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While China sees AI as another tool for controlling its populace, the United States is rushing to create AI that will give it global economic dominance.
even if we're taking the first part at face value, "global economic dominance" sure sounds like the u.s. is trying to control every populace
who makes up the "economy"?
He described how hundreds of small and medium-sized Chinese AI companies are competing against each other to develop and deploy new AI models that generate tangible and immediate economic, social, and environmental benefits [instead of trying to] create a “super” intelligence that, at an undetermined moment in the future, will change everything.
second paragraph contradicts the headline, anyway, unless this is what the union of concerned scientists means by "controlling the populace"
that's right Palantir doesn't exist
There's a part in this article that refers to them as "The People’s Republic", omitting the "of China".
I have to say I like it. I like it a lot. I like the implication that The People's Republic could be extranational.
Anyway AGI has always struck me as pie in the sky bullshit to drive investor speculation. China is right to focus on more tangible applications of AI in robotics and machinery.
Yeah practical applications with tangible material results is the way to apply this tech. Amusingly, we're basically seeing a case study of what happens when markets go against central planning here.
I was going to write "random distribution of investor money" but it's not really is it. It's distribution of investor money to the most pie in the sky projects, the projects that lie the hardest, the projects that capture the most investor imagination.
Boring projects that might be more practical get left by the side of the road. They're the engineer-ey and technical things. They're not exciting. They don't offer 10,000,000x return potential in a giant investment bubble that will inevitably burst.
The market distributes resource to whatever convinces investors of returns the hardest. This however does not mean realistic, and when that occurs bubbles form and cause chaos when they explode.
And there are other issues as well such as having a long term commitment to developing something where there's no immediate profit to be had.
Right. The whole system favours economic wunderwaffe.
It will fail for the same reason a system that favoured wunderwaffe over fundamentals of production failed the nazis.
Exactly, the thing most people don't realize is that the success of the modern capitalist system was a historical accident. The US basically got to sit out the second world war and build up their industries while the rest of the world burned. When the war ended, the US emerged as the biggest economy and they've been riding that ever since. But if the system actually worked as advertised, then the US would only be getting stronger over time, and the exact opposite is happening in practice. So, clearly the system itself is not responsible for the success that's ascribed to it.
It's the real use case, and I have been hammering my old teachers and management about not giving into the hype and focusing into learning and teaching it.
Our Chinese colleague also mentioned that his government, not surprisingly, is very concerned about the disruptive social, cultural, and political impacts of artificial intelligence. That’s led China’s top officials to invest considerable effort in establishing effective AI governance. They appear more concerned about that problem than US politicians.
The tech titans at the top of the US AI pyramid don’t want to be governed, and the Trump administration obtained their considerable financial and political support by promising to give them free rein.
This is probably the most naked example of the difference between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Also, something makes me think that part of the reason for the US companies' feverish chase to AGI is that they believe it's their last chance to stay ahead of China, now that their lead in almost every field is either gone or eroding.
Also, something makes me think that part of the reason for the US companies' feverish chase to AGI is that they believe it's their last chance to stay ahead of China
They believe it is their last chance in everything. They have gone all-in on "we either achieve this or climate destroys the planet". They believe new uninvented technology that only AGI will create will save the planet.
They are totally invested in the idea that AGI will be able to improve itself, thus bringing about progressively better super intelligence that will produce technology bordering on magic.
It's basically Millenarianism, they think they're building God and that everything that comes before will cease to matter.
Americans love that shit
Yeah China wants AI to actually do things, the West just wants AI to sift through surveillance data and help them kill leftists
I think I fell for the Avatar propaganda. I am now in favor of AI to the end of having a chip planted in my brain so I can do tsaheylu
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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