China has put an extraordinary amount of resources into developing their own chip fabrication capacities, and so far has failed pretty pathetically and now IMO it is probably too late: China will more likely than not never acquire the capability to design and fab GPUs and TPUs as efficient as those currently being designed by Nvidia and Google respectively and currently being fabbed by TSMC and whoever is fabbing Google’s TPUs.
The ability to design and fab such chips is currently a “world ability”: the fabbing relies on litho machines made by in the Netherlands, which in turn depends heavily on lenses made by Zeiss in Germany and other advanced products from Japan, the US and probably other countries. The fabbing relies on very expensive other products that like the litho machines are made by just a handful of companies, almost all of which are vulnerable to pressure from the US government (especially if other governments generally aligned with the US tend to agree with the USGov’s reasons). Designing the chips (the layouts) requires software available from only a handful of suppliers again probably all vulnerable to pressure from the USGov. It is currently a world ability and more likely than not will remain a world ability and not an ability of any one bloc (e.g., the Chinese government and its friends) unless we consider the US and Europe and entities vulnerable to pressure from those 2 as one bloc.
Note the “more likely than not” above! I’m not saying that I can reliably predict the relative strength of China in the future! It’s just that I am not moved by the numerous pronouncements that the rise of China is inevitable. To take just one example, Peter Zeihan says that if China were subjected to the same sanctions imposed on Russia after Feb 24 of this year, there would be rolling blackouts within a few months, trucks running out of gas and abandoned on its highways and in about a year half of the population will have died of starvation: in contrast to Russia, which produces more fossil fuels, fertilizer and basic foodstuffs like wheat than it needs, China is heavily dependent on imports for those things.
Zeihan goes on to say that although China has always been aware of the possibility that US and Europe governments would impose sanctions on it, it was utterly shocked to learn of the possibility that major corporations would in the future refuse to do business with China without even being forced to by a government. He says he has heard from sources inside China that such an eventuality was never considered by Chinese planners and now they feel they must re-evaluate their entire geopolitical strategy.
There is a danger when spending a lot of time reading comments on the internet—or when reading the output of our newspapers and similar institutions—to allow the sheer repetition of a claim thousands of times from thousands of individual authors to give the claim more credence than it deserves. The vast majority of the claims I have seen as to the probable eclipsing of the US by China either makes no argument in support of the claim or the included argument is very unimpressive. Yes, there are experts I respect, like John Mearsheimer, who make the claim (though I haven’t heard him make an argument for it: he just claims it, but he is Mearsheimer, so I listen), but there are other geopolitical experts I respect, like George Friedman, who believe that China will be lucky if 15 years from now it hasn’t split into 2 or 3 countries—and that the Chinese government knows that and preventing it is their main focus. Friedman also says that the Chinese navy is still not capable enough to protect the ships that bring it oil from the Persian Gulf from pirates and privateers if the US navy stepped down from its role of protecting the world’s shipping from pirates. “Privateers”: if there ever is a really serious oil shortage, the Indian government might follow a centuries-old tradition of defining the takeover of oil tankers bound to China as “piracy”, but rather “privateering”, and consequently not illegal and in fact maybe it is rewarded, and according to Friedman, there is nothing the Chinese navy can do about that: they simply lack the ability to project force that far from port. Friedman also says that the Japanese navy would more likely than not prevail over the Chinese navy if they fought today. He says that that is partly because Japan’s admirals were trained by admirals who were trained by admirals who actually fought a major war with what remains the dominant naval technology relevant to a major war, namely, the aircraft carrier—and according to him, that that counts for a lot.
The reason I’m commenting is that this has relevance to managing the risk of AI: in particular, in a situation as dire as the current global situation around AI research, we should be paying attention to those futures in which our ability to control and manage the global situation around AI has drastically increased even if right now those futures seem unlikely. In particular, there is a chance that the leaders of China will in the future do something at least as risky and ill-fated as Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, and the response to that by the West will make it so that we don’t have to worry about AI researchers in China because China will be too preoccupied with feeding itself and just keeping the country supplied with electricity and whatever China uses to heat its homes. Or maybe Southern China or Shanghai will make a serious attempt to secede from Beijing’s rule, in response to which Beijing will lock the country down kinda like they did for Covid, with the same effects on the Chinese economy that the Covid lock-downs had, but these lock-downs will go on for years, and again then we don’t have to worry about the danger posed by Chinese AI researchers.
