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Show Notes
"In July 2017, The State Council of China released the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan. This policy outlines China’s strategy to build a domestic AI industry worth nearly US$150 billion in the next few years and to become the leading AI power by 2030. This officially marked the development of the AI sector as a national priority and it was included in President Xi Jinping’s grand vision for China." (FLI's AI Policy - China page) In the context of these developments and an increase in conversations regarding AI and China, Lucas spoke with Jeffrey Ding from the Center for the Governance of AI (GovAI). Jeffrey is the China lead for GovAI where he researches China's AI development and strategy, as well as China's approach to strategic technologies more generally.
Topics discussed in this episode include:
- China's historical relationships with technology development
- China's AI goals and some recently released principles
- Jeffrey Ding's work, Deciphering China's AI Dream
- The central drivers of AI and the resulting Chinese AI strategy
- Chinese AI capabilities
- AGI and superintelligence awareness and thinking in China
- Dispelling AI myths, promoting appropriate memes
- What healthy competition between the US and China might look like
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Key points from Jeffrey:
- "Even if you don't think Chinese AI capabilities are as strong as have been hyped up in the media and elsewhere, important actors will treat China as either a bogeyman figure or as a Sputnik type of wake-up call motivator... other key actors will leverage that as a narrative, as a Sputnik moment of sorts to justify whatever policies they want to do. So we want to understand what's happening and how the conversation around what's happening in China's AI development is unfolding."
- "There certainly are differences, but we don't want to exaggerate them. I think oftentimes analysis of China happens in a vacuum where it's like, 'Oh, this only happens in this mysterious far off land, we call China and it doesn't happen anywhere else.' Shoshana Zuboff has this great book on Surveillance Capitalism that shows how the violation of privacy is pretty extensive on the US side, not only from big companies but also from the national security apparatus. So I think a similar phenomenon is taking place with the social credit system. Jeremy Dom at Yale laws China Center has put it really nicely where he says that, 'We often project our worst fears about technology in AI onto what's happening in China, and we look through a glass darkly and we unleash all of our anxieties on what's happening on to China without reflecting on what's happening here in the US, what's happening here in the UK.'"
- "I think we have to be careful about which historical analogies and memes we choose. So 'arms race' is a very specific call back to cold war context, where there's almost these discrete types of missiles that we are racing Soviet Union on and discrete applications that we can count up; Or even going way back to what some scholars call the first industrial arms race in the military sphere over steam power boats between Britain and France in the late 19th century. And all of those instances you can count up. France has four iron clads, UK has four iron clads; They're racing to see who can build more. I don't think there's anything like that. There's not this discreet thing that we’re racing to see who can have more of. If anything, it's about a competition to see who can absorb AI advances from abroad better, who can diffuse them throughout the economy, who can adopt them in a more sustainable way without sacrificing core values. So that's sort of one meme that I really want to dispel. Related to that, assumptions that often influence a lot of our discourse on this is techno-nationalist assumption, which is this idea that technology is contained within national boundaries and that the nation state is the most important actor –– which is correct and a good one to have and a lot of instances. But there are also good reasons to adopt techno-globalist assumptions as well, especially in the area of how fast technologies diffuse nowadays and also how much underneath this national level competition, firms from different countries are working together and make standards alliances with each other. So there's this undercurrent of techno-globalism, where there are people flows, idea flows, company flows happening while the coverage and the sexy topic is always going to be about national level competition, zero sum competition, relative games rhetoric. So you're trying to find a balance between those two streams."
- "I think currently a lot of people in the US are locked into this mindset that the only two players that exist in the world are the US and China. And if you look at our conversation, right, oftentimes I've displayed that bias as well. We should probably have talked a lot more about China-EU or China-Japan corporations in this space and networks in this space because there's a lot happening there too. So a lot of US policy makers see this as a two-player game between the US and China. And then in that sense, if there's some cancer research project about discovering proteins using AI that may benefit China by 10 points and benefit the US only by eight points, but it's going to save a lot of people from cancer –– if you only care about making everything about maintaining a lead over China, then you might not take that deal. But if you think about it from the broader landscape of it's not just a zero sum competition between US and China, then your kind of evaluation of those different point structures and what you think is rational will change."
Important timestamps:
0:00 intro
2:14 Motivations for the conversation
5:44 Historical background on China and AI
8:13 AI principles in China and the US
16:20 Jeffrey Ding’s work, Deciphering China’s AI Dream
21:55 Does China’s government play a central hand in setting regulations?
23:25 Can Chinese implementation of regulations and standards move faster than in the US? Is China buying shares in companies to have decision making power?
27:05 The components and drivers of AI in China and how they affect Chinese AI strategy
35:30 Chinese government guidance funds for AI development
37:30 Analyzing China’s AI capabilities
44:20 Implications for the future of AI and AI strategy given the current state of the world
49:30 How important are AGI and superintelligence concerns in China?
52:30 Are there explicit technical AI research programs in China for AGI?
53:40 Dispelling AI myths and promoting appropriate memes
56:10 Relative and absolute gains in international politics
59:11 On Peter Thiel’s recent comments on superintelligence, AI, and China
1:04:10 Major updates and changes since Jeffrey wrote Deciphering China’s AI Dream
1:05:50 What does healthy competition between China and the US look like?
1:11:05 Where to follow Jeffrey and read more of his work
Works referenced
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