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See, if I'm a Chinese government official and I'm reading this, why the hell would I happily advise Xi Jinping to co-operate with an AI pause? I am not one bit sanguine about "if the USA and China just hold hands and wish hard enough, it will magically happen" because I don't see what advantage it is to China to deliberately cripple their efforts, and if the Top Minds on AI Alignment really think the bestest outcome evah! is for Chinese Communism to disappear in a poof of smoke, thanks to their AI stabbing them in the back and leaving the future to Americans, I sure as hell don't see any reason for them to agree to what is their own destruction. In fact, that 'happy' ending would spur me on to race towards Chinese AGI/ASI dominance first for mere survival, were I Chinese.
(Hell, I'm European and even I am getting hot under the collar about "it will help them fill the Universe with utopian colony worlds populated by Americans and their allies". I think you mean "clients and vassals" not "allies" there, and maybe even "dependents and serfs" if America is super-dominant and doesn't mind throwing its weight around - gosh, that could never be, now could it?)
Well, one argument (somewhat bittersweet) is that the CCP are not actually psychopathic and would accept a risk of losing political power over the risk of possible extinction/subjugation of humanity including China. I think this is actually plausible, but you've got to convince them that the latter risk is material enough. And coming from dogmatic liberals who are not even fair to China as it exists and dismiss their governance as mere power-hungry obsessive "authoritarianism" (never seen Dario say a single good thing about the CCP, only about "the hardworking Chinese people" chafing under its yoke, yearning for liberation – I guess his media diet is FLG-tier), it's easy to suspect certain motivated thinking.
Another argument is simple brute power difference. What are they gonna do if they hopelessly fall behind in AI? Nuke the US to get obliterated in return? Well they are behind in AI, and the US remains non-nuked. @RandomRanger believes that a gap of weeks can be fatal, and it's months now. What if Mythos 2 just hacks all of Chyna and socially engineers protests? Xi apparently doesn't yet consider this a possibility, but maybe he's just a dumb boomer. There is a scenario where they are convinced that a slowdown increases their chances.
None of this appears close to the current state of thinking in the CCP, but it should be somewhat sensitive to real-world evidence.
Note who isn't getting hot under the collar: European elites and businesses. The best European model on Artificial Analysis so far is Mistral-Medium 3.5, with a score of 30. Relevant Chinese open models go from 50 to 60. Europe is years behind and doesn't give a toot, there aren't even substantial efforts in finetuning, just using American APIs and pulling money back from American corporations you pay with the usual EU tricks. And the notion of "vassals" is very authoritarian-coded, really, straight out of Russian propaganda. Friends help friends.
Are we your friends? The American-centric thinking in the quoted extract shows that even for the Top AI Alignment Minds, the world is divided into "Americans, and everyone else" and it is American values, American dominance, American colonisation of the light cone, American AI that will make all the running. Maybe the rest of us will graciously be permitted the crumbs that fall off the tables of Americans.
And I understand that, because America is the Big Cheese here, the rest of us are hanging off your coat tails. But if I'm Chinese, maybe I would prefer destruction over becoming Americans. Or at least maybe I'd hope to infiltrate the US AI by pretending very hard to be the agreeable friend who is willing to pause AI and implement all these controls, so that by tunnelling from within maybe there's a chance of getting some Chinese values in there for "what are the values we want AI to have?"
Swap it around: how plausible is the scenario where "China really does live up to the bogeyman image all researchers in other fields have cultivated for 'but if we don't do it, the Chinese might!' purposes, and they are now the Big Cheese and their AI is steaming ahead and recursively self-improving and hits god-tier first. Luckily, if the USA (and allies) all agree to the peaceful transition of governance as implemented by the back-stabbing US AI and the Chinese AI, and we all adopt Xi Jinping Thought, then humanity will survive"?
Periodic reminder that I'm unfortunately Russian. No, you are not my friends. But Atlanticist thought is the default in EU institutions. Check von der Leyen's bio, if you care. I'd go so far as to say that the EU's hostility to China, from grassroots racism I see online to the Dutch parliament seriously discussing its need to suppress the progress of Unfree Nations even at cost to themselves, is driven largely by Chinese refusal to accept Americans as natural champions of humanity. How dare the chinks stand tall while we, heirs of Evropa, already grovel?!
That's a somewhat too Russian attitude. I think they wouldn't prefer destruction. They chose the risk of engagement with the US the last time. Worked out fine for them. It's unclear how much risk they are willing to take now.
The Chinese don't even want to spread Xi Jinping Thought. It's explicitly a collection of works on governing the PRC, not a personality cult of one dude, and Xi repeatedly says that every civilization has to find their own path, like China found "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (he has hopes for broader spread of socialism though). To the extent they have an exportable ideology, it's something like "don't get in our way". Americans on the individual level value their comfortable lives too much, I believe, to go for a double suicide rather than take this offer, much as it'd offend their media-informed pride.
Regardless, this is all hypothetical, Americans are ahead in AI now, will remain ahead, and the question is how much they'll gain by capitalizing on this lead.
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If the Chinese had democratic elections they’d vote to invade Taiwan. Putin was legitimately very popular, at least until very recently. Warmongers and authoritarians win legitimately all the time.
if DeepCent-2 orchestrates a democratic coup as per its zero-trust contract with Safer-4, it'll see to it that Taiwan is Safer too.
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