So if young people concerned about AI risk move to Washington and London and Paris and start a career in the national-security bureaucracy there with the goal of eventually convincing their government to impose a regime of “compute governance” similar to the existing regime of nuclear non-proliferation, then maybe their efforts will be in vain because the center of mass of irresponsible AI research (currently somewhere in the Atlantic between the US and Britain) will just move to China. But maybe their efforts won’t be in vain because China will stop being able to host the intensity of scientific research and technological development necessary to contribute significantly to the AI danger. And maybe Russia will continue its decline with the result that regardless of the wishes and the ambitions of its government, it becomes unable to contribute significantly to the AI danger (which of course its government does not perceive as particularly dangerous).
The vast majority of the claims I have seen as to the probable eclipsing of the US by China either makes no argument in support of the claim or the included argument is very unimpressive.
The main argument for increased strength is that China manages to keep a high growth rate. Last year they managed to get back to 8 percent. Increased money also means increased foreign investments and thus more ways to project power.
And maybe Russia will continue its decline with the result that regardless of the wishes and the ambitions of its government, it becomes unable to contribute significantly to the AI danger (which of course its government does not perceive as particularly dangerous).
The whole rationality community in Sanct Petersburg left Russia. Between braindrain, embargos to import chips, and corrupt corporate governance I don’t expect Russia to be able to do much in the field of AI.
I would expect more risk from a country like Argentina that currently leads in zero-day exploit generation than from Russia.
During the Cold War, no one believed the economic figures published by the Soviet Union. I am puzzled as to why the figures published by the Chinese Communist party are often taken at face value now. Yes, I concede that the average Chinese resident really is wealthier than the average resident of India. But I don’t necessarily believe the GDP figures that say he or she is wealthier than the average Mexican, just to pick a country for the sake of illustration that according to the World Bank has a GDP per capita a little lower than China’s. And I’m much less certain than “the internet” that the average Chinese person will ever be wealthier than the average Mexican since Mexico is much less likely to descend into political chaos than China is and since Mexico has significant petroleum reserves and access to cheap Texan natural gas.
The main argument for the potential of China IMO is the staggering number of people with IQs over 130, many of whom have degrees in science or engineering. But whereas scientific and engineering knowledge transfer fairly easily to any sufficiently bright population anywhere in the world, the ability to organize a society such that the scientists and engineers can contribute to societal goals is not so easy, and Russia is a good example of this because although Russia certainly can produce great scientists (just restricting ourselves to the 20th Century, we find Solomonoff, Kolmogorov and Grigori Perelman) the society is lacking in many ways (e.g., the quality of life of the average person is low; e.g., even if you’re wealthy, the chances of your being treated unjustly by the government or the justice system is much higher than it is in many countries; e.g., Russia does not contribute to the flourishing of the world anywhere near as much as the West does).
Again, I am not making a prediction about how powerful China will be 10 or 20 years from now; I’m merely saying that I’m much less certain that it will continue to grow in capability than the average internet commentator is.
Absolute GDP values aren’t very trustworthy just like the absolute COVID numbers that China publishes are not trustworthy. On the other hand, it’s hard to fake exponential growth over longer timeframes.
But whereas scientific and engineering knowledge transfer fairly easily to any sufficiently bright population anywhere in the world, the ability to organize a society such that the scientists and engineers can contribute to societal goals is not so easy, and Russia is a good example
Russia mainly exports resources and not technology. They indeed didn’t manage to organize their society in a way that allows engineers to contribute effectively.
China is different. They manage to export a lot of technology. They are the most efficient producer of solar cells.
If we look at their domestic market, they build better trains than the West. They have better digital payment.
