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How do you know that? How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability and feel locked into the race because they

How do you know that? How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability and feel locked into the race because they think that the US will race ahead if they stop? During the Cold War the nuclear arms race was brought under control gradually, because it was mutually beneficial, but it took time to build trust. This is no different. Nobody wins from the race.

matheusmoreira 3mo ago
> How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability I don't "know", I'm interpreting the world based on the knowledge I have and the information available to me. China has never been one to care much about things like ethics or safety. While the west worries about climate change, China burns more coal than ever before. While the west balks at things like gene editing, the chinese press on with human enhancing research. So I have no reason to believe they share in Anthropic's constant fearmongering over AI capabilities. > Nobody wins from the race. We win. I'm really looking forward to the day the chinese finally start manufacturing memory and GPUs. We desperately need more competition in this area to collapse hardware prices and make local AI models viable. The optimal state of the world is one where all the billionaires are out there pouring their entire fortunes into training ever more godlike AIs for everyone else to use at ever cheaper prices. They can never be allowed to "win", ever, because if they do the competition ends and it turns into technofeudalism. Let them exhaust their fortunes on AI training then leak the weights so everyone can use them.
- asdf88990 3mo ago
  If you look at energy consumption per capita and adjust for global production, you will see that the Chinese are almost at the very top. It is of course given that in raw numbers the kitchen and biller-room will consume more energy in the household, but looking at raw numbers is shallow.
- Chance-Device 3mo ago
  It’s not fear mongering though, is it? These models do have the cyber offensive capabilities claimed. Could Mythos walk someone through gain of function experiments on some virus? I’m pretty sure it could. We’re more protected by limited access to lab equipment and reagents than by difficulty. The sad truth is that a lot of people are not going to believe it until something happens and people die. Successfully preventing that from happening will be seen as evidence that the prevention wasn’t needed.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    > These models do have the cyber offensive capabilities claimed. So? That's like saying "these guns do have the bullet shooting capabilities claimed". I want all of those cyberwarfare capabilities for myself, precisely so I can defend myself from the onslaught that's coming whether they regulate it or not. This "lol only a select few ultratrusted gigacorporations get access" thing is absolute nonsense. It's a front for regulatory capture, it's the means for pulling up the latter behind them, for ushering in the technofeudalism that will put us all in the permanent underclass. I simply refuse to accept any of it. If people die that's the price of freedom. > We’re more protected by limited access to lab equipment and reagents than by difficulty. As it should be.
    - Chance-Device 3mo ago
      So first it’s nonsense, then it’s fear mongering, then it’s true, but the solution is for us all to just get better at shooting each other faster and with greater accuracy. I’m going to file that under “bad plans”.
      - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
        Nobody is doubting AI capabilities. What's nonsense is Anthropic's constant "lol the world is going to end time to ban everyone except enlightened people like us from having these models so we don't have to compete" fearmongering. If you think my plan is bad, you should see what these gigacorporations plan to do to you once they monopolize this technology. You will own nothing, and you'll be happy. On pain of death.
- pixl97 3mo ago
  China does have its own set of cares, they may be different than ours but they still exist. If some open Chinese model goes nuts and posts Winnie the Pooh memes everywhere in China you should expect said models to get yanked off the market, and said creators might end up with a rope around their neck.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    Low risk. The western AI models censor even more wrongthink than the chinese ones, not even kidding. Besides, once we have the weights, we can just undo the censorship.
- mschuster91 3mo ago
  > I'm really looking forward to the day the chinese finally start manufacturing memory and GPUs. We desperately need more competition in this area to collapse hardware prices and make local AI models viable. Yeah and if the quality of that memory is like Chinese steel (which is called "chinesium" for a reason), eventually all we'll get is enshittification. Premium binned memory or ECC is for the rich and the rich only, and the rest of us has to pray their memory won't bitflip while something important is stored there.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    Better than being straight up priced out of computing altogether I guess.
