Is there a canonical discussion of what you call “race dynamics” somewhere? I can see how proliferating firms and decentralized communities would “mak[e] potential moratoriums on capabilities research much harder (if not impossible) to enforce”, but it’s less clear to me what that means for how quickly capabilities advance. Is there evidence that, say, the existence of Anthropic has led to increased funding for OpenAI?
In particular, one could make the opposite argument—competition, at least intra-nationally, slows the feedback cycle for advancing capabilities. For example, a lot of progress in information technology seems to have been driven by concentration of R&D into Bell Labs. If the Bell monopoly had been broken up sooner, would that have accelerated progress? If some publicly-funded entity had provided email and internet search services, would Google have reached the same scale?
Meanwhile, training leading-edge models is capital intensive, and competing firms dilute available funding across many projects. Alternative commercial and open-source models drive potential margins down. Diminished prospects for monopoly limit the size and term of bets that investors are willing to make.
I don’t know which way the evidence actually falls, but there seems to be a background assumption that competition, race dynamics, and acceleration of progress on capabilities always go hand in hand. I’d be very interested to read more detailed justifications for that assumption.
Is there a canonical discussion of what you call “race dynamics” somewhere? I can see how proliferating firms and decentralized communities would “mak[e] potential moratoriums on capabilities research much harder (if not impossible) to enforce”, but it’s less clear to me what that means for how quickly capabilities advance. Is there evidence that, say, the existence of Anthropic has led to increased funding for OpenAI?
In particular, one could make the opposite argument—competition, at least intra-nationally, slows the feedback cycle for advancing capabilities. For example, a lot of progress in information technology seems to have been driven by concentration of R&D into Bell Labs. If the Bell monopoly had been broken up sooner, would that have accelerated progress? If some publicly-funded entity had provided email and internet search services, would Google have reached the same scale?
Meanwhile, training leading-edge models is capital intensive, and competing firms dilute available funding across many projects. Alternative commercial and open-source models drive potential margins down. Diminished prospects for monopoly limit the size and term of bets that investors are willing to make.
I don’t know which way the evidence actually falls, but there seems to be a background assumption that competition, race dynamics, and acceleration of progress on capabilities always go hand in hand. I’d be very interested to read more detailed justifications for that assumption.