Baidu just won a license to start offering fully autonomous robotaxis in some test cities. I think it’s plausible that China is better than the West in transferring engineering knowledge to products because their government is more willing to get regulatory barriers out of the way than Western governments are.
China also has a good startup culture with lots of Unicorns.
China has put an extraordinary amount of resources into developing their own chip fabrication capacities, and so far has failed pretty pathetically and now IMO it is probably too late: China will more likely than not never acquire the capability to design and fab GPUs and TPUs as efficient as those currently being designed by Nvidia and Google respectively and currently being fabbed by TSMC and whoever is fabbing Google’s TPUs.
The ability to design and fab such chips is currently a “world ability”: the fabbing relies on litho machines made by in the Netherlands, which in turn depends heavily on lenses made by Zeiss in Germany and other advanced products from Japan, the US and probably other countries. The fabbing relies on very expensive other products that like the litho machines are made by just a handful of companies, almost all of which are vulnerable to pressure from the US government (especially if other governments generally aligned with the US tend to agree with the USGov’s reasons). Designing the chips (the layouts) requires software available from only a handful of suppliers again probably all vulnerable to pressure from the USGov. It is currently a world ability and more likely than not will remain a world ability and not an ability of any one bloc (e.g., the Chinese government and its friends) unless we consider the US and Europe and entities vulnerable to pressure from those 2 as one bloc.
Note the “more likely than not” above! I’m not saying that I can reliably predict the relative strength of China in the future! It’s just that I am not moved by the numerous pronouncements that the rise of China is inevitable. To take just one example, Peter Zeihan says that if China were subjected to the same sanctions imposed on Russia after Feb 24 of this year, there would be rolling blackouts within a few months, trucks running out of gas and abandoned on its highways and in about a year half of the population will have died of starvation: in contrast to Russia, which produces more fossil fuels, fertilizer and basic foodstuffs like wheat than it needs, China is heavily dependent on imports for those things.
Zeihan goes on to say that although China has always been aware of the possibility that US and Europe governments would impose sanctions on it, it was utterly shocked to learn of the possibility that major corporations would in the future refuse to do business with China without even being forced to by a government. He says he has heard from sources inside China that such an eventuality was never considered by Chinese planners and now they feel they must re-evaluate their entire geopolitical strategy.
There is a danger when spending a lot of time reading comments on the internet—or when reading the output of our newspapers and similar institutions—to allow the sheer repetition of a claim thousands of times from thousands of individual authors to give the claim more credence than it deserves. The vast majority of the claims I have seen as to the probable eclipsing of the US by China either makes no argument in support of the claim or the included argument is very unimpressive. Yes, there are experts I respect, like John Mearsheimer, who make the claim (though I haven’t heard him make an argument for it: he just claims it, but he is Mearsheimer, so I listen), but there are other geopolitical experts I respect, like George Friedman, who believe that China will be lucky if 15 years from now it hasn’t split into 2 or 3 countries—and that the Chinese government knows that and preventing it is their main focus. Friedman also says that the Chinese navy is still not capable enough to protect the ships that bring it oil from the Persian Gulf from pirates and privateers if the US navy stepped down from its role of protecting the world’s shipping from pirates. “Privateers”: if there ever is a really serious oil shortage, the Indian government might follow a centuries-old tradition of defining the takeover of oil tankers bound to China as “piracy”, but rather “privateering”, and consequently not illegal and in fact maybe it is rewarded, and according to Friedman, there is nothing the Chinese navy can do about that: they simply lack the ability to project force that far from port. Friedman also says that the Japanese navy would more likely than not prevail over the Chinese navy if they fought today. He says that that is partly because Japan’s admirals were trained by admirals who were trained by admirals who actually fought a major war with what remains the dominant naval technology relevant to a major war, namely, the aircraft carrier—and according to him, that that counts for a lot.
