AI Wars

[SOL]

Since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the semiconductor issue has taken a prominent place in the new government’s agenda. It not only relates to job creation and the “Build Back Better” plan, but it concerns the renaissance of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing leadership and, most of all, the future of U.S. leadership in the age of Asia. After Biden’s first two in-person summits – with Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide on April 16 and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on May 21 – the U.S. president reiterated the importance of semiconductor supply chain security and resilience. After the summits, the U.S. reiterated its intention to cooperate on semiconductor issues with Japan and South Korea. The long-term security and resilience of semiconductor supply chain is at risk, however, if that cooperation does not expand to other like-minded countries.

With the ongoing progress in China’s semiconductor market and support from the Chinese government, the United States’ current method of containing China’s technological progress in semiconductors is insufficient. In order to prevent China’s eventual dominance in the semiconductor industry, the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea must form a “Semi Quad” to coordinate their policies and efforts.

There are two major obstacles to establishing a resilient local semiconductor supply chain that would be invulnerable to geopolitics: The manufacturing base is over-clustered in Asia, especially in Taiwan, and there is a manufacturing decline in the United States. These dangerous conditions impact the U