China is weak in frontier AI safety, and the domestic field is currently facing significant challenges and headwinds. Why? Here's a TL;DR field note after talking with various researchers on the Chinese side.
[Obligatory disclaimer: This post is written in my personal capacity and is not intended to represent the official stance of any organization(s) that I am in or have been in contact with]
Chinese AI startups and hyperscaler labs alike have very little frontier risk situational awareness. People can maybe name cybersecurity, but not much more than that. There is no intimate understanding of frontier risks. It's generally not deliberately ignorant or strategically not pursuing them; it's a complete vacuum of imagination. The Western field had FOOM debates in 2011, while China has nothing analogous in the mainstream AI research field consciousness before 2023.
Getting any funding at all is hard. If you are a domestic organization, being a non-profit means heavy suspicion (this had already played out in one of the most prominent Chinese safety orgs). Getting foreign EA funding/grants is basically a non-starter, given China's stringent foreign non-profit rules. Domestically, there's very little local EA money both in absolute terms and in terms of [...]
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