The reason I’m commenting is that this has relevance to managing the risk of AI: in particular, in a situation as dire as the current global situation around AI research, we should be paying attention to those futures in which our ability to control and manage the global situation around AI has drastically increased even if right now those futures seem unlikely. In particular, there is a chance that the leaders of China will in the future do something at least as risky and ill-fated as Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, and the response to that by the West will make it so that we don’t have to worry about AI researchers in China because China will be too preoccupied with feeding itself and just keeping the country supplied with electricity and whatever China uses to heat its homes. Or maybe Southern China or Shanghai will make a serious attempt to secede from Beijing’s rule, in response to which Beijing will lock the country down kinda like they did for Covid, with the same effects on the Chinese economy that the Covid lock-downs had, but these lock-downs will go on for years, and again then we don’t have to worry about the danger posed by Chinese AI researchers.
So if young people concerned about AI risk move to Washington and London and Paris and start a career in the national-security bureaucracy there with the goal of eventually convincing their government to impose a regime of “compute governance” similar to the existing regime of nuclear non-proliferation, then maybe their efforts will be in vain because the center of mass of irresponsible AI research (currently somewhere in the Atlantic between the US and Britain) will just move to China. But maybe their efforts won’t be in vain because China will stop being able to host the intensity of scientific research and technological development necessary to contribute significantly to the AI danger. And maybe Russia will continue its decline with the result that regardless of the wishes and the ambitions of its government, it becomes unable to contribute significantly to the AI danger (which of course its government does not perceive as particularly dangerous).
The main argument for increased strength is that China manages to keep a high growth rate. Last year they managed to get back to 8 percent. Increased money also means increased foreign investments and thus more ways to project power.
The whole rationality community in Sanct Petersburg left Russia. Between braindrain, embargos to import chips, and corrupt corporate governance I don’t expect Russia to be able to do much in the field of AI.
I would expect more risk from a country like Argentina that currently leads in zero-day exploit generation than from Russia.
During the Cold War, no one believed the economic figures published by the Soviet Union. I am puzzled as to why the figures published by the Chinese Communist party are often taken at face value now. Yes, I concede that the average Chinese resident really is wealthier than the average resident of India. But I don’t necessarily believe the GDP figures that say he or she is wealthier than the average Mexican, just to pick a country for the sake of illustration that according to the World Bank has a GDP per capita a little lower than China’s. And I’m much less certain than “the internet” that the average Chinese person will ever be wealthier than the average Mexican since Mexico is much less likely to descend into political chaos than China is and since Mexico has significant petroleum reserves and access to cheap Texan natural gas.
The main argument for the potential of China IMO is the staggering number of people with IQs over 130, many of whom have degrees in science or engineering. But whereas scientific and engineering knowledge transfer fairly easily to any sufficiently bright population anywhere in the world, the ability to organize a society such that the scientists and engineers can contribute to societal goals is not so easy, and Russia is a good example of this because although Russia certainly can produce great scientists (just restricting ourselves to the 20th Century, we find Solomonoff, Kolmogorov and Grigori Perelman) the society is lacking in many ways (e.g., the quality of life of the average person is low; e.g., even if you’re wealthy, the chances of your being treated unjustly by the government or the justice system is much higher than it is in many countries; e.g., Russia does not contribute to the flourishing of the world anywhere near as much as the West does).
Again, I am not making a prediction about how powerful China will be 10 or 20 years from now; I’m merely saying that I’m much less certain that it will continue to grow in capability than the average internet commentator is.
You might be interested in this study: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/09/29/a-study-of-lights-at-night-suggests-dictators-lie-about-economic-growth (based on https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-720458.html).
Absolute GDP values aren’t very trustworthy just like the absolute COVID numbers that China publishes are not trustworthy. On the other hand, it’s hard to fake exponential growth over longer timeframes.
Russia mainly exports resources and not technology. They indeed didn’t manage to organize their society in a way that allows engineers to contribute effectively.
China is different. They manage to export a lot of technology. They are the most efficient producer of solar cells.
If we look at their domestic market, they build better trains than the West. They have better digital payment.
Baidu just won a license to start offering fully autonomous robotaxis in some test cities. I think it’s plausible that China is better than the West in transferring engineering knowledge to products because their government is more willing to get regulatory barriers out of the way than Western governments are.
China also has a good startup culture with lots of Unicorns.