Why “Binding China” in AI carries its own risks

The Biden administration this week introduced new export restrictions designed to control the progress of AI in the world and ultimately prevent more advanced AI from falling into China’s hands. The rule is just the latest in a series of measures put in place by Donald Trump and Joe Biden to keep Chinese AI in check.

With prominent AI figures including OpenAI Sam Altman and the anthropic Dario Amodei warning of the need to “beat China” in AI, the Trump administration may also step things up.

Paul Triulo is a partner at the DGA Group, a global consulting firm, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a senior advisor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations. Alvin Graylin is an entrepreneur who previously ran China operations for Taiwanese electronics firm HPC. Together they followed the AI ​​industry in China and the impact of US sanctions. In an email exchange, Triolo and Graylin discussed the latest sanctions, Silicon Valley rhetoric, and the dangers of viewing global AI as a zero-sum game.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

What do you do about the new one? The AI ​​diffusion rule by the US government this week, which aims to curb China’s access to AI?

Paul Triolo: In general, it focuses on high-performance computing clusters. The rule also places controls on proprietary model weights for more advanced “frontier” models, but it is unclear how performance levels will be determined, and most open (freely shared) weight AI models are tuned and improved by users, including leading AI companies. in China.

The complex rule and uncertain compliance conditions inject considerable uncertainty into the long-term plans of medium and large US and Western hyperscalers.

For hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, AWS and Oracle, the rule introduces critical issues, including slower or more complex international expansion, new compliance and legal costs, impact on global R&D, and uncertain enforcement requirements.

How have previous measures, including sanctions introduced by the first Trump administration, affected the AI ​​industry?

Paul Triolo: US export controls have slowed down China, but at a high level the sanctions have unified the will and efforts of the Chinese government to become more self-sufficient. It has spent tens of billions to help local players regain technological capacity or scale in core areas, resulting in significant changes in the semiconductor industry and its ability to support advanced hardware for model development Frontier AI.

Chinese AI developers have become very good at leveraging legacy AI hardware from Western firms and are gradually integrating domestic alternatives into their development process. Chinese companies continue to innovate across the AI ​​hardware and software stack, if not at the pace of their Western counterparts.

Why do you think so many in Silicon Valley are now talking about the need to “beat China” in AI?

Paul Triolo: There is a growing link between conservative venture capitalists, mostly located in Silicon Valley, and technology companies whose business models depend on hyping the threat of China. This is a troubling combination that confuses the threat of China, personal gain, and pushback against the regulation of advanced AI. It also portrays US-China competition around AI as zero-sum, which is particularly dangerous.