Why do you think China will ignore it? This is “it’s going too fast, we need some time”, and China also needs some time for all the same reason. For example, China is censoring Google with Great Firewall, so if Google is to be replaced by ChatGPT, they need time to prepare to censor ChatGPT. Great Firewall wasn’t built in a day. See Father of China’s Great Firewall raises concerns about ChatGPT-like services from SCMP.
I am saying it is Chinese government’s interest for Chinese labs to slow down, as well as other labs. I am curious which part you disagree:
a) Chinese government prioritizes social stability over technological development (my assessment: virtually certain) b) Chinese government is concerned technology like ChatGPT is a threat to social stability (my assessment: very likely, and they are in fact correct about this) c) Chinese government will need some time to prepare to neutralize technology like ChatGPT as a threat to social stability, as they neutralized Internet with Great Firewall (my assessment: very likely, they got surprised by pace of development as everyone else did)
Russia is not at all an AI superpower. China also seems to be quite far behind the west in terms of LLMs, so overall, six months would very likely not lead to any of them catching up.
China also seems to be quite far behind the west in terms of LLM
This doesn’t match my impression. For example, THUDM(Tsing Hua University Data Mining lab) is one of the most impressive group in the world in terms of actually doing large LLM training runs.
yeah you’re pretty much just wrong about china, as far as I can tell. It’s hard to be sure, but they’ve been hitting >1T parameters sparse regularly [edit: whoops, I was wrong about that scale level, they’re just reaching 1T of useful model scale now]; I find it hard to tell whether they’re getting good performance out of their scaling, my impression is they scaled slightly too early, but with the different dataset I’m not really sure.
So, it’s not clear that they got the target performance out of this model. However, they did manage to scale it, which is all it takes. They don’t need to buy more GPUs, they’ve got what they need, as long as they can find the algorithms. Which are mostly published.
Well they get to run however much compute they do have 6 more months with no competition. Probably several years since obviously this pause would get renewed again and again until someone honoring it defects. Note that enormous models are a function of total cluster memory and interconnect. Many current clusters have enough memory for theoretically enormous models, 10 trillion weights plus. Having too few GPUs so training takes a year+ is a problem unless your competition is all idle.
Worth keeping in mind that the current focus on generative AI is very much a western phenomenon, and the focus on China has, until recently at least, been on non-generative applications, so progress is going to look different there as it does here.
Of course. If everyone is getting guns, and you were previously fighting with clubs, it is entirely reasonable to argue that you should “pause” your trips to the gun store to lock and load.
But it doesn’t change the fact that if all you have is a club, and a weaker opponent now has a gun and is willing to use it, this is not a good situation to be in.
Best you can do is try to be careful with the safety but you must get a gun or die. A 6 month of “make no progress” is choosing the die option.
Given almost certainty that Russia, China and perhaps some other despotic regimes ignore this does it:
1. help at all?
2. could it actually make the world less safe (If one of these countries gains a significant military AI lead as a result)
Why do you think China will ignore it? This is “it’s going too fast, we need some time”, and China also needs some time for all the same reason. For example, China is censoring Google with Great Firewall, so if Google is to be replaced by ChatGPT, they need time to prepare to censor ChatGPT. Great Firewall wasn’t built in a day. See Father of China’s Great Firewall raises concerns about ChatGPT-like services from SCMP.
Because it is in China’s interest that we slow down, not that it slows down.
I am saying it is Chinese government’s interest for Chinese labs to slow down, as well as other labs. I am curious which part you disagree:
a) Chinese government prioritizes social stability over technological development (my assessment: virtually certain)
b) Chinese government is concerned technology like ChatGPT is a threat to social stability (my assessment: very likely, and they are in fact correct about this)
c) Chinese government will need some time to prepare to neutralize technology like ChatGPT as a threat to social stability, as they neutralized Internet with Great Firewall (my assessment: very likely, they got surprised by pace of development as everyone else did)
Russia is not at all an AI superpower. China also seems to be quite far behind the west in terms of LLMs, so overall, six months would very likely not lead to any of them catching up.
This doesn’t match my impression. For example, THUDM(Tsing Hua University Data Mining lab) is one of the most impressive group in the world in terms of actually doing large LLM training runs.
yeah you’re pretty much just wrong about china, as far as I can tell. It’s hard to be sure,
but they’ve been hitting >1T parameters sparse regularly[edit: whoops, I was wrong about that scale level, they’re just reaching 1T of useful model scale now]; I find it hard to tell whether they’re getting good performance out of their scaling, my impression is they scaled slightly too early, but with the different dataset I’m not really sure.1 Haven’t seen an impressive AI product come out of China (Please point me to some if you disagree)
2 They can’t import A100/ H100 anymore after the US chip restrictions
So, it’s not clear that they got the target performance out of this model. However, they did manage to scale it, which is all it takes. They don’t need to buy more GPUs, they’ve got what they need, as long as they can find the algorithms. Which are mostly published.
https://twitter.com/arankomatsuzaki/status/1637983258880122881 - https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10845
Thanks! Haven’t found good comments on that paper (and lack the technical insights to evaluate it myself)
Are you implying that China has access to compute required for a) GPT-4 type models or b) AGI?
Well they get to run however much compute they do have 6 more months with no competition. Probably several years since obviously this pause would get renewed again and again until someone honoring it defects. Note that enormous models are a function of total cluster memory and interconnect. Many current clusters have enough memory for theoretically enormous models, 10 trillion weights plus. Having too few GPUs so training takes a year+ is a problem unless your competition is all idle.
a.
Worth keeping in mind that the current focus on generative AI is very much a western phenomenon, and the focus on China has, until recently at least, been on non-generative applications, so progress is going to look different there as it does here.
Of course. If everyone is getting guns, and you were previously fighting with clubs, it is entirely reasonable to argue that you should “pause” your trips to the gun store to lock and load.
But it doesn’t change the fact that if all you have is a club, and a weaker opponent now has a gun and is willing to use it, this is not a good situation to be in.
Best you can do is try to be careful with the safety but you must get a gun or die. A 6 month of “make no progress” is choosing the die option.