Inside China's AI Ecosystem: A View From Beijing

**L-squared** (0:00)
They're having to spread their bets fairly widely because there isn't a real standout front runner in China for LLMs in the way that you might see just two or three really standout players in the US.
You don't see as much research happening in China on AI alignment. You don't see top labs here committing to responsible scaling policies in the same way that Anthropic and OpenAI have. There's a lot less thinking here about corporate governance mechanisms that might need to be in place to mitigate the worst risk from AI. But maybe this is because you don't have in China such a long history of labs that are explicitly focused on building AGI.

**Nathan Labenz** (0:52)
Hello and welcome to The Cognitive Revolution, where we interview visionary researchers, entrepreneurs, and builders working on the frontier of artificial intelligence. Each week, we'll explore their revolutionary ideas, and together we'll build a picture of how AI technology will transform work, life, and society in the coming years. I'm Nathan Labenz, joined by my co-host Erik Thornburg. Hello and welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution. Today, I'm excited to share another episode in our experimental series providing wide-angle coverage of critical AI topics.
This time, we're providing a bird's-eye view of the Chinese AI ecosystem.
My guest is a tech worker and AI watcher based in Beijing who goes by the pen name L Squared. She prefers to remain anonymous, not because her takes are super spicy. On the contrary, I think you'll find that they're very well grounded and not at all sensationalist, but just out of an abundance of caution given her location and employment situation.
In this wide-ranging conversation, we cover the major AI players in China, the quality of Chinese models and products and how they compare to US offerings, the Chinese public's engagement with AI products, the state of AI regulation in China and the Chinese government's general stance toward AI technology, the impact of the US chip man both today and in the years ahead, the state of US-China AI research collaborations, and much more along the way as well. One of my key takeaways is that the US and Chinese AI ecosystems are in many ways more similar than they are different. In both countries, the major tech giants are leading the charge by writing the biggest checks to AI startups, providing critical infrastructure, and increasingly competing with those same startups in the race to bring AI products to consumers and businesses.
Research in both countries is also being pushed forward by a mix of big tech, top universities, and startups.
In terms of differences, the most important one is simply that there are no standout labs in China that are pushing the frontiers of possibility in the way that OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic are doing here in the United States. Beyond that, L Squared shares fascinating details on the current state of China's AI regulations, which on paper are quite onerous, requiring companies to jump through significant hoops to bring products to market, but which so far seem to be enforced only very loosely. We also discussed the apparent lack of jailbreaking culture that comes to the fore whenever a major new model or product is released here in the West. I am very grateful to L Squared for taking the time to share her knowledge and perspective on all of this, and I also want to thank Jordan Schneider of Chinatalk for making this connection possible. For more of L Squared's writing on AI in China, you can refer to the Chinatalk newsletter. We did have some minor recording issues due to VPN bandwidth limitations while recording this episode, and so we are using an AI-enhanced version of the web recording. I think it sounds very good overall. That's a testament to the power of modern AI systems, but if you hear any weirdness along the way, that's why. As always, if you find value in this work, please take a moment to share it with friends. Regular listeners will know that while my politics are generally very libertarian, and I certainly would not want to live under the Chinese government's restrictive speech codes, my bias is to look for ways to de-escalate US-China tension. And I hope that content like this, which provides an up-to-date, on-the-ground perspective on the state of Chinese AI technology, can serve as a counterweight to the worst fears that our collective imaginations might conjure up. Finally, if you've got a unique perspective on another important area in AI, even if that's just a contrasting perspective on the Chinese AI ecosystem, I would love to work with you to make an episode about it. So please reach out via our website, cognitiverevolution.ai, or by DMing me on your favorite social network. Now, I hope you enjoy this Insider's View on China's AI ecosystem with L Squared. Technology worker and AI watcher based in Beijing, China, previously published on the China Talk blog with some outstanding analysis. Thank you to Jordan for making this possible with a timely connection. Welcome to The Cognitive Revolution.