I spent some time last summer looking into the “other countries” idea: if we’d like to slow down both Chinese AI timelines without speeding up US timelines, what if we tried to get countries that aren’t the US (or the UK, since DeepMind is there) to accept more STEM talent from China? TLDR:
There are very few countries at the intersection of “has enough of an AI industry and general hospitality to Chinese immigrants (e.g., low xenophobia, widely spoken languages) that they’d be interested in moving” + “doesn’t have so much of an AI industry that this would defeat the purpose” + “has sufficiently tractable immigration policy that they might actually do it.” GovAI did some survey work on this. Canada, Switzerland, France, Australia, and Singapore looked like plausible candidates (in order of how much time I spent looking into them).
Because this policy might also draw migrants who would have instead moved to the US, the question of whether this is a good idea hinges in part on the question of whether overall timelines or the West-China gap is more important (as is often the case). I think recently consensus has moved in the “timelines” direction (in light of very fast Western progress and the export controls and domestic regulation likely slowing things down in China), making it look more appealing.
Happy to share my (now somewhat outdated) draft privately if people are curious.
I spent some time last summer looking into the “other countries” idea: if we’d like to slow down both Chinese AI timelines without speeding up US timelines, what if we tried to get countries that aren’t the US (or the UK, since DeepMind is there) to accept more STEM talent from China? TLDR:
There are very few countries at the intersection of “has enough of an AI industry and general hospitality to Chinese immigrants (e.g., low xenophobia, widely spoken languages) that they’d be interested in moving” + “doesn’t have so much of an AI industry that this would defeat the purpose” + “has sufficiently tractable immigration policy that they might actually do it.” GovAI did some survey work on this. Canada, Switzerland, France, Australia, and Singapore looked like plausible candidates (in order of how much time I spent looking into them).
Because this policy might also draw migrants who would have instead moved to the US, the question of whether this is a good idea hinges in part on the question of whether overall timelines or the West-China gap is more important (as is often the case). I think recently consensus has moved in the “timelines” direction (in light of very fast Western progress and the export controls and domestic regulation likely slowing things down in China), making it look more appealing.
Happy to share my (now somewhat outdated) draft privately if people are curious.