Strong upvote. I feel like the China-US AI race debate is laden with ideology and confused lack of specificity. It is like how “capitalism” is used. People throw the term around and it can mean hundred different things. Every mention of China in relation to AI should be specific. Are we talking about AI-enabled cyberattacks against civilian infrastructure in the West? Are we talking about some weird pathway where they will create a communist super-bot that will both rule China and the rest of the world? Are we talking about only the GDP impact? Or how increased GDP will allow them to build a larger military? Or some subset of these multitude of ways in which “China winning on AI” is important?
Currently, without the lack of specificity I feel that the China AI debate is less about any specific threat and more about creating some appealing, overly simplified narrative that can lubricate the bureaucratic machine, get buy-in from a range of private sector stakeholders and fabricate some sense of urgency for people to push through various agendas. My fear is that this sounds eerily similar to “threat of the communists” during the Cold war which can be argued led to the disastrous outcome of thousands of nuclear warheads still being pointed at some of the most dense clusters of civilians around the world.
I have read far from everything about AI, so if someone has pointers to material on why China as a one-word concept is useful to point to I would be grateful. I see this issue has been raised many times on the Forum and have not read everything but decided to comment any way as I think signal boosting here is important, especially as the China one-worder is being quite casually thrown around by people with lots of influence.
Sorry for posting it here too, but a FLI podcast just dropped that seems relevant, it mentions 24 minutes in some push by several actors to use China to motivate action.
Strong upvote. I feel like the China-US AI race debate is laden with ideology and confused lack of specificity. It is like how “capitalism” is used. People throw the term around and it can mean hundred different things. Every mention of China in relation to AI should be specific. Are we talking about AI-enabled cyberattacks against civilian infrastructure in the West? Are we talking about some weird pathway where they will create a communist super-bot that will both rule China and the rest of the world? Are we talking about only the GDP impact? Or how increased GDP will allow them to build a larger military? Or some subset of these multitude of ways in which “China winning on AI” is important?
Currently, without the lack of specificity I feel that the China AI debate is less about any specific threat and more about creating some appealing, overly simplified narrative that can lubricate the bureaucratic machine, get buy-in from a range of private sector stakeholders and fabricate some sense of urgency for people to push through various agendas. My fear is that this sounds eerily similar to “threat of the communists” during the Cold war which can be argued led to the disastrous outcome of thousands of nuclear warheads still being pointed at some of the most dense clusters of civilians around the world.
I have read far from everything about AI, so if someone has pointers to material on why China as a one-word concept is useful to point to I would be grateful. I see this issue has been raised many times on the Forum and have not read everything but decided to comment any way as I think signal boosting here is important, especially as the China one-worder is being quite casually thrown around by people with lots of influence.
Sorry for posting it here too, but a FLI podcast just dropped that seems relevant, it mentions 24 minutes in some push by several actors to use China to motivate action.