Nathan Goes to China #3: US-China Relations, the Art of the AI Deal & the Road to Pax Robotica

Nathan Labenz (0:00)

Hello, and welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution. Today, with a potentially historic meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi just a couple weeks away, and AI governance expected to be a major part of their agenda, I'm excited to share the third and final installment of my Nathan Goes to China series, in which I'll offer my thoughts on US-China relations and what we can do to improve our chances of successfully navigating the AGI era.

I begin with an overview of what I think our goal for the US-China relationship should be. In short, I argue that our goal should not be to win, but rather to realize a future of peace and abundance in which both countries and the world as a whole can share in the tremendous benefits of AI without running extreme risks or creating new AI swords of Damocles. I call this a Pax Machina, or perhaps better, a Pax Robotica. From there, I move on to a high level assessment of China's strengths and weaknesses relative to the United States. My core point, which I expect most China watchers will find rather obvious, but might still be news to Silicon Valley AI obsessives of a certain age, is that China's rise, in general and in the field of AI research specifically, should not be understood as a recent change, but as a return to the long-term historical norm. Which to me suggests that any attempt to delay Chinese progress can succeed for a short period of time at most. Beyond that, we should expect China to be a top-tier live player in essentially every major area of human endeavor, and we should not be surprised when more and more labor and life-saving technologies, from domestic-servant robots to disease cures, are invented first in China.

After that, I attempt to articulate the Chinese perspective on recent history and international relations. In short, the Chinese have learned very much the hard way by living through what they call their century of humiliation, that technological inferiority is extremely dangerous, and that technological strength is the one great source of power and security. And so, they are naturally determined never to fall behind, or even to become overly reliant on other countries for key technologies ever again, no matter what it takes. And they understand American Semiconductor Export Controls and our general rhetoric around winning the AI race, as reflecting our desire to keep them down, or potentially even worse.

That said, while technological leadership and self-sufficiency are non-negotiable parts of the Chinese strategy, it's my view that the United States and the West more broadly should see this as a motivating challenge, but not necessarily as a threat. After all, Chinese rhetoric suggests not only that they share many of our concerns regarding AI safety and control, but also that they would prefer a collaborative international approach to global AI governance, and would rather avoid an AI arms race. So far at least, they've backed this up. By publishing their research in English, and especially by releasing open weights models for all to use as they wish, China has established itself as the leading provider of global AI public goods. The second half of today's episode focuses on what I believe the United States should do in response. For starters, given our geographic good fortune and our peerless cultural and economic dynamism, we should not fear China, but we should learn both from China's mistakes and their successes. We too must make sure that we don't fall behind the technological frontier, which means that we can't simply exclude Chinese technology, but rather we will need to actively seek to develop state capacity with American characteristics, and also to learn from China in the areas that they now lead.

In AI specifically, I emphasize above all the importance of maintaining a shared AI paradigm, and how dangerous it would be for us to allow our relative tech stacks to diverge to the point where neither side can be confident about the other's capabilities.

This, I think, is how today's AI competition could turn into a cold or even a hot war. And this is a big part of the reason that I remain skeptical of export controls, even though I do recognize that they will help America keep its lead in AI for a bit longer than we otherwise would. Altogether, unless you are very confident in short AI timelines and willing to bet on your own particular flavor of recursive self-improvement going well, such that nothing else much matters, I believe the overall picture suggests that the United States should seek a deal whereby we trade chips, and perhaps even some chip making know-how, for Chinese expertise in solar energy, batteries, robotics, and much more, effectively re-coupling our economies without creating vulnerabilities or dependencies that either side finds unacceptable. Some of my ideas I recognize might seem a bit fanciful. I don't expect that we'll see jointly controlled research compute, software security standards robust enough to allow Huawei to compete in the US market, or confidential computing arrangements that allow each side to verify the other's claims without exposing secrets in the immediate future. But I do think we can make some very meaningful moves to reduce tensions unilaterally even in the lead up to the summit, by simply, for example, clarifying that rules meant to limit China's access to chips are not meant to interfere with AI safety or other research collaborations.