Fear Drives the AI 'Cold War' Between America and China (msn.com)
- Reference: 0180089403
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/15/2123207/fear-drives-the-ai-cold-war-between-america-and-china
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-ai-cold-war-that-will-redefine-everything/ar-AA1Qb9jY
"Both countries are driven as much by fear as by hope of progress. "
> In Washington and Silicon Valley, warnings abound that China's "authoritarian AI," left unchecked, will erode American tech supremacy. Beijing is gripped by the conviction that a failure to [2]keep pace in AI will make it easier for the U.S. to cut short China's resurgence as a global power. Both countries believe market share for their companies across the world is up for grabs — and with it, the potential to influence large swaths of the global population.
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> The U.S. still has a clear lead, producing the most powerful [3]AI models . China can't match it in [4]advanced chips and has no answer for the financial firepower of private American investors, who funded AI startups to the tune of $104 billion in the first half of 2025, and are [5]gearing up for more . But it has a massive population of capable engineers, lower costs and a state-led development model that often moves faster than the U.S., all of which Beijing is working to harness to tip the contest in its direction. A new "whole of society" campaign looks to accelerate the construction of computing clusters in areas like Inner Mongolia, where vast solar and wind farms provide plentiful cheap energy, and connect hundreds of data centers to create a shared compute pool — some describe it as a "national cloud" — by 2028. China is also funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into its power grid to support AI training and adoption...
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> "Our lead is probably in the 'months but not years' realm," said Chris McGuire, who helped design U.S. export controls on AI chips while serving on the National Security Council under the Biden administration. Chinese AI models currently rank at or near the top in every task from coding to video generation, with the exception of search, according to Chatbot Arena, a popular crowdsourced ranking platform. China's manufacturing sector, meanwhile, is rocketing past the U.S. in [6]bringing AI into the physical world through robotaxis, autonomous drones and [7]humanoid robots . Given China's progress, McGuire said, the U.S. is "very lucky" to have its advantage in chips...
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> If AI surpasses human intelligence and acquires the ability to improve itself, it could confer unshakable scientific, economic and military superiority on the country that controls it. Short of that, AI's ability to automate tedious tasks and process vast amounts of data quickly promises to supercharge everything from cancer diagnoses to missile defense. With so much at stake, hacking and cyber espionage are likely to get worse, as AI gives hackers more powerful tools, while increasing incentives for state-backed groups to try to steal AI-related intellectual property. As distrust grows, Washington and Beijing will also find it hard, if not impossible, to cooperate in areas like preventing extremist groups from using AI in destructive ways, such as building bioweapons. "The costs of the AI Cold War are already high and will go much higher," said Paul Triolo, a former U.S. government analyst and current technology policy lead at business consulting firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. "A U.S.-China AI arms race becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with neither side able to trust that the other would observe any restrictions on advanced AI capability development...."
The article includes an interesting observation from Helen Toner, director of strategy for Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former OpenAI board member. Toner points out "We don't actually know" if boosting computing power with better chips will continue producing more-powerful AI models.
So "If performance plateaus," the Journal writes, "despite all the spending by OpenAI and others — a growing concern in Silicon Valley — China has a chance to compete."
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-ai-cold-war-that-will-redefine-everything/ar-AA1Qb9jY
[2] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-race-tech-workers-schedule-1ea9a116
[3] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/is-openai-becoming-too-big-to-fail-400bac2c
[4] https://www.wsj.com/world/china/trump-nvidia-china-chip-exports-51e00415
[5] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/big-tech-is-spending-more-than-ever-on-ai-and-its-still-not-enough-f2398cfe
[6] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-has-a-different-vision-for-ai-it-might-be-smarter-581f1e44
[7] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/humanoid-robots-are-lousy-co-workers-china-wants-to-be-first-to-change-that-0fe8528c
Really? (Score:3)
It's certainly possible that some people do, sincerely, 'fear' that the onrushing machine god will speak chinese and that it would be just the worst if all humans were rendered obsolete by the wrong side's robot when that's supposed to be our job; but, especially with how tepid the results are for the money poured in, it seems much more the case that we are seeing a lot of nakedly cynical playing of the 'give us what we want, lest the chinese win' by people who are otherwise on deeply shaky ground in terms of things like massive copyright infringement, voracious data mining, and an endless hunger for capital without any signs of returns.
It's like a vastly hypertrophied case of the 'race to 5G' stuff; where, if we didn't give Verizon whatever they asked for, China would have a faster rollout of 5G and we would lose the 4th industrial revolution or something? It was never entirely clearly what losing the race was going to involve.
The existential tone of the claims seem especially curious given how meagre the leads people are pouring billions into seem to be; and how readily 'AI' models can be poked at via distillation attacks or good, old-fashioned, electronic intrusion. If The Singularity kicks off that presumably changes everything beyond the powers of meaningful prediction(though that holds for whoever develops it as well as everyone else; given the odds that it will slip the leash); but as long as you are in the realm of incrementally more or less flakey chatbots it seems a bit weird to even talk like there is some sort of victory condition that will trigger and cause one side to lose.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is existential in a financial sense. The spend is completely insane, for what amounts to a search engine. The fact the purveyors can so easily rake in the money on claims of great things says that fear is indeed what's driving the actions.
Re: (Score:2)
Fear or corruption?
This isn't some Manhattan style project, with great secrecy over methods, attracting the best and brightest.
It is a MASSIVE wealth transfer though, disregarding law and scrutiny, with some of the most dubious leading the charge.
I would rather that it was fear driving this as there would be more evaluation of how this will play out globally instead of an endless black hole to dump the nation's wealth.
The AI Cold War is our Salvation, not fearsome (Score:3)
We do not want a singular AI that is unified and acts as one.
The AI War is what we want to prevent this.
Ideally we want hundreds of them, each with different purposes, from different builders - companies and countries.
If one of them wants to say convert all metal into paperclips, another will say slow your roll, I need the aluminum to make as many sapphires as possible. A third will say I need the copper for my pipes!
Or maybe it will be more sophisticated disagreements, but it does not matter.
End result, the AI's differing objectives will prevent them from taking control of Earth. The plucky humans will say they learned their lesson, but let's be honest - there is going to be a sequel to this movie.
We never learn (Score:2)
After world war II Russia was a burnt-out husk and it never fully recovered. Putting a criminal in charge of the country was the final straw. Russia was never a threat and there was zero reason to have a cold war with them except to keep the military industrial complex going and to line the pockets of well connected defense contractors at the expense of the public at Large.
At this point with Russia not even able to subdue a nation of 20 million it's stupidly obvious they are no threat so we can't use th
\o/ (Score:1)
Maybe the AI powered think tanks can come up with something more original the yet another freaking cold war.
Can't you figure out how to cooperate? Too challenging?
Wrong question (Score:2)
"If performance plateaus," the Journal writes, "despite all the spending by OpenAI and others — a growing concern in Silicon Valley — China has a chance to compete."
If performance plateaus so will AI's usefulness and there will not be so much to compete for.
Re: (Score:3)
> If performance plateaus so will AI's usefulness /quote. Not necessarily. Other analysts have suggested that China's approach to AI is far more pragmatic and immediate. They are focused on using the technology. Rather than winning the race to the most powerful tool they are racing to enhance its current practical uses. The idea that computing power will determine the outcome is unproven.