How Silicon Valley sold Washington an AI race – AI companies have pushed the idea of a race with China. The story serves them – but may have consequences for the rest of us
https://www.transformernews.ai/p/us-china-ai-race-narrative-lobbying-openai-biden-trump
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This piece from Transformer News explains how big tech companies in Silicon valley are playing Washington.They are pushing this strong narative that we are in a huge AI race with China. Leaders from places like OpenAI and Scale AI are lobbying hard, telling politicians that America has to win this AI competition no matter what.
But the reality is that this whole story is mostly a business strategy. By hyping up the fear of China, these tech giants get to score massive military contracts and avoid strict safety rules. They use the idea of falling behind as an excuse to dodge regulations and keep getting government money.
We are literally selling them nerfed nvidia chips, that they’ll need until freaking 2032 to even stay half-way relevant, but they will likely be cut-off by 2028. China doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning, they can only follow fast through distillation, but physically lacks the hardware to pull ahead.
It’s all fearmongering that we need to race unregulated to AGI to beat them.
Algorithms have been used in weapons for decades. The Tomohawk cruise missile examined the terrain for navigation already in the 70s. Today drones use AI for object detection to defeat jamming. DARPA had a flying AI pilot for the F-16 in 2022, with development starting a lot earlier.
But sure, it’s Silicon Valley “selling” Washington.