The competition is literally where they are by distilling OpenAI and Anthropic. It’s like creating nuclear weapons then providing your adversaries everything they need to catch up in no time. We need to stop asap and set strict international control over the compute hardware used for training. Like, now.

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seanmcdirmid 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Assuming China makes progress only because they copy the west is really arrogant. And it would require strict international control as you say, a world government that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

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dgellow 20 hours ago | parent [-]

We have international control for a lot of things. That’s not a new concept and can perfectly be applied to the specific hardware used for training. I also didn’t say Chinese labs only copy the west, please don’t put words in my mouth.

You have to consider what happens with the status quo, and the risks of continuing the way things are is really, really bad

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seanmcdirmid 19 hours ago | parent [-]

International control hasn’t solved the nuclear weapon problem, the best we can do is threaten to invade people who try to develop them and don’t already have them. Once you join the club, you are in and cant be kicked out.

I’ve considered that, but the rules of game theory don't change just because they are inconvenient. China has a lot of talent and a lot of problems that they are banking on automation (along with AI) to solve. They see it as an advantage that they can’t afford for America to monopolize and one they are uniquely suited to lean into (having lots of smart educated people). There is no world where (a) China willingly gives up its edge and (b) trusts America to give up its edge (the reverse is likely true also). And that is only one pair of countries to consider.

Heck, after visiting China this summer, I’m even more worried about an accidental terminator/skynet-style robot apocalypse.

	▲	dgellow 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t disagree (other than the robot apocalypse), it is indeed unlikely and wouldn’t work perfectly, but do you see other options? The fact the US has antagonized China for so long makes it pretty much impossible to have anything done at the international level, but the actors have to realize how serious the risk is. And we somehow need to find a way to limit the exposure to those insanely irresponsible attacker-trained agents. The fact that it is dome by private companies is wild. It’s like having companies developing their nuclear weapons just to see what happens (with close to no supervision)