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The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

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Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#131

Post by SubiculumCode »

Galanwe wrote: post #71
SubiculumCode wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise, the goal is to not get globally dominated by China. You cannot point to one without the other. It's not like the U.S. is the only country that values national security and geopolitical power.

What does it mean "dominated"? How would your life change if your country became the second wealthiest instead of the first? This is a ranking and competition no other country in the world gives ... about.

What would the world be like if China led? Whatever Xi wanted it to be like. I do not want a non-democratic, dictatorial power leading the world. You might think that most of the world does not care, and maybe they don't right now. But this is, I suspect, due to the relative benevolence of historical U.S. policy of international law and order. New boss same as the old boss is a motto that is only as informative as the extent to which the new boss acts like the old boss.

Why would the world care? Take Trump's threats against Greenland...actions that run completely contrary to our historical policies and treatment of our Western allies. They were alarmed, because when the leader of the most powerful military in the world makes a threat, you have to treat it seriously. Despite Trump's hubris, such an invasion did not occur because Americans, Congress, made it very clear that Trump would be impeached if he invaded our NATO ally.

Let's say China is ascendant. It is now the dominant military and economic power in the world. China is under Xi's complete dictatorial rule. Xi decides that invading Greenland is a good idea. Stopping that internally would not involve democratic processes, it would need to involve a coup.

Let's make it even more stark. If Germany had won WWII and had become the ascendant world power, would it make a difference to most countries? ABSOLUTELY YES. If there is going to be a dominant world power, the character of that nation matters.

Are there other nations with the character and institutions that could do as well or better than the U.S. has done? Sure. I can think of several nations. But let us not pretend that all nations are equally bad/good for the world.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#132

Post by JKCalhoun »

brazukadev wrote: post #67
JKCalhoun wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mark Cuban in a recent interview answered your question: companies are afraid there is going to be just one in the end—sort of the way there is one ad-company now on the internet. They want to be that one. Whether they're correct that there can be only one is of course a matter of debate. But that is at least the mind-set they are operating under according to Cuban.

> sort of the way there is one ad-company now on the internet Which one, Meta[0]? 0. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/meta-poised-s...

That kind of does make the point.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#133

Post by ambicapter »

brabel wrote: post #125
embedding-shape wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not doing capitalism right, but isn't it supposed to be "The one who profits the most wins"? If you win by just spending, I think you need to adjust the parameters of your capitalistic market.

I don't get it either, but it seems to me a bit similar to how the US, if you look at market value of car companies, has utterly crushed Europe and Japan (with China surging ahead of those and maybe threatening the US soon), which to me sounds crazy (I still think of German cars as the top of the bunch). According to Google (AI summary, no idea if it's 100% right but from what I've seen elsewhere it seems right): Top…

The stock market is over 60% passive investment, it's starting to get unmoored from the financial realities of the underlying companies. What that means for the future is [shrug emoji].

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#134

Post by SubiculumCode »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #104
SubiculumCode wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a lot of rationalization to me. China is pursuing these because they cannot compete on the frontier. Yes, there is a possibility that all that compute is not needed, but it is a rather remote possibility, and there is no doubt that, given the choice, China would be pursuing frontier model building with closed, propietary-only offerings.

Well China is consistently 6 months behind the frontier labs(possibly because they can they harvest data from released frontier models). If the scaling continues, US will win, but if not then China will win as the models will converge.

The non-release of Mythos tell you the future of that, so long as they can keep the weights from being exfiltrated. Once models become true national security threats, they won't be released in their full form. The hitch-a-ride approach becomes less capable of keeping up.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#135

Post by Jalad »

rich_sasha wrote: post #65
yalogin wrote: post #30

Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are the standouts, but the main question for me is, why is this a war? In their own context China has greatly benefitted from this. They shored up their gpu design and manufacturing expertise. If this really is a war, trump is kneecapping the country with his lawlessness and eroding America’s good will. If the world cannot trust China with their data and they cannot trust the U.S. to prov…

It's a war in the sense that there's a concern that eventually you hit a singularity and can outsmart others in ways not constrained by human scales. If you make better guns, you're still limited by how many people can carry them. You can't conquer the world just like this. But if someone invents super intelligence, they can dominate new AI research, control global economies, fight much better, and all very quickly.

