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Kai-Fu Lee describes the culture so well in AI Superpowers. The roots are well before GPU restriction. Absolute cut throat competition. Imagine Sam Altman thro
by wodderam 2y ago
Kai-Fu Lee describes the culture so well in AI Superpowers. The roots are well before GPU restriction. Absolute cut throat competition.
Imagine Sam Altman throwing a chair out a window in a meeting lol.
The message of AI Superpowers is that China will lag the US at first but once things stabilize this will happen because China has a lot more engineers and a lot more data.
Anyone who hasn't read AI Superpowers should really make it a point to read it in 2025. It is an incredible book.
- Etheryte 2y agoI don't know, I've been hearing the story that China is about to upend the US as the leading global superpower ever since I was a kid. There's always a new vogue and novel twist put on the rationale and how it's gonna happen, but so far it's like fusion, always a few years away.
- solaarphunk 2y agoEconomic superpower perhaps - just take a look at their relative GDP over time.
- kayewiggin 2y agoChina has 900M people making less than $400/month, and 600M people making less than $100/month. relative GDP is a joke, go to China to see what most of them are eating (hint: it's unsafe food filled with chemicals, or its mostly carbs) and where these people are living (hint: it's shoddy constructed condos or run down farm houses)
- bugglebeetle 2y agoIt’s unclear to me why what you’re describing is specific to China and not also what Americans euphemistically refer to as “fly over states.”
- kamarg 2y agoNot sure why you have something against the flyover states. I'm sure there's more shoddily constructed condos in Florida/California/New York per capita than there is in the Midwest. Same goes for cheap high calorie food. Of course, the same can probably be said about the large population centers in China too. More people concentrated in one area tends to mean more poverty in that area and all the things that come with it.
- bugglebeetle 2y agoI don’t have anything against them. I was born and raised in one. I just find it ironic that someone would fail to see this parallel.
- Airodonack 2y agoThe parallel is that there are rich and poor? It is unscrupulous to argue in imprecise, binary terms while ignoring the difference in scale. People in flyover states are not making only $400/mo or even occupying that same societal equivalent of China in America.
- eunos 2y ago> China has 900M people making less than $400/month Most of these folks are illiterate oldies that would pass away in a few years anyway.
- elashri 2y agoI think you mean nuclear fusion.
- Etheryte 2y agoOf course, thanks.
- tossandthrow 2y agoWhat makes you think it has not happened? There has not been an event to establish who the current super power is in new time.
- futureshock 2y agoI think you have the right idea. China has yet to truly flex its muscle. They prefer to quietly grow stronger. Their response to Covid with the largely successful zero covid strategy gives a clue about the power of its government. Silly, you can’t become the champion without stepping into the ring.
- daveguy 2y agoLargely successful? I wouldn't confuse Chinese propaganda to the outside world with success.
- pphysch 2y agoThe Chinese government treated the pandemic as a bioweapon attack by a foreign adversary engaged in a broader hybrid war, and it did so effectively.
- daveguy 2y agoThat's batshit insane.
- pphysch 2y agoA country targeted in an ongoing hybrid war by the world's #1 superpower would have a (relatively) extreme response to a pandemic that originated in an epidemiologically interesting location deep in their inland territory, and that extreme response having any substantial national security impetuous is "batshit insane". Insightful contribution! A big country would never overreact to national security threats. We have the TSA to protect us from that :)
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- jitl 2y agoIf you want to look at an objective numeric metric for this, why not foreign military bases? US has 128+, China had ~2. To project global military power China will need similar order of magnitude presence. I use that number as a check against sometimes breathless and sensational journalism about the topic. It’s harder for me to come up with a simpler metric for “Belt and Road” / IMF style control-through-capital. But, I think it will happen. After visiting China and seeing how much consistent progress both in infrastructure from the government and in daily life from the economy, my impression is US government makes 2 steps forward 1 step back in the same time it takes China to take 100 steps forward.
- bpodgursky 2y agoThe US does not have 128 foreign military bases. It has ~50 nominal bases [1]. Most of them are just the US sharing an airfield with a friendly country; it's a refueling stop that would not be hard for China to replicate. The US does have several large overseas bases but 90% of this list is are indefensible logistics hubs and not a meaningful projection of force. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_installations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...
- daveguy 2y agoCalling any US military base an "indefensible logistics hub" reveals that the extent of your research was probably just that Wikipedia listicle.
- bpodgursky 2y agoBelieve whatever you want. Most of these bases are co-located with NATO or other allies for good reason, the US doesn't have to do everything itself wrt air defense, locating an airlift wing with a fighter wing. But then it's a lower bar than people imagine, for China to buy similar friendship.
- daveguy 2y ago
- jurli 2y agoIt's literally happening lol. When you were a kid China was making shoes and their GDP is 10% of the US. Now they're making drones / evs / high end electornics and it's 80%. This is why people's perception is so unreliable because it's impossible to notice things when they happen over a lifetime
- talldayo 2y agoWhen I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations. If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China.
- joshbaptiste 2y agoAs a sovereign nation rises in power you'll notice how it slowly starts losing favor from USA
- roca 2y agoIf it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal. In the 1990s everyone thought Japan was going to be the next superpower and that was just fine.
- ijidak 2y agoHa! Do you remember the panic induced by a rising Japan in the late 80's and early 90's. The fear of the "Red Sun Rising". The fear that Japan was going to own most of the valuable real estate in America. The forcing of Japanese car companies to onshore to protect American jobs. Blaming of Japanese industrial policy as being unfair competition. It was the collapse of the Japanese growth engine in the mid 90's that finally ended the American panic. The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power. Whenever powers rise to threaten that duality there is a lot of hand-wringing in Washington.
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- janalsncm 2y agoForget about future tense. In many industries China is already the undisputed leader by far. https://itif.org/publications/2024/09/16/china-is-rapidly-becoming-a-leading-innovator-in-advanced-industries/ https://itif.org/publications/2024/09/16/china-is-rapidly-be... China leads in Computers and Electronics, Machinery and Equipment, Motor Vehicles, Basic Metals, Fabricated Metals, Electrical Equipment. The US leads in IT and Information Services, Pharmaceuticals, and Other Transportation. It’s not about to happen. It already happened, and it is largely due to hubris that the US doesn’t talk about it.
- lopatin 2y agoI never knew Sam Altman threw Bret Taylor out of a window. That makes the OpenAI board drama more understandable.
- modeless 2y agoDidn't Ballmer do that? I'm not sure it indicates success.
- daedrdev 2y agoThe thing is Bejing undercuts this completly by allowing local governments to perform rampant shakedown of investors and ceos through disappearances for bogus charges, even in other provinces.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]