The Chinese leaders’ alternative is to lose the ASI race to the US, which puts them in significantly higher danger of being disempowered or even killed. And given the trajectory we’re on, they would need major algorithmic breakthroughs, that they successfully manage to keep secret, to not be in a position where they’re going to lose. They’re at too large of a compute disadvantage and the timelines are too short for them to use their better industrial capacity to overcome that. That might be more uncertain if it was clear that they were already treating the situation with the appropriate gravity, but they are not. They seem to be viewing AI the same way the US gov currently does, as a mere important economic and military technology.
The Chinese leaders’ alternative is to lose the ASI race to the US, which puts them in significantly higher danger of being disempowered or even killed. And given the trajectory we’re on, they would need major algorithmic breakthroughs, that they successfully manage to keep secret, to not be in a position where they’re going to lose. They’re at too large of a compute disadvantage and the timelines are too short for them to use their better industrial capacity to overcome that. That might be more uncertain if it was clear that they were already treating the situation with the appropriate gravity, but they are not. They seem to be viewing AI the same way the US gov currently does, as a mere important economic and military technology.