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How China gets better bang for its buck than America in AI. Its investment lags far behind America’s. Its models do not (www.economist.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 7 points 3 months ago (22 children)

Being the pioneer means doing the heavy lifting and making mistakes. So makes sense, China can learn for others mistakes

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    That'd only make sense if this was a total investment thing, but it's not. America is investing at a higher rate yet China is getting more returns. Who started first is irrelevant here.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Im not sure how that cancels out what they said. One of their first models said "I'm ChatGPT" when asked who are you and it was rumored they used OpenAI model outputs for training.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I think of it like drafting behind another vehicle on the speedway. The car behind gets higher fuel efficiency

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    But the problem there is that China is clearly ahead of America now when it comes to AI, so if that was it they wouldn't be getting higher fuel efficiency anymore.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    China is clearly ahead of America

    Well that's debatable. The article implies that the US is still ahead. The root comment of this thread implies that the US is still ahead. Your earlier comment made no mention of this idea. Clearly if that was part of your argument you should have brought it up earlier

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    The article implies that the US is still ahead.

    The whole point of the article is that it's not (or at least not enough for the disparity we're seeing).

    The root comment of this thread implies that the US is still ahead.

    No, it implies it was ahead at one point (which is obviously true)

    Its investment lags far behind America’s. Its models do not

    Their models appear only fractionally less powerful owing to this frugality. K3, an advanced model launched last month by Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based startup, is 95% as clever (on widely used benchmarks) as Fable 5, a frontier model from Anthropic, another top American lab. It is also 70% cheaper to use. On August 3rd Alibaba, a Chinese tech giant, released a model which reportedly scored among the world’s best by some measures.

    See also: Chinese models showing up at or near the top in leaderboards. Admittedly it seems I was wrong about China being clearly ahead, but what little gap exists is far from enough to explain the disparity in investment efficacy.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    little gap exists is far from enough to explain the disparity in investment efficacy.

    This is difficult to say. From what I've seen AI gains are slowing down, so catching up might not be that hard anymore. We'll see from here if China is able to pull a clear lead. If so, then that's clear evidence that they aren't just copying

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (14 children)

    China loves to steal tech.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Oh come on all of AI is built on stolen tech, you can't get mad at China for playing by the same rules as everyone else.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Which is great. Intellectual property is innovation-stifling cancer. I'd certainly rather China have the tech to make all those EVs than leave the West to hoard it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    I don’t necessarily disagree, but you’re a trashy person stop talking to me mrdown

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    I'll never understand why people keep saying I'm Mrdown.

    Edit: Oh it's not "people" it's just you. Still, why Mrdown in particular? Like what's the thought process here?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    The problem with not doing the heavy lifting yourself and using derived technology and ideas is that in evolutionary terms you are not selecting for innovators. Down the road this approach becomes ingrained both philosophically and in reality as you let your own innovators wither on the vine.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah China's VERY good at reverse engineering stuff and playing catch up. Haven't really seen them take a clear lead in developing new technology in any field though.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    That's more due to the lack of new technology these days. AI aside most modern engineering is incremental improvements to existing technology—that's the innovation everyone is doing.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    GenAI? Self-driving cars? Robots? Materials science?

    All science and innovation is incremental, but some have bigger impacts than others.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    In order:

    GenAI?

    I said "AI aside" for a reason.

    Self-driving cars?

    Fair enough, though I don't hear much about those these days.

    Robots? Materials science?

    No idea what's going on with materials science, but robots aren't exactly new, so this is incremental improvement to existing technology.

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