Comment by Dalewyn
2 years ago
Even better if (read: when) China, who has negative damns for concerns, can take charge of the industry that we willingly and expediently relinquish.
2 years ago
Even better if (read: when) China, who has negative damns for concerns, can take charge of the industry that we willingly and expediently relinquish.
…and the problem with that is what, exactly?
The only meaningful thing in this discussion is about people who want to make money easy, but can’t, because of the rules they don’t like.
Well, suck it up.
You don’t get to make a cheap shity factory that pours its waste into the local river either.
Rules exist for a reason.
You want the life style but also all the good things and also no rules. You can’t have all the cake and eat it too.
/shrug
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.
This “we must out compete China by being as shit and horrible as they are” meme is stupid.
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.
> 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.
> Or they do exist for a reason but the rules are still absurd and net harmful
Ok.
…but if you have a law and you’re opposed to it on the basis that “China will do it anyway”, you admit that’s stupid?
Shouldn’t you be asking: does the law do a useful thing? Does it make the world better? Is it compatible with our moral values?
Organ harvesting.
Stem cell research.
Human cloning.
AI.
Slavery.
How can anyone stand there and go “well China will do it so we may as well?”
In an abstract sense this is a fundamentally invalid logical argument.
Truth on the basis of arbitrary assertion.
It. Is. False.
Now, certainly there is a degree of naunce with regard to AI specifically; but the assertion that we will be “left behind” and “out competed by China” are not relevant to the discussion on laws regarding AI and AI development.
What we do is not governed by what China may or may not do.
If you want to win the “AI race” to AGI, then investment and effort is required, not allowing an arbitrary “anything goes” policy.
China as a nation is sponsoring the development of its technology and supporting its industry.
If you want want to beat that, opposing responsible AI won’t do it.
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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"
> "Don't worry if our adversary develops nuclear weapons and we won't - it's OK we'll just use theirs"
Beneath this comment is hidden a truth that there is AI which can be used beneficially, AI which can be used detrimentally, AI which can be weaponized in warfare, and AI which can be used defensively in warfare. Discussions about policy and regulation should differentiate these, but also consider implications of how this technology is developed and for what purpose it could be employed.
We should definitely be developing AI to combat AI as it will most certainly be weaponized against us with greater frequency in the near future.
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>…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.
Wish people stopped with that Cold War narrative. You're not waging anything just yet.
Here's the thing: the US didn't win the OG Cold War by being, as 'AnthonyMouse puts it upthread, "the country that has an elected government and constitutional protections for human rights" and "having a stronger economy". It won it by having a stronger economy, which it used to fuck half of the world up, in a low-touch dance with the Soviets that had both sides toppling democratic governments, funding warlords and dictatorships, and generally doing the opposite of protecting human rights. And at least through a part of that period, if an American citizen disagreed, or urged restraint and civility and democracy, they were branded a commie mutant spy traitor.
My point here isn't to pass judgement on the USA (and to be clear, I doubt things would've been better if the US let Soviets take the lead). Rather, it's that when we're painting the current situation as the next Cold War, then I think people have a kind of cognitive dissonance here. The US won the OG Cold War by becoming a monster, and not pulling any punches. It didn't have long discussions about how to safely develop new technologies - it just went full steam ahead, showered R&D groups with money, while sending more specialists to fuck up another country to keep the enemy distracted. This wasn't an era known for reasoned approach to progress - this was the era known for designing nuclear ramjets with zero shielding, meant to zip around the enemy land, irradiating villages and rivers and cities as they fly by, because fuck the enemy that's why.
I mean, if it is to happen, it'll happen. But let's not pretend you can keep Pax Americana by keeping your hands clean and being a nice democratic state. Or that whether being more or less serious about AI safety is relevant here. If it becomes a Cold War, both sides will just pull all the stops and rush full-steam to develop and weaponize AGI.
--
EDIT - an aside:
If the history of both sides' space programs is any indication, I wouldn't be surprised to see the US building a world-threatening AGI out of GPT-4 and some duct tape.
Take for example US spy satellites - say, the 1960s CORONA program. Less than a decade after Sputnik, no computers, with engineering fields like control theory being still under development - but they successfully pulled off a program that involved putting analog cameras in space on weird orbits, which would make ridiculously high-detail photos of enemy land, and then deorbit the film canisters, so they could be captured mid-air by a jet plane carrying a long stick. If I didn't know better, I'd say we don't have the technology today to make this work. The US did it in the 1960s, because it turns out you can do surprisingly much with surprisingly little, if you give creative people infinite budget, motivate them with basic "it's us vs. them" story, and order them to win you the war.
As impressive as such feats were (and there were plenty more), I don't think we want to have the same level of focus and dedication applied to AI - if that's a possibility, then I fear we've crossed the X-risk threshold already with the "safe" models we have now.
China doesn't innovate, it copies, clones, and steals. Without the West to innovate, they won't take charge of anything.
A price paid, I think, due a conformant, restrictive culture. And after all, even if you do excel, you may soon disappear.
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.
that's a tired old talking point that the US always throws in. The fact is that, as part of their agreements to operate in the Chinese market, Western companies cooperated with Chinese local companies, which included sharing of knowledge.
These terms, the Western companies agreed to to gain a piece of the juicy Chinese market. And the Chinese did it because they had the rare power to stop Western companies from just coming and draining resources, in the colonial manner the West usually operates.
Building on this, China has now surpassed the West on much development. Electric cars, solar technology, cell phone towers are now much more advanced in China.
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They have a massive advantage due to having less regulation, cheaper costs, a large pool of talent even if lower on quality on average, and a strong ecosystem of suppliers.
This may surprise, but Japan is not China. Their culture is not the same. Further their culture was shifted to capitalism at the end of WWII. Citing Japan, is supporting my point about culture.
Mass marketing things isn't innovation. It's copying. DJI seems like more copying. "Innovation" isn't marketing. It's raw research and development, along market paths which are useful. This requires a desire for change, a desire to not conform first, but capitalism first, and this is what China's culture does not have.
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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.
Frankly I think the only reason China copies and clones is because it’s the path of least resistance to profit. They have lax laws on IP protection. Ther is no reason to do R&D when you can just copy/clone and make just as much money with none of the risk.
And that’s probably the only reason. If push comes to shove, they can probably innovate if given proper incentives.
I heard the tale about the Japanese lens industry. For the longest time they made crap lens that were just clones of foreign designs until the Japanese government banned licensing of foreign lens designs forcing their people to design their own lens. Now they are doing pretty well in that industry if I’m right.
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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 amount of outright theft of entire IP from US, Canadian, and European countries by China is well known. There is no confusion here, in more recent times people have been arrested and charged for it, and it's how China is able to compete.
> 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.
And in more recent times, how the USA first viewed Japan and later Korea.
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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.
Yes western companies spend a lot on marketing, cause without it you might confuse their products which are built to deliver positive experiences and value with similarly looking but not so positive counterparts.
Not to dunk on China particularly here, I do/did enjoy a lot of hq chinese products.
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> 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.
Conformism don't capture it. It's more complex than that but maybe authoritarian and democratic. Authoritarian organizations rewards loyalty over merit so people, in order to survive, tend to be obedient, bureaucratic, ruthless and less competent. Democratic organizations rewards merit over loyalty. Paradoxically, despite people having more freedom, things are less chaotic because people have better incentives to be competent, to trust and work out together. Though no society is perfectly one or the other.
> China doesn't innovate, it copies, clones, and steals
Explain DJI and Douyin/TikTok.
TikTok is Chinese owned. Its algo was not Chinese invented.
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Tiktok is just full-screen Vine.
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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.