Now, apparently, someone has used Kling to make a commercial for a Mad Max-themed beer. Zvi would call this mundane utility.
What it demonstrates is that the Chinese can fast copy anything we do, improve around the edges, and release a product. Frontier model...boom, fast copied. The amount of compute required for some of these tasks makes me suspect big leaks from frontier labs. Also, because big labs here are reluctant to release any new models ahead of this years elections, Chinese counterparts get a head start with copying and product diffusion. We could see a situation like the one with TikTok. A Chinese firm creates an intel slurping app that it releases to the West (but doesn’t allow internally) and then the West cannot get rid of it because the Chinese proceed to abuse Western legal processes. A video generating application is the poster child for an app that can be tweaked to cause destabilization while also hiding behind free speech protections.
While I’m not sure about doom from AGI, my p(doom) for West rises every time another one of these fast copies happens. The asymmetry in Sino-Western relations—Chinese firms can enter western markets but not the reverse—ensures this dynamic will continue until western firms and labs lose predominance in everything.
Now, apparently, someone has used Kling to make a commercial for a Mad Max-themed beer. Zvi would call this mundane utility.
What it demonstrates is that the Chinese can fast copy anything we do, improve around the edges, and release a product. Frontier model...boom, fast copied. The amount of compute required for some of these tasks makes me suspect big leaks from frontier labs. Also, because big labs here are reluctant to release any new models ahead of this years elections, Chinese counterparts get a head start with copying and product diffusion. We could see a situation like the one with TikTok. A Chinese firm creates an intel slurping app that it releases to the West (but doesn’t allow internally) and then the West cannot get rid of it because the Chinese proceed to abuse Western legal processes. A video generating application is the poster child for an app that can be tweaked to cause destabilization while also hiding behind free speech protections.
While I’m not sure about doom from AGI, my p(doom) for West rises every time another one of these fast copies happens. The asymmetry in Sino-Western relations—Chinese firms can enter western markets but not the reverse—ensures this dynamic will continue until western firms and labs lose predominance in everything.