China’s race to develop smarter-than-human artificial intelligence may put it ahead of the U.S., but such ground-breaking technology could also risk lessening the stronghold that the ruling Communist Party has over the world’s second-largest economy.
That’s the view of prominent AI scientist Max Tegmark, who told CNBC artificial general intelligence (AGI) is closer than we think and the narrative of a geopolitical battle between the U.S. and China racing to build the smartest AI is a “suicide race.”
While there is no singular definition of AGI, it is broadly taken to refer to AI that can outsmart humans.
Applications like ChatGPT — that allow users to prompt a chatbot for answers — have exploded in popularity. But many AI companies are racing to develop the next level, with AI that has human-level intelligence.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has said that AGI could be achieved by 2025. While there are other major names in the tech sector who also think AGI is close, many others think true AGI is still very far away.
As well as competition between technology companies, there is also the geopolitical battle taking place between the U.S. and China for dominance in realms from AI to chips. While this is often portrayed as a race to be first to the latest technology, Tegmark said this is not the right framing.
“I think of this battle, this geopolitical battle to build AGI first as a ‘hopium war’,” Tegmark told CNBC in an interview last month. ” I call it the ‘hopium war’ because it’s fueled by … delusional hope that we can control AGI.”
Tegmark is the president of the Future of Life Institute, a thinktank which penned a letter last year calling for AI labs to pause the development of advanced AI systems. The letter was signed by major tech names including Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Tegmark’s concern is that AI is advancing rapidly with very few guardrails in place, and no way to control it should it begin to outsmart humans.
“We are much closer to building AGI than figuring out how to control it. And that means that the AGI race is not an arms race, it’s a suicide race,” Tegmark said.
referencing new regulation governing generative AI.
China’s ministry of foreign affairs was not immediately available for comment on the anecdote. CNBC also contacted Tesla for a response from Musk.
China is looking to challenge the U.S. in artificial intelligence. China’s tech giants have launched their own AI models.
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“The U.S. doesn’t need to convince China to not build AGI. Even if the U.S. didn’t exist, the Chinese government would have an incentive to not build it because they want to be in control,” Tegmark said.
“[The] last thing they want is to lose that control.”
Alibaba, Huawei and Tencent have been developing their own AI models. The capabilities of those models are also advancing.
China was also among the first countries in the world to bring in regulation around various aspects of AI. The country’s internet is heavily censored and any information that appears to go against Beijing’s ideology is blocked. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is banned and it is well-noted that chatbots in China won’t answer questions related to politics and topics deemed sensitive by the Communist Party.
The country’s approach to AI is therefore an attempt to push innovation while also balancing its own interests. When it comes to AGI, China is likely to pursue a similar approach, according to analysts.
“I would not count on China to limit its own AI capabilities due to fears that such technologies would threaten Party rule. Similar predictions were made about the internet, they all proved to be false,” Kendra Schaefer, a partner at consultancy Trivium China,” told CNBC.
“China will attempt to dominate AGI while creating a techno-regulatory apparatus that limits what AGI is permitted to do domestically.”