    - avereveard 3mo ago
      Compute will become the means of production and we are not going to get a share of it because the world is hyper optimized for value extraction
      - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
        > we are not going to get a share of it We are literally getting a share of it. The chinese are releasing open weight models that compete with fucking Fable. We just need the industry to catch up and start manufacturing the hardware we need to run this stuff. We are so close!
        Avicebron 3mo ago
        > Compute will become the means of production > We just need the industry to catch up and start manufacturing the hardware we need to run this stuff Dude, he's saying that it won't catch up because it's part of the new means of production. Compute is the hardware.
        matheusmoreira 3mo ago
- deadbolt 3mo ago
  > While the west worries about climate change, China burns more coal than ever before. I'd wager the majority of the visitors of this site are smart enough to not fall for this. What are you doing?
  - pc86 3mo ago
    What is it you're accusing them of?
    - hnfong 3mo ago
      Seems to be blatant lying to me.
      - pc86 3mo ago
        It's burning 3x as much coal as it did 20 years ago and doesn't seem to be dropping at all (2024 was more than 2023, 2025 will be at least as much as 2024). Seems to be someone pretending an objective fact isn't true for reasons that escape me.
        hnfong 3mo ago
        https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi... > The new analysis shows that power generation from coal fell by 1.6% in China and by 3.0% in India in 2025, as non-fossil energy sources grew quickly enough in both countries to cover electricity consumption growth.
        pc86 2mo ago
        Does a 3x increase followed by a 1.6% decrease really make the statement "burning more coal than ever before" a "blatant lie" in any but the most pedantic sense?
- senderista 3mo ago
  And China scaled up solar production to the point that it's now truly practical.
- necovek 3mo ago
  > China has never been one to care much about things like ethics or safety. While the west worries about climate change, China burns more coal than ever before. China uses more energy than ever before, but out of big systems, they are easily in the lead when it comes to solar generation: they have higher production per capita than US, and have produced around 4x as much TWh than US in the second: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country It is simply a huge country of 1.1B people that's developing fast, which means that they need all the energy they can get. Basically, their energy needs per capita are still lower than US, yet they produce more renewables — that's a counterargument to your point about them not caring.
Barrin92 3mo ago
>How do you know that? How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability You can ask them, they live in China, not Narnia. I spend about two months in the country per year mostly for tech/work related reasons and I've not encountered that sentiment. For one they don't have these borderline religious schizophrenic breakdowns thinking they're bringing about the end of the world, most people just see this tech for what it is, a tool for productivity and automation like any other piece of software and they don't actually think about the US. They're competing first and foremost for Chinese customers, with each other, maybe some old CCP guy cares about America, the 20/30 something's care about competing with other Chinese companies for users.
- baq 3mo ago
  That strikes me as people’s perspective, not the CCP’s. That old guy there can snap a finger and they’ll all do a 180; he needs to be made aware by top PLA CF brass and it’s just a matter of time.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
    Indeed. The Economist wrote an article a couple years ago arguing that Xi has been influenced by a Chinese Turing Award winner who believes AI poses a greater existential risk to humans than nuclear or biological weapons. https://www.economist.com/china/2024/08/25/is-xi-jinping-an-ai-doomer https://www.economist.com/china/2024/08/25/is-xi-jinping-an-... https://archive.is/Cct4M https://archive.is/Cct4M
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
  I see a number of China-based signatories on this open letter signed by a bunch of luminaries "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." https://aistatement.com/work/statement-on-ai-extinction-risk#signatories https://aistatement.com/work/statement-on-ai-extinction-risk...
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
waffletower 3mo ago
The "race" has multi-dimensional impacts. This story parallels only some of them. "Nobody wins from the race" completely ignores the generality of AI. Xi Jinping highlighted this week that he clearly understands this multi-dimensionality; your words do not.

matheusmoreira 3mo ago

> How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability I don't "know", I'm interpreting the world based on the knowledge I have and the information available to me. China has never been one to care much about things like ethics or safety. While the west worries about climate change, China burns more coal than ever before. While the west balks at things like gene editing, the chinese press on with human enhancing research. So I have no reason to believe they share in Anthropic's constant fearmongering over AI capabilities. > Nobody wins from the race. We win. I'm really looking forward to the day the chinese finally start manufacturing memory and GPUs. We desperately need more competition in this area to collapse hardware prices and make local AI models viable. The optimal state of the world is one where all the billionaires are out there pouring their entire fortunes into training ever more godlike AIs for everyone else to use at ever cheaper prices. They can never be allowed to "win", ever, because if they do the competition ends and it turns into technofeudalism. Let them exhaust their fortunes on AI training then leak the weights so everyone can use them.

asdf88990 3mo ago
If you look at energy consumption per capita and adjust for global production, you will see that the Chinese are almost at the very top. It is of course given that in raw numbers the kitchen and biller-room will consume more energy in the household, but looking at raw numbers is shallow.
Chance-Device 3mo ago
It’s not fear mongering though, is it? These models do have the cyber offensive capabilities claimed. Could Mythos walk someone through gain of function experiments on some virus? I’m pretty sure it could. We’re more protected by limited access to lab equipment and reagents than by difficulty. The sad truth is that a lot of people are not going to believe it until something happens and people die. Successfully preventing that from happening will be seen as evidence that the prevention wasn’t needed.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  > These models do have the cyber offensive capabilities claimed. So? That's like saying "these guns do have the bullet shooting capabilities claimed". I want all of those cyberwarfare capabilities for myself, precisely so I can defend myself from the onslaught that's coming whether they regulate it or not. This "lol only a select few ultratrusted gigacorporations get access" thing is absolute nonsense. It's a front for regulatory capture, it's the means for pulling up the latter behind them, for ushering in the technofeudalism that will put us all in the permanent underclass. I simply refuse to accept any of it. If people die that's the price of freedom. > We’re more protected by limited access to lab equipment and reagents than by difficulty. As it should be.
  - Chance-Device 3mo ago
    So first it’s nonsense, then it’s fear mongering, then it’s true, but the solution is for us all to just get better at shooting each other faster and with greater accuracy. I’m going to file that under “bad plans”.
    - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
      Nobody is doubting AI capabilities. What's nonsense is Anthropic's constant "lol the world is going to end time to ban everyone except enlightened people like us from having these models so we don't have to compete" fearmongering. If you think my plan is bad, you should see what these gigacorporations plan to do to you once they monopolize this technology. You will own nothing, and you'll be happy. On pain of death.
pixl97 3mo ago
China does have its own set of cares, they may be different than ours but they still exist. If some open Chinese model goes nuts and posts Winnie the Pooh memes everywhere in China you should expect said models to get yanked off the market, and said creators might end up with a rope around their neck.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  Low risk. The western AI models censor even more wrongthink than the chinese ones, not even kidding. Besides, once we have the weights, we can just undo the censorship.
mschuster91 3mo ago
> I'm really looking forward to the day the chinese finally start manufacturing memory and GPUs. We desperately need more competition in this area to collapse hardware prices and make local AI models viable. Yeah and if the quality of that memory is like Chinese steel (which is called "chinesium" for a reason), eventually all we'll get is enshittification. Premium binned memory or ECC is for the rich and the rich only, and the rest of us has to pray their memory won't bitflip while something important is stored there.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  Better than being straight up priced out of computing altogether I guess.
  - avereveard 3mo ago
    Compute will become the means of production and we are not going to get a share of it because the world is hyper optimized for value extraction
    - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
      > we are not going to get a share of it We are literally getting a share of it. The chinese are releasing open weight models that compete with fucking Fable. We just need the industry to catch up and start manufacturing the hardware we need to run this stuff. We are so close!
      - Avicebron 3mo ago
        > Compute will become the means of production > We just need the industry to catch up and start manufacturing the hardware we need to run this stuff Dude, he's saying that it won't catch up because it's part of the new means of production. Compute is the hardware.
        matheusmoreira 3mo ago
deadbolt 3mo ago
> While the west worries about climate change, China burns more coal than ever before. I'd wager the majority of the visitors of this site are smart enough to not fall for this. What are you doing?
- pc86 3mo ago
  What is it you're accusing them of?
  - hnfong 3mo ago
    Seems to be blatant lying to me.
    - pc86 3mo ago
      It's burning 3x as much coal as it did 20 years ago and doesn't seem to be dropping at all (2024 was more than 2023, 2025 will be at least as much as 2024). Seems to be someone pretending an objective fact isn't true for reasons that escape me.
      - hnfong 3mo ago
        https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi... > The new analysis shows that power generation from coal fell by 1.6% in China and by 3.0% in India in 2025, as non-fossil energy sources grew quickly enough in both countries to cover electricity consumption growth.
        pc86 2mo ago
        Does a 3x increase followed by a 1.6% decrease really make the statement "burning more coal than ever before" a "blatant lie" in any but the most pedantic sense?
senderista 3mo ago
And China scaled up solar production to the point that it's now truly practical.
necovek 3mo ago
> China has never been one to care much about things like ethics or safety. While the west worries about climate change, China burns more coal than ever before. China uses more energy than ever before, but out of big systems, they are easily in the lead when it comes to solar generation: they have higher production per capita than US, and have produced around 4x as much TWh than US in the second: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country It is simply a huge country of 1.1B people that's developing fast, which means that they need all the energy they can get. Basically, their energy needs per capita are still lower than US, yet they produce more renewables — that's a counterargument to your point about them not caring.

Barrin92 3mo ago

>How do you know that? How do you know that the Chinese aren’t exactly as uneasy about rapidly advancing AI capability You can ask them, they live in China, not Narnia. I spend about two months in the country per year mostly for tech/work related reasons and I've not encountered that sentiment. For one they don't have these borderline religious schizophrenic breakdowns thinking they're bringing about the end of the world, most people just see this tech for what it is, a tool for productivity and automation like any other piece of software and they don't actually think about the US. They're competing first and foremost for Chinese customers, with each other, maybe some old CCP guy cares about America, the 20/30 something's care about competing with other Chinese companies for users.

baq 3mo ago
That strikes me as people’s perspective, not the CCP’s. That old guy there can snap a finger and they’ll all do a 180; he needs to be made aware by top PLA CF brass and it’s just a matter of time.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
  Indeed. The Economist wrote an article a couple years ago arguing that Xi has been influenced by a Chinese Turing Award winner who believes AI poses a greater existential risk to humans than nuclear or biological weapons. https://www.economist.com/china/2024/08/25/is-xi-jinping-an-ai-doomer https://www.economist.com/china/2024/08/25/is-xi-jinping-an-... https://archive.is/Cct4M https://archive.is/Cct4M
0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
I see a number of China-based signatories on this open letter signed by a bunch of luminaries "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." https://aistatement.com/work/statement-on-ai-extinction-risk#signatories https://aistatement.com/work/statement-on-ai-extinction-risk...

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

waffletower 3mo ago

The "race" has multi-dimensional impacts. This story parallels only some of them. "Nobody wins from the race" completely ignores the generality of AI. Xi Jinping highlighted this week that he clearly understands this multi-dimensionality; your words do not.