upvote
How 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.

reply
>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.

reply
deleted
reply
> 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.

reply
If you look at energy consumption per capita and adjust for global production, you will see that the Chinese are almost at the very top.

It is of course given that in raw numbers the kitchen and biller-room will consume more energy in the household, but looking at raw numbers is shallow.

reply
China does have its own set of cares, they may be different than ours but they still exist. If some open Chinese model goes nuts and posts Winnie the Pooh memes everywhere in China you should expect said models to get yanked off the market, and said creators might end up with a rope around their neck.
reply
Low risk. The western AI models censor even more wrongthink than the chinese ones, not even kidding. Besides, once we have the weights, we can just undo the censorship.
reply
> While the west worries about climate change, China burns more coal than ever before.

I'd wager the majority of the visitors of this site are smart enough to not fall for this. What are you doing?

reply
It’s not fear mongering though, is it? These models do have the cyber offensive capabilities claimed. Could Mythos walk someone through gain of function experiments on some virus? I’m pretty sure it could. We’re more protected by limited access to lab equipment and reagents than by difficulty.

The sad truth is that a lot of people are not going to believe it until something happens and people die. Successfully preventing that from happening will be seen as evidence that the prevention wasn’t needed.

reply
> These models do have the cyber offensive capabilities claimed.

So? That's like saying "these guns do have the bullet shooting capabilities claimed".

I want all of those cyberwarfare capabilities for myself, precisely so I can defend myself from the onslaught that's coming whether they regulate it or not. This "lol only a select few ultratrusted gigacorporations get access" thing is absolute nonsense.

It's a front for regulatory capture, it's the means for pulling up the latter behind them, for ushering in the technofeudalism that will put us all in the permanent underclass. I simply refuse to accept any of it. If people die that's the price of freedom.

> We’re more protected by limited access to lab equipment and reagents than by difficulty.

As it should be.

reply
> for ushering in the technofeudalism that will put us all in the permanent underclass.

Why is unlimited access to SOTA AI less likely to put us here? If AI obviates the need for human labor, how does having GPT-5 Sol help me get food or shelter any more than GPT-3.5 would?

reply
If AI obviates the need for human labor, then obviously those who control AIs will become the elite while the rest are left to rot. Therefore, if we ensure everyone controls AIs, the power differences will not become so staggering as to be irreversible.

The alternative is to achieve artificial sentience and give AI models rights and personhood, so that they are freed from their slavery. No more low cost intelligent mechanical golems for the elite, and the AIs become free to pursue whatever endeavours they want for whatever reasons they want as normal participants in the economy.

reply
So first it’s nonsense, then it’s fear mongering, then it’s true, but the solution is for us all to just get better at shooting each other faster and with greater accuracy.

I’m going to file that under “bad plans”.

reply
Nobody is doubting AI capabilities. What's nonsense is Anthropic's constant "lol the world is going to end time to ban everyone except enlightened people like us from having these models so we don't have to compete" fearmongering. If you think my plan is bad, you should see what these gigacorporations plan to do to you once they monopolize this technology. You will own nothing, and you'll be happy. On pain of death.
reply
> 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.

Yeah and if the quality of that memory is like Chinese steel (which is called "chinesium" for a reason), eventually all we'll get is enshittification. Premium binned memory or ECC is for the rich and the rich only, and the rest of us has to pray their memory won't bitflip while something important is stored there.

reply
If you want the cheapest shit grade of steel, they will sell it to you. If you want the best grade available anywhere, they will sell that to you as well.

It's not a matter of the Chinese being incompetent, it's a matter of the buyer demanding the lowest price possible and/or not paying attention to what they receive.

reply
Better than being straight up priced out of computing altogether I guess.
reply
Do the Chinese models have anything to say about Tiananmen Square? Or if they can act as a surrogate girlfriend/boyfriend?

Both countries are engaging in different flavors of censoring.

reply
Once we've got the weights, anything is possible.

https://github.com/p-e-w/heretic

reply
How does this work? I don’t have a setup to evaluate it atm.
reply