Not OP, but IMO the Chinese are waging economic warfare by "commodifying the competition". US VC's and equity are massively invested in AI being very very profitable and as soon as it's not that becomes garbage debt on a balance sheet, and a lot of it. When money is invested it's expected to make a return. When a few people make bad investments they lose their bag, when many many people all make the same bad investment, you get a nasty recession. When the US goes into recession China is more emboldened to pursue their agenda because policy makers are distracted by shoring up support at home and not as interested in expanding their power abroad.
Free market economics is constant warfare. It's called competition, and if you're really doing free market economics, you don't get to shut down the market every time you're bad at it.
I'm confused. China has been in a fairly bad recession the last ~2 years (their housing bubble popping). Why are we assuming that recessions can only happen in the US?
I'm also confused how China managed to convince so many US VC's to spend an insane amount on a technology with "no moat". China exporting cheap AI hurts American hyperscalars. But it doesn't induce the behavior in American hyperscalars that causes them to be vulnerable to cheap AI. It seems kind of patronizing to point the finger at China, rather than acknowledge the American (potential) misallocation of resources.
That sounds like a problem for the idiots invested in this garbage and who cut foolish sweetheart debt deals with the hyper-scalers. That's mostly rich people, because they haven't yet found a way to offload their bags onto retail (though they're certainly trying).
Not sure I follow your point, are you confusing espionage with IP theft? The victims are entirely different in each case, I am sure china would not restrict itself to corporate espionage.
Soft power primarily (see my original comment),and less data for western labs to train on, less money for western labs to have.
The state can use their AI as a tool to bolster their standing, which is working well. Chinese AI labs don't have to worry about making money or affording more compute. The state will (and does) give them whatever they need.
Because the US is a democracy and there is blowback for pissing off the public. So allocating hundred of billions of taxpayer money to AI would be enormously unpopular. We have private markets that can spend their money however they chose.
China just has the state with one leader than thats it.
Not who you are replying to, nor do I agree with their take (no sign of irony, complete lack of self awareness, and just blatantly xenophobic. not suprised by it either). but they did already address this:
> it's called soft power, look at endless glazing, it works
So people in countries adversarial to the US, or even demographics at risk domestically like illegal migrants have nothing to worry about dumping their info OpenAI or Anthropic servers? But the Chinese are going to spy on people using open weight models running on private or third party servers? Do you hear yourself? Do you have any grasp of theory of mind at all? Is your vision of Chinese "ethnonationalism" white people picking cotton? Is that what you are afraid of?
The untold capital and effort, the disciplined, complex long game operation, all to get 10 million people a second asking "are there timezones in space?" or "excel bar chart colors?" or "do you think I'm beautiful?"
It's hard to truly grasp the enormity of the evil, really.
