Thanks for writing this post! I want to note a different perspective. Although unlike OP, I have not lived in China since 2015 and am certainly more out of touch with how the country is today.
I do observe some of the same dynamics that OP describes, but I want to point out that China is a really big country with inherently diverse perspectives, even in the current political environment. I don’t see the dynamics described in this post as necessarily the dominant one, and certainly not the only one. I know a lot of young people, both in my social circle and online, that share many of the Western progressive values such as the pursuit of equality, freedom, and altruism. I see many people trying their best to live a meaningful life and do good for the world. (Of course, many people are not thinking about this at all, but that is the same everywhere. It’s not like these concerns are that mainstream in the West.) As a small piece of evidence, 三联生活周刊 did an interview with me about AI safety recently, and it got 100k+ views on WeChat and only positive comments. I’ve also had a few people reach out to me expressing interest in EA/AI safety since the interview came out.
You can’t just hope an entire field into being in China. Chinese EAs have been doing field-building for the past 5+ years, and I see no field.
Implying that they are simply “hoping the field into being” is really unfair to the Chinese EAs doing field building. Even in the US, EA was much less mainstream 5 years ago.
The main reason I could find is the lack of interfaces, people who can navigate both the Western EA sphere and the Chinese technical sphere.
Thanks for writing this post! I want to note a different perspective. Although unlike OP, I have not lived in China since 2015 and am certainly more out of touch with how the country is today.
I do observe some of the same dynamics that OP describes, but I want to point out that China is a really big country with inherently diverse perspectives, even in the current political environment. I don’t see the dynamics described in this post as necessarily the dominant one, and certainly not the only one. I know a lot of young people, both in my social circle and online, that share many of the Western progressive values such as the pursuit of equality, freedom, and altruism. I see many people trying their best to live a meaningful life and do good for the world. (Of course, many people are not thinking about this at all, but that is the same everywhere. It’s not like these concerns are that mainstream in the West.) As a small piece of evidence, 三联生活周刊 did an interview with me about AI safety recently, and it got 100k+ views on WeChat and only positive comments. I’ve also had a few people reach out to me expressing interest in EA/AI safety since the interview came out.
Implying that they are simply “hoping the field into being” is really unfair to the Chinese EAs doing field building. Even in the US, EA was much less mainstream 5 years ago.
I agree this is a major bottleneck.