[hackerlight]

China can not win this race and I hate that this comment is going to be controversial among the circle of people that need to understand this the most. It is damn frightening that an authoritarian country is so close to number one in the race to the most powerful technology humanity has invented, and I resent people who push for open source AI for this reason alone. I don't want to live in a world where the first superintelligence is controlled by an entity that is threatened by the very idea of democracy.

[id00]

I agree with your point. However I also don't want to live in a world where the first superintelligence is controlled by an entities that:

- try to scan all my chat messages searching for CSAM

- have black sites across the world where anyone can dissappear without any justice

- can require me to unlock my phone and give it away

- ... and so on

The point I'm trying to make is that other big players in the race are crooked as well and i'm waiting for a great horror for AGI to be invented as no matter who gets it - we are all doomed

[insane_dreamer]

Agreed. The U.S. has a horrible history (as do many countries), and many things I dislike, but its current iteration is much, much better than China's totalitarianism and censorship.

[richrichie]

US is no angel and it cannot be the only one which wins the race. We have hard evidence of how monopoly power gets abused in the case of the US e.g. as the sole nuclear power, it used nukes on civilians.

We need every one to win this race to keep things on balance.

[hackerlight]

US has to win the race because while it's true that it's no angel, it isn't an authoritarian dictatorship and there isn't an equivalence in how bad the world will end up for you and me if the authoritarian side wins the race. Monopoly power will get abused the most by the least democratic actors, which is China. We need multiple actors within the US to win to balance power. We don't need or want China to be one of the winners. There is no upside for humanity in that outcome.

The US policymakers have figured this out with their chip export ban. Techies on the other hand, probably more than half the people here, are so naive and clueless about the reality of the moment we are in, that they support open sourcing this tech, the opposite of what we need to be doing to secure our future prosperity and freedom. Open source almost anything, just not this. It gives too much future power to authoritarians. That risk overwhelms the smaller risks that open sourcing is supposed to alleviate.

[AYBABTME]

If anyone doubts this. Recent (<100y) leaders of China and Russia internally displaced and caused the death of large % of their population, for essentially fanciful ideological reasons.

[mr_toad]

You don’t need to be an autocracy to commit genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

[usef-]

I'm not American, but ~1850 is quite a long way back to go to make this point (especially when the US was quite a young country at the time). And it's small if you've comparing to the atrocities of other countries being discussed here (not that that excuses it!). Do any country histories remain pure with such a long timeline?

US is one of the very few countries that has been tested in a position of power over the world — speaking post-1945— and they've largely opened world trade and allowed most countries of the world to prosper, including allowing economic competitors to overtake their own (eg, Japanese car manufacturers, among many others). They have also not shown interest in taking territory, nor doing mass extermination. There are undeniable flaws and warts in the history, but they're quite marginal when compared to any other world power we've seen.

(*beware when replying to this that many people in the US only know their own country's flaws, not the abundant flaws of other countries — the US tends to be more reflective of its own issues and that creates the perspective of it being much worse than it actually is.).

[CRConrad]

> Do any country histories remain pure with such a long timeline?

You know the old joke, "Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance; Americans think 100 years is a long time", I presume?

OK, so I'm a European, but still: 170 years is NOT, in a historical context, "a long timeline".

[pcthrowaway]

I mean, the US is supporting a genocide right now...

[richrichie]

I am puzzled how it is OK to kill people of other countries, but not your own. US, China and Russia have all indulged in wanton mass killing of people. So that's an even keel for me.

The nuking of civilians and the abuse of supremacy post cold war show that the US cannot trusted to act morally and ethically in the absence of comparable adversaries. Possession of nukes by Russia and China clearly kept the US military adventures somewhat in check.

[hackerlight]

If it was liberal minded people like Deng as leader of China and Gorbachev as leader of Russia I would care a lot less and may even be in favor of open source despite their autocratic system. They'd be trending towards another Singapore at that point. Although I'd still be uneasy about it.

But I'm looking at the present moment and see too many similarities with the fascist dictatorships of the past. The nationalism, militarism, unreasonable border disputes and territorial claims and irredentist attitudes. The US just isn't that, despite their history.

[CRConrad]

> I am puzzled how it is OK to kill people of other countries, but not your own.

The former is rather universally regarded as regrettable, but sometims necessary: It's called "war". The latter, pretty much never.

Also, there are separate terms for slaying members of your own family, presumably because patri-, matri-, fratri- and infanticide are seen as even more egregious than "regular" homicide. Same concept, only expanded from person to populations -- from people to peoples -- seems to pretty much demand that killing your own population is seen as "less OK" than others.

[jazzyjackson]

Which countries will become authoritarian dictatorships on a 25 year timeline is not easily foreseeable.

[CRConrad]

> US has to win the race because while it's true that it's no angel, it isn't an authoritarian dictatorship

Yet.

[ericd]

Could you explain your point a bit more? You say you’re worried about them having a monopoly, but then say that’s why you don’t support open source models? Open models mean that no one has a monopoly, what am I not getting here?

[hackerlight]

Open sourcing benefits everyone equally. Given that the US is currently ahead, it's helping China to make gains relative to the US that would have been very difficult otherwise. It's leaking what should be state secrets without even needing the CCP to do the hard work of espionage.

[jazzyjackson]

What about Moroccans, or Argentinians, they shouldn't benefit from scientific advances because China is pissing off USA?

I guess it comes down to whether you think language models are at atom-bomb-levels of destructive capability. I don't see it, I think trying to keep tech and economic advances to ourselves is more likely to lead to war than a level playing field.

[hackerlight]

They should be allowed to have the same access to and benefit of AI as any regular American business or individual. That is, access through an API. It's the secret sauce that I believe should be kept under wraps as a state secret.

[ericd]

How do you estimate that that turns into a monopoly for China?