> But if someone invents super intelligence, they can dominate new AI research, control global economies, fight much better, and all very quickly.

After reading "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" I think this is not the correct take. If anyone creates ASI, it just means it's going to wipe everyone out, and it doesn't matter if China or the US do it first

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#136

Post by nothinkjustai »

nba456_ wrote: post #95
nodja wrote: post #48

No, the US is _leading_ the AI race, but the race isn't over. What's the point of leading the race for 90% of it, if they're gonna slip on their own sweat and fall down by the end? In non metaphorical terms, what's the point of spending billions of dollars rushing to get the best AI tech at all costs, when the competition can distil your progress and catch up in 6-12 months while only spending 1% of what you spent. E…

> No, the US is _leading_ the AI race, but the race isn't over. When someone says their football team is winning in the first half, do you say, "Umm, no, they're leading, not winning!"

Well, if they were up by 4 and now it’s 4-3 and the team is under massive pressure, “we’re still winning” is of little condolence to the fans.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#137

Post by Matl »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #38
thepasch wrote: post #7

Article title: “The US is winning the AI Race” Article content: “The US are capitalizing on AI the best” A lot of assumptions there that no one can actually verify as true right now. If commercialization into rent-seeking SaaS landscapes is the endgame, then yeah, the US is winning the AI race. If individualization, local LLMs, and consumer hardware are the endgame, China is winning the AI race. If it’s something ent…

That seems like a lot of rationalization to me. China is pursuing these because they cannot compete on the frontier. Yes, there is a possibility that all that compute is not needed, but it is a rather remote possibility, and there is no doubt that, given the choice, China would be pursuing frontier model building with closed, propietary-only offerings.

I dunno, DeepSeek v4 Pro is rather on par as far as I can tell, maybe not with 5.5 Pro in all areas quite yet, but close.

I think China is thinking more about the application layer on top of models as going to matter more than the models themselves, so they don't need to gatekeep the models as much.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#138

Post by nradov »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #38
thepasch wrote: post #7

Article title: “The US is winning the AI Race” Article content: “The US are capitalizing on AI the best” A lot of assumptions there that no one can actually verify as true right now. If commercialization into rent-seeking SaaS landscapes is the endgame, then yeah, the US is winning the AI race. If individualization, local LLMs, and consumer hardware are the endgame, China is winning the AI race. If it’s something ent…

That seems like a lot of rationalization to me. China is pursuing these because they cannot compete on the frontier. Yes, there is a possibility that all that compute is not needed, but it is a rather remote possibility, and there is no doubt that, given the choice, China would be pursuing frontier model building with closed, propietary-only offerings.

All that compute is not needed. We have an existence proof from biology in the form of natural intelligence that much greater efficiency is possible. However, achieving dramatic improvements in compute efficiency will depend on unpredictable scientific breakthroughs. Personally I suspect that an entirely new hardware architecture will be needed, although I don't have any hard evidence to back that up.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#139

Post by abalashov »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #123
Jamesbeam wrote: post #76

No, it’s not. It’s all about adoption and the bigger picture. The US is an untrustworthy, isolated island in the AI future if you vote another idiot into office in a few years. If you’ll still be able to vote at all, that is. The largest part of the world is not the US. The cutting-edge US models are way too expensive for most parts of the world, and that also shows in adoption. China is building an ecosystem of open…

>If you’ll still be able to vote at all, that is. Stopped reading here. What a ridiculous statement and I can only assume the rest of your post is just as ridiculous.

Why do you... seem so sure that this is a ridiculous statement?

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#140

Post by SubiculumCode »

mghackerlady wrote: post #130
SubiculumCode wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are free to hate capitalism (even if you benefit from it enormously). You are free to say that you hate capitalism and the U.S. as openly and as often as you like, without facing imprisonment or worse. But if you were in China, could you say you hate the Chinese Communist Party and China openly and as often as you like without imprisonment or worse? We know the answer to that. So go ahead and trust China more tha…

Actually, Chinas free speech, while abysmal, is better than you're making it out to be. They only really care if they see you as a threat, which realistically isn't too far off from the US both currently and historically

I understand that there is some freedom of speech in China, but I don't think the implication is that US and China are functionally equivalent. In the U.S. you can criticize the president all day every day and have millions of followers. Could you do that in China? The more people listen to you, the more dissident opinions become a threat.
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