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Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand is why this is always presented as a "race" that "we" have to win or else. It's just such a strange framing to me and every time I see it, it's presented as some sort of self-evident truth, but I don't think it's self-evident at all.

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The "race" analogy is entirely driven by venture capital framing: they are interested in controlling the market usually done by getting to a certain dominant position within the overall space thereby crowding out new entrants and being able to direct where the market goes.

China's lead efforts on the other hand look to the long view - by releasing their products as open-source they can improve on each other's work. No one controls the market but there is constant competition and innovation.

All this is besides the point, however, for this article claims that OpenAI is using China as an excuse to have unfettered access to all copyrighted works through the fair use loophole.

So the crux is whether we believe in "innovation uber alles" or intellectual property rights.

Nature is a complex system. Many are in competition, it's not just humans. Most of these systems form a balance (see biodiversity). Due to resource scarcity, power tends to form which gives these power structures and advantage. Humans form these power structures arounds groups. This has been happening for as long as humans tribalised. Right now, humans can form these groups at nation-state level complexity and to some extent more global. This is humans current best effort. If you can do better, please do.

No need to even complicate it to that degree. A wrong begets another wrong forever unless someone stops doing the next wrong thing. That's literally what it takes.

That doesn't answer the question.

It's a race with winners and losers because ego and money. Ego because … well, ego.

Money because whoever develops the most powerful AI and gets enough people to buy into it, will probably retain the top spot for quite a while because inertia (sort of like how Google got to be where it is).

I'm sure some level of paranoia feeds into it at some level. Whoever gets locked in the public's mindset will rule the world and if it's not a Silicon Valley magnate, then they are losers.

>>Nature is a complex system.

There is no winner take all in an ecosystem. If it happens, that ecosystem collapses !!

It is strange that you use this as an example yet fail to understand it fully.

Nature is a complex system ... with adaptive feedback. Every process is a cycle - has feedbacks that amplifies/regulates it. Yes there are apex predators, but there is no winner take all in an ecosystem. Living beings coexist.

I mean, I do think we should want to win the race, the point is they want to keep all the money. You can literally just offer equity as compensation to "content providers" and we won't have any problems with liquidity issues on the development side, and people can still be compensated or opt out.

OpenAI doesn't want to do that.

> I do think we should want to win the race

Why, though? I can understand the companies involved wanting to be first in order to maximize their profit, but why should that matter to anybody else?

Uhh... because nations should care about their economic output? And want to maximize that output all things being equal?

It’s yet to be proven that AI will increase economic output. Some might argue that reducing the economic benefits for the many in order to maximize the output of the whole may backfire horribly over the long-term.

I'm talking about the firms that develop AI. The entire point of the conversation is "why should countries care about businesses being in their country as opposed to elsewhere." The point is obvious that where businesses operate is important to the economic output of a nation.

Sorry, but your attempt to reframe my response was not successful. If AI is harmful to society, the “winning” of the AI race may not be beneficial to that society.

It seems like the term "race" comes from "arms race".

Perhaps the future of Silicon Valley is to be the home of defense contractors.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/SiliconValle...

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