The 'But China!' Dilemma Driving the A.I. Race | The Ezra Klein Show

Comments · 690

• IN

  @intothemoat · 1 day ago

  AI is already much more regulated in China than it is in the US. The Chinese leadership are engineer graduates who understand how technology works. My sense is they will be able to regulate AI better than the US.

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• AL

  @allred6505 · 1 day ago

  If we don’t destroy the world before China does- we’ll be humiliated!

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• SI

  @siyangling5808 · 1 day ago

  China will have the compute if it choose to. The bigger problem is what that compute is used for. That's why open source is so important: the labs shouldn't be the only ones trying to figure out what's the use of their models. It's better for the entire community to actively discover new uses.

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• HA

  @hardkandie23 · 1 day ago

  The 'But China' argument:  "If China wins the AI arms race,  AI will be controlled by bad actors!"   Guess what?  American AI is ALREADY being controlled by bad actors.

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• NE

  @nealcarlson30 · 1 day ago

  There is NO WAY this admin is going to unilaterally pause development to prevent RSI. It's hard to see a positive outcome here.

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• BE

  @bencarter3920 · 1 day ago (edited)

  I keep thinking about how when the allies won the war, American troops were deployed to Germany expecting to find evidence of the Nazis nuclear weapon program and what they found was… basically nothing. German scientists never got past the research phase and by 1942 the Nazis were so confident of winning the war that they gave up on practical development, meaning there was no real attempt to build a nuclear weapon. You constantly hear the argument that ‘we needed to build the bomb so that they didn’t do it first’ but you never hear how that assumption turned out to be completely wrong.

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• AN

  @andrewcrone1511 · 1 day ago

  Finally, a concise conversation on comparing China and US AI environments for a while.  This is the level of knowledge we need as citizens to intelligently and effectively engage in policy-making and push for specific policy outcomes without the vague fog of ignorance. Up to now we have had to rely on the Frontier companies and major investors pushing over-broad talking points that mainly serve  their financial interests, not our community and democratic values.  Now the people want specifics to explain why the companies and our leaders can't be more responsive to our concerns.  This episode helps us more clearly identify their BS.  We don't want AI everywhere, the massive shifting of our economy landscape, environment and way of life based on the financial goals of a few.  We want a democratic say in how it unfolds.  We want to educate our politicians on how exactly to prioritize our concerns.  Detailed facts, not generic concepts of "Race against China" so we have no choice but to risk humanity.

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• SE

  @seanivore · 1 day ago (edited)

  China releases them open weight <b>because</b> US companies release them closed weight. It lowers the risk of US companies controlling everything in the future compared to if they released their models as closed like the US.

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• PI

  @PilarNarvaezalvarez · 15 hours ago

  Normal China doesn’t trust US. Nobody does. US AI bosses are acting like fascists, they just want a dystopian world. We are better with Chinese AI.

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• SE

  @seanivore · 1 day ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2O0sdpuFRQ&amp;t=808">13:28</a> feels like one should pause and acknowledge that, it is literally, publicly, true. Their perspective just described here is not something politicians and legislators shy away from making plainly clear. Not making a moral ethical argument at all. Just seems worth acknowledging considering the topic was, how does China view us. Well, they have a very accurate view, apparently.

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• SE

  @seanivore · 1 day ago

  &quot;Harder to control&quot; is better to China than &quot;not our control&quot; because it means &quot;not in US control&quot;

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• BL

  @BlinkertonCity0 · 1 day ago

  The amount of paranoia in the US about China tells me that China isn&apos;t the country that they themselves portray in media.

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