Chinas AI balancing act — beating the U.S. but keeping the tech from threatening Beijings rule
Summary
Chinas race to develop smarter-than-human artificial intelligence may put it ahead of the U.S., but such ground-breaking technology could also risk lessening the stronghold that the ruling Communist Party has over the worlds second-largest economy. The AI scientist recalled a story in which Elon Musk told him about a "high level meeting" the Tesla boss had with Chinese government officials in early 2023. OpenAIs ChatGPT is banned and it is well-noted that chatbots in China wont answer questions related to politics and topics deemed sensitive by the Communist Party. The U.S. has pursued a policy of attempting to restrict Chinas access to key technologies, mainly semiconductors like those designed by Nvidia , that are required to train more advanced AI models. "So my optimistic path forward is the U.S. and China unilaterally impose national safety standards to prevent their own companies from doing harm and building uncontrollable AGI, not to appease the rivals superpowers, but just to protect themselves," Tegmark said.