The more I think about it, the more I think AI is basically perfect for china to succeed in. China’s strengths are:
Massive amounts of money
Massive amounts of data
Massive amount of gumption, often put in the form of scaling infrastructure projects quickly
Likely the ability to make & use legible metrics, how else would you work such a giant bureaucracy work as well as theirs?
And its weaknesses are:
A soon to collapse population
Lack of revolutionary thought
And what it wants is:
Massive surveillance
Population thought control
Loyal workers
Stable society
AI uniquely requires its strengths, solves one weakness while conspicuously not requiring the other (though some claim that’s about to change, AI still seems to not require it far more than most other sciences & technologies), and assists in all of its wants.
We should expect China to be bigger in the future wrt AI. Learning chinese seems useful for such a world. Translation tools may at that point be advanced, but even if as good as a skilled interpreter, likely inferior to direct contact.
Also in favor of china: The money they allocate to research is increasing faster than their number of researchers. I put a largish probability based off post-war American science that this results in more groundbreaking science done.
Indeed. I also note that if innovation is hampered by institutional support or misallocated funding / support, we should have higher probability on a rapid & surprising improvement. If its hampered by cultural support, we should expect slower improvement.