China will most probably win the AI race in the long run because of one major bottleneck the US has - energy. The electric energy and grid buildout in China has been massive since a long time and there is simply no way for the US to quickly catch up.
No matter how much cash you throw you can't just materialize a 100 nuclear reactors to power the data centers.
I think we are talking about the medium term for China to pull ahead. They just released a new domestic AI chip which seems in important ways to have caught up to Nvidias previous generation. They have a LOT more manufacturing capacity. They are collaborating via open source by default. They have better materials access and much more energy capacity. They have many more people overall and more researchers.
There is a strong chance most of the researchers are pulled out of the US and Europe if WWIII really kicks off or even if there is just more global crisis and concern.
One other thing about the power needs. Within a few years, the power efficiency of AI chips is likely to improve by a factor of 20, 50 or more times by switching to true compute-in-memory architecture with new materials that have made rapid progress lately.
I think you underestimate what a massive country China is and the scale of their military. Russia is already quite an adversary, but China is at an even higher level. By some metrics, they have already surpassed the US military.
So it is very unlikely that a neighbor will have the audacity to attack them, and even if this happens, i'd expect the war to be over rapidly. Just like if Canada or Mexico tried to attack the US.
margorczynski · · focus · HN ↗
No matter how much cash you throw you can't just materialize a 100 nuclear reactors to power the data centers.
ilaksh · · focus · HN ↗
There is a strong chance most of the researchers are pulled out of the US and Europe if WWIII really kicks off or even if there is just more global crisis and concern.
One other thing about the power needs. Within a few years, the power efficiency of AI chips is likely to improve by a factor of 20, 50 or more times by switching to true compute-in-memory architecture with new materials that have made rapid progress lately.
ShinyLeftPad · · focus · HN ↗
for wwiii it would likely imply a war in asia too, so it's not as if PRC will be a safe place for those researches to run away to.
rednb · · focus · HN ↗
So it is very unlikely that a neighbor will have the audacity to attack them, and even if this happens, i'd expect the war to be over rapidly. Just like if Canada or Mexico tried to attack the US.
victorbjorklund · · focus · HN ↗