Comment by dmix

> Rules exist for a reason.

The trouble is sometimes they don't. Or they do exist for a reason but the rules are still absurd and net harmful because they're incompetently drafted. Or the real reason is bad and the rules are doing what they were intended to do but they were intended to do something bad.

> If China builds amazing AI tech (and they will) then the rest of the world will just use it.

Not if it's banned elsewhere, or they allow people to use it without publishing it, e.g. by offering it as a service.

And it matters a lot who controls something. "AI" potentially has a lot of power, even non-AGI AI -- it can create economic efficiency, or it can manipulate people. If an adversarial entity has greater economic efficiency, they can outcompete you -- the way the US won the Cold War was essentially by having a stronger economy. If an adversarial entity has a greater ability to manipulate people, that could be even worse.

> If you want to live in China, go live in China. I assure you you will not find it to be the law less free hold of “anything goes” that you somehow imagine.

But that's precisely the issue -- it's not an anarchy, it's an authoritarian competing nation state. We have to be better than them so the country that has an elected government and constitutional protections for human rights is the one with an economic advantage, because it isn't a law of nature that those things always go together, but it's a world-eating disaster if they don't.

I think you underestimate the power foreign governments will have and will use if we are relying on foreign AI in our everyday lives.

When we ask it questions, an AI can tailor its answers to change peoples opinions and how people think. They would have the power to influence elections, our values, our sense of right and wrong.

That's before we start allowing AI to just start making purchasing decisions for us with little or no oversight.

The only answer I see is for us all to have our own AI's that we have trained, understand, and trust. For me this means it runs on my hardware and answers only to me. (And not locked behind regulation)

// If China builds amazing AI tech (and they will) then the rest of the world will just use it. Some of it will be open source. It won’t be a big deal.

"Don't worry if our adversary develops nuclear weapons and we won't - it's OK we'll just use theirs"

>…and the problem with that is what, exactly?

The problem is what the Powers-That-Be say and what they do are not in alignment.

We are now, after much long-time pressure from everyone not in power saying that being friendly with China doesn't work, waging a cold war against China and presumably we want to win that cold war. On the other hand, we just keep giving silver platter after silver platter to China.

So do we want the coming of Pax Sino or do we still want Pax Americana?

If we defer to history, we are about due for another changing of the guard as empires generally do not last more than a few hundred years if that, and the west seems poised to make that prophecy self-fulfilling.

This is what was said about Japan prior to their electronics industry surpassing the rest of the world. Yes, china does copy. However, in many instances those companies move faster and innovate faster than their western counterparts. Look at the lidar industry in china. It's making mass market lidar in the tens of thousands [see hesai]. There is no american or european equivalent at the moment. What about DJI? They massively out innovated western competitors. I wouldn't be so quick to write off that country's capacity for creativity and technological prowess.

I think it’s a mistake to believe that all China can do is copy and clone.

It’s also a mistake to underestimate the market value of copies and clones. In many cases a cloned version of a product is better than the original. E.g., clones that remove over-engineering of the original and simplify the product down to its basic idea and offer it at a lower price.

It’s also a mistake to confuse manufacturing prowess for the ability to make “copies.” It’s not China’s fault that its competitors quite literally won’t bother producing in their own country.

It’s also a mistake to confuse a gain of experience for stealing intellectual property. A good deal of innovation in Silicon Valley comes from the fact that developers can move to new companies without non-compete clauses and take what they learned from their last job to build new, sophisticated software.

The fact that a bunch of Western companies set up factories in China and simultaneously expect Chinese employees and managers to gain zero experience and skill in that industry is incredibly contradictory. If we build a satellite office for Google and Apple in Austin, Texas then we shouldn’t be surprised that Austin, Texas becomes a hub for software startups, some of which compete with the companies that chose Austin in the first place.

> China doesn't innovate, it copies, clones, and steals.

FWIW There was a time when that was was the received wisdom about the USA, from the point of view of European powers. It was shortsighted, and not particularly accurate then either.

This is true in general but with 1.5 billion citizens they have a lot of non-conformists. Conformism is good for manufacturing and quality, see Japan. I buy a lot from China and I'm frequently positively surprised. I find things that are equally good or better than their Western counterparts at a fraction of the cost. Western companies spend way too much on marketing instead of delivering value. There're issues with the West as well. Today Asia is responsible for a big chunk of the World manufacturing, this is strategic.

> A price paid, I think, due a conformant, restrictive culture. And after all, even if you do excel, you may soon disappear.

I once spoke to a Chinese person who speculated: "I wish that the Chinese were as conformant and uniform as the Americans - China is too diverse and unruly!"

I think that it's a common human habit to upsell one's own diversity and downplay that of others.

> China doesn't innovate, it copies, clones, and steals

Explain DJI and Douyin/TikTok.

Industrial espionage happens everywhere, the US does it, as well. At some point this excuse starts becoming cope.

Haha. I can tell you're obviously not Chinese, and has no understanding of Chinese culture at all.

US, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, then China. Toyota, Foxconn, Samsung, Huawei are grown with it.

Maybe they don't today, but tomorrow? Giving them the chance is poor policy.