#193 – Sihao Huang on navigating the geopolitics of US–China AI competition
80,000 Hours Podcast18 Heinä 2024

#193 – Sihao Huang on navigating the geopolitics of US–China AI competition

"You don’t necessarily need world-leading compute to create highly risky AI systems. The biggest biological design tools right now, like AlphaFold’s, are orders of magnitude smaller in terms of compute requirements than the frontier large language models. And China has the compute to train these systems. And if you’re, for instance, building a cyber agent or something that conducts cyberattacks, perhaps you also don’t need the general reasoning or mathematical ability of a large language model. You train on a much smaller subset of data. You fine-tune it on a smaller subset of data. And those systems — one, if China intentionally misuses them, and two, if they get proliferated because China just releases them as open source, or China does not have as comprehensive AI regulations — this could cause a lot of harm in the world." —Sihao Huang

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Sihao Huang about his work on AI governance and tech policy in China, what’s happening on the ground in China in AI development and regulation, and the importance of US–China cooperation on AI governance.

Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.

They cover:

  • Whether the US and China are in an AI race, and the global implications if they are.
  • The state of the art of AI in China.
  • China’s response to American export controls, and whether China is on track to indigenise its semiconductor supply chain.
  • How China’s current AI regulations try to maintain a delicate balance between fostering innovation and keeping strict information control over the Chinese people.
  • Whether China’s extensive AI regulations signal real commitment to safety or just censorship — and how AI is already used in China for surveillance and authoritarian control.
  • How advancements in AI could reshape global power dynamics, and Sihao’s vision of international cooperation to manage this responsibly.
  • And plenty more.

Chapters:

  • Cold open (00:00:00)
  • Luisa's intro (00:01:02)
  • The interview begins (00:02:06)
  • Is China in an AI race with the West? (00:03:20)
  • How advanced is Chinese AI? (00:15:21)
  • Bottlenecks in Chinese AI development (00:22:30)
  • China and AI risks (00:27:41)
  • Information control and censorship (00:31:32)
  • AI safety research in China (00:36:31)
  • Could China be a source of catastrophic AI risk? (00:41:58)
  • AI enabling human rights abuses and undermining democracy (00:50:10)
  • China’s semiconductor industry (00:59:47)
  • China’s domestic AI governance landscape (01:29:22)
  • China’s international AI governance strategy (01:49:56)
  • Coordination (01:53:56)
  • Track two dialogues (02:03:04)
  • Misunderstandings Western actors have about Chinese approaches (02:07:34)
  • Complexity thinking (02:14:40)
  • Sihao’s pet bacteria hobby (02:20:34)
  • Luisa's outro (02:22:47)


Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering team: Ben Cordell, Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

Jaksot(320)

#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments

#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments

What happens when you lock two AI systems in a room together and tell them they can discuss anything they want?According to experiments run by Kyle Fish — Anthropic’s first AI welfare researcher — som...

28 Elo 20252h 28min

How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin Todd)

How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin Todd)

About half of people are worried they’ll lose their job to AI. They’re right to be concerned: AI can now complete real-world coding tasks on GitHub, generate photorealistic video, drive a taxi more sa...

31 Heinä 202551min

Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say about bouncing back

Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say about bouncing back

What happens when civilisation faces its greatest tests?This compilation brings together insights from researchers, defence experts, philosophers, and policymakers on humanity’s ability to survive and...

15 Heinä 20254h 26min

#220 – Ryan Greenblatt on the 4 most likely ways for AI to take over, and the case for and against AGI in <8 years

#220 – Ryan Greenblatt on the 4 most likely ways for AI to take over, and the case for and against AGI in <8 years

Ryan Greenblatt — lead author on the explosive paper “Alignment faking in large language models” and chief scientist at Redwood Research — thinks there’s a 25% chance that within four years, AI will b...

8 Heinä 20252h 50min

#219 – Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer you didn't (fully) understand

#219 – Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer you didn't (fully) understand

The era of making AI smarter just by making it bigger is ending. But that doesn’t mean progress is slowing down — far from it. AI models continue to get much more powerful, just using very different m...

24 Kesä 20252h 48min

#218 – Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US hegemony – and that’s probably good

#218 – Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US hegemony – and that’s probably good

For decades, US allies have slept soundly under the protection of America’s overwhelming military might. Donald Trump — with his threats to ditch NATO, seize Greenland, and abandon Taiwan — seems hell...

12 Kesä 20252h 48min

#217 – Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI right now — and the 7-month rule that governs its progress

#217 – Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI right now — and the 7-month rule that governs its progress

AI models today have a 50% chance of successfully completing a task that would take an expert human one hour. Seven months ago, that number was roughly 30 minutes — and seven months before that, 15 mi...

2 Kesä 20253h 47min

Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of consciousness in insects, AI, and more

Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of consciousness in insects, AI, and more

What if there’s something it’s like to be a shrimp — or a chatbot?For centuries, humans have debated the nature of consciousness, often placing ourselves at the very top. But what about the minds of o...

23 Touko 20253h 34min

Suosittua kategoriassa Koulutus

rss-murhan-anatomia
psykopodiaa-podcast
rss-narsisti
voi-hyvin-meditaatiot-2
aamukahvilla
rss-vapaudu-voimaasi
rss-niinku-asia-on
psykologia
rss-liian-kuuma-peruna
adhd-podi
kesken
dear-ladies
leveli
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-koira-haudattuna
rss-luonnollinen-synnytys-podcast
rahapuhetta
aloita-meditaatio
ihminen-tavattavissa-tommy-hellsten-instituutti
rss-ai-mita-siskopodcast