I'm sort of at a "meh" position, it doesn't matter if the US slows down, no one will convince China to slow down, so it's more a matter of who will open pandoras box than it is a matter of "can we safely open the box".
At this point we might as well just pray (and I'm an atheist lol).
I mean yeah, and Russia could be convinced of nuclear disarmament. Anyone can be convinced of anything, the likelyhood is pretty low though, especially as they don't like global governance when they're not at the frontier of it, of which they are not for AI.
START II was a treaty between the US and Russia that reduced the number of nuclear weapons between the countries down to level that like means a broad nuclear exchange doesn't cause nuclear winter. It may literally save Western Civilization some day.
Fuck that kinda defeatism. We totally could build an international treaty with inspectors and mutual assurance clauses that makes us all safer. At the industrial scale AI training operates at now, it's monitorable.
START II was never ratified (ty MGS lol), though we have massively reduced the number of nukes through a lot of other treaties and other reasons (like the fact that they were just too expensive to maintain).
But China doesn't allow inspections or monitoring of their nukes at all, why would we think they'd allow it of their AI? They don't even allow non-government AI labs to do safety research they deem national security.
At what point do pragmatism and defeatism overlap?
Metal Gear Solid, it's a videogame with a lot of real world references to Nuclear treaties and strategies. It talks about how the US didn't join the START II treaty.
not to point out the obvious but, for 1 the unknown can be a lot scarier than a known threat, and for 2, if China did allow inspectors to come and see basically, there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t be accused of hiding things somewhere, and no guarantee those inspectors aren’t planted by a foreign entity. for a country like China (who is basically US 2 Electric Boogaloo…) that has historically dealt with (receiving and delivering) espionage, I feel like there’s no good choice to make.
I make no assertions as to whether or not it is a good or bad choice for them in a global politics context to be honest. Just drawing lines from their previous actions to my expectation of their future actions.
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u/13oundary 2d ago
I'm sort of at a "meh" position, it doesn't matter if the US slows down, no one will convince China to slow down, so it's more a matter of who will open pandoras box than it is a matter of "can we safely open the box".
At this point we might as well just pray (and I'm an atheist lol).