Comment by RazorBucksICO
1 day ago
So if you were to imagine the second largest economy in the world, governed by a monolithic politburo, with a long history of barely concealed programs of corporate and academic espionage, what do you think their approach would be to American technology worth trillions? Now take it a step further, this hypothetical government sees itself as the civilization representation of an ethnic group, and regularly attempts to monitor and police that group regardless of where they are in the world. Also, that ethnic group, separated from the motherland by one generation or less, makes up the majority of research labor in American labs.
Don’t you think there’s maybe a teeny, tiny chance that their approach is a little more sophisticated than just buying retail subscriptions? Maybe the trade secrets are being exfiltrated directly from the American labs?
The ego of America to think it is the only place where innovation can happen is pretty funny. Maybe America’s hubris and hostility towards talented foreigners is driving talent towards other countries? China doesn’t need to embed bad actors and spies in Anthropic and OpenAI, the U.S. is sabotaging itself just fine.
America was at the forefront of technology because it attracted the best talent from all over the world. The talent is now staying at home, and America is discovering that America is nothing without immigration. OpenAI and Anthropic are filled with Chinese employees because some of the most talented engineers are Chinese, not because they are spies. Unfortunately, that’s the last generation of Chinese talent that America will get, the latest generation are staying in China.
Americans should be ashamed of what they have fumbled, not conspiratorial about what China is doing.
If you think the number of US AI lab employees feeding information back to the homeland is zero, you’re terribly naive. There is the kind of money on the table people will absolutely lie, steal, and kill for.
There is also not strong evidence that immigration is the source of progress. We issued many more patents in the 19th century than now which was well before Hart-Cellar. The statement that immigration is even declining is not also supported by evidence.