wins from the race" completely ignores the generality of AI. Xi Jinping highlighted this week that he clearly understands this multi-dimensionality; your words do not.
> How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability
I don't "know", I'm interpreting the world based on the knowledge I have and the information available to me.
China has never been one to care much about things like ethics or safety. While the west worries about climate change, China burns more coal than ever before. While the west balks at things like gene editing, the chinese press on with human enhancing research.
So I have no reason to believe they share in Anthropic's constant fearmongering over AI capabilities.
> Nobody wins from the race.
We win. I'm really looking forward to the day the chinese finally start manufacturing memory and GPUs. We desperately need more competition in this area to collapse hardware prices and make local AI models viable.
The optimal state of the world is one where all the billionaires are out there pouring their entire fortunes into training ever more godlike AIs for everyone else to use at ever cheaper prices. They can never be allowed to "win", ever, because if they do the competition ends and it turns into technofeudalism. Let them exhaust their fortunes on AI training then leak the weights so everyone can use them.
>How do you know that? How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability
You can ask them, they live in China, not Narnia. I spend about two months in the country per year mostly for tech/work related reasons and I've not encountered that sentiment. For one they don't have these borderline religious schizophrenic breakdowns thinking they're bringing about the end of the world, most people just see this tech for what it is, a tool for productivity and automation like any other piece of software and they don't actually think about the US. They're competing first and foremost for Chinese customers, with each other, maybe some old CCP guy cares about America, the 20/30 something's care about competing with other Chinese companies for users.