We’re moving towards AGI (artificial general intelligence—capable of learning applying knowledge) and then ASI (artificial super intelligence—smarter than the whole human race combined) beyond it. Nobody knows how long it’s going to take. Some people say two or three years to AGI, some people say 10. But it seems to us that this impending change in the history of the human race is consciously or unconsciously at the heart of a lot of the chaos and weirdness in the world today. The status quo will not stand, is the feeling. A key point is that the development of AGI is not being done in a collaborative way, with everyone working together. The Chinese are definitely building AGI on their own. The various players in Silicon Valley, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI and the others, meanwhile, are competing but on the other hand, we’re guessing there is some cross fertilization of the whole AI effort between these people—they all know each other. It’s first past the post, whoever gets there first will reap the whole reward.
The China process is interesting, because at the heart of it there appears to be a flaw which also affects economic development—determination on the part of the party to have full control, and that the AGI created in China has to meet that requirement. This would presumably have some impact on the nature of China AGI and its mental flexibility, if that’s the right phrase, compared to what they’re going to come up with in Silicon Valley/US. If you add in that, plus all of the various issues with regard to supplies of chips, then does this mean China will not be able to catch up and the AGI crown will go to the US? It’s impossible to take a clear view on how many chips are getting into China from the US, regardless of whatever controls there are, but the controls are getting tougher and tougher and while China is increasing its ability to produce cutting-edge chips, they’re still behind. But how far behind? NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang recently said that China is now only microseconds behind. But who knows if that is a cover for greater sales or the truth? Both China and the US are pouring huge amounts of money into AI, and the direction of AI related stocks on Wall Street are a good indicator of that. Is it a bubble or the beginning of the future?
Bottom line? It’s impossible to say for sure, but it looks as if the systemic constraints on AI development in China are going to play a very important role in terms of how this plays out.