Hi Justin, thanks for this reply. Lots to think about. For the moment, just one point:
I worry that EA culture tends to trust the US/Western companies, governments, & culture too much, and is too quick to portray China as an ‘imperialist autocracy’ that can’t be trusted at all, and that’s incapable of taking a long view about humanity in general, or about X risks in particular. (Not that this is what you’re necessarily doing here; your comment just provoked this mini-rant about EA views of China in general).
I’m far from a China expert, but I have some experience teaching at a Chinese university, reading a fair amount about China, and following their rise rather closely over the last few decades. My sense is that Chinese government and people are somewhat more likely to value AI alignment than American politicians, media, and voters do.
And that they have good reasons not to trust any American political or cultural strategy for trying to make AI research safe. They see the US as much more aggressively imperialistic over the last couple of hundred years than China has ever been. They understand that the US fancies itself a representative democracy, but that, in practice, it is, like all stable countries, an oligarchy pretending to be something other than an oligarchy. They see their system as, at least, honest about the nature of its political power; whereas Americans look deluded into thinking that their votes can actually change the political power structure.
I worry that the US/UK strategies for trying to make AI research safer will simply not be credible to Chinese leaders, AI researchers, or ordinary people, and will be seen as just another form of American exceptionalism, in which we act as if we’re the only people in the world who can be trusted to reduce global X risks. From what I’ve seen so far (e.g. a virtual absence of any serious political debate about AI in the US), China would be right not to trust our capacity to take this problem seriously, let alone to solve it.
Hi Justin, thanks for this reply. Lots to think about. For the moment, just one point:
I worry that EA culture tends to trust the US/Western companies, governments, & culture too much, and is too quick to portray China as an ‘imperialist autocracy’ that can’t be trusted at all, and that’s incapable of taking a long view about humanity in general, or about X risks in particular. (Not that this is what you’re necessarily doing here; your comment just provoked this mini-rant about EA views of China in general).
I’m far from a China expert, but I have some experience teaching at a Chinese university, reading a fair amount about China, and following their rise rather closely over the last few decades. My sense is that Chinese government and people are somewhat more likely to value AI alignment than American politicians, media, and voters do.
And that they have good reasons not to trust any American political or cultural strategy for trying to make AI research safe. They see the US as much more aggressively imperialistic over the last couple of hundred years than China has ever been. They understand that the US fancies itself a representative democracy, but that, in practice, it is, like all stable countries, an oligarchy pretending to be something other than an oligarchy. They see their system as, at least, honest about the nature of its political power; whereas Americans look deluded into thinking that their votes can actually change the political power structure.
I worry that the US/UK strategies for trying to make AI research safer will simply not be credible to Chinese leaders, AI researchers, or ordinary people, and will be seen as just another form of American exceptionalism, in which we act as if we’re the only people in the world who can be trusted to reduce global X risks. From what I’ve seen so far (e.g. a virtual absence of any serious political debate about AI in the US), China would be right not to trust our capacity to take this problem seriously, let alone to solve it.