Wrong choices of example, wrong units of competition. Hopefully this will illustrate my point: the West won the gunboat race, and it was devastating for every other civilisation.
On your specific examples electricity was a gimmick for the first decade or so, and cars were something businesses competed to sell but weren’t life-changing for nearly half a century; coming first isn’t life-changing because the time it takes to get an advantage is smaller than the time it takes the invention to disseminate. This isn’t a fundamental law of the universe, you have to work it out for each example.
Britain won the industry race so won the 19th century because industrialising takes time. If Germany had won the nukes race, they’d have got one hell of an advantage a lot faster than anyone else would’ve stolen their secrets.
So far as units of competition, 19th century Western countries just weren’t that all-out competitive with each other, and Taiwan/Europe can really be treated as part of the US after WW2.
If China develops AI, they’re not going to release the source code or stick their findings on sci hub. It’ll be a secret defence project (so long dissemination time), with every incentive to deploy it instantly if it’s really a game changer (depending on how useful it is, to crack everyone’s crypto, disable the US’ nuclear forces or permanently prevent anyone else from developing AI - short advantage time). More to the point, if China develops it first, it’ll presumably be horribly aligned (same applies to Zuckerberg), but without anyone knowing or being able to take a regulatory sledgehammer to it.
Finally, accepting the AI=genie premise, Xi Jinping simply isn’t going to do anything you’d remotely like with it. It’ll be a tool to ensure the CCP’s global hegemony and a boot stamping on a human face forever.
Wrong choices of example, wrong units of competition. Hopefully this will illustrate my point: the West won the gunboat race, and it was devastating for every other civilisation.
On your specific examples electricity was a gimmick for the first decade or so, and cars were something businesses competed to sell but weren’t life-changing for nearly half a century; coming first isn’t life-changing because the time it takes to get an advantage is smaller than the time it takes the invention to disseminate. This isn’t a fundamental law of the universe, you have to work it out for each example.
Britain won the industry race so won the 19th century because industrialising takes time. If Germany had won the nukes race, they’d have got one hell of an advantage a lot faster than anyone else would’ve stolen their secrets.
So far as units of competition, 19th century Western countries just weren’t that all-out competitive with each other, and Taiwan/Europe can really be treated as part of the US after WW2.
If China develops AI, they’re not going to release the source code or stick their findings on sci hub. It’ll be a secret defence project (so long dissemination time), with every incentive to deploy it instantly if it’s really a game changer (depending on how useful it is, to crack everyone’s crypto, disable the US’ nuclear forces or permanently prevent anyone else from developing AI - short advantage time). More to the point, if China develops it first, it’ll presumably be horribly aligned (same applies to Zuckerberg), but without anyone knowing or being able to take a regulatory sledgehammer to it.
Finally, accepting the AI=genie premise, Xi Jinping simply isn’t going to do anything you’d remotely like with it. It’ll be a tool to ensure the CCP’s global hegemony and a boot stamping on a human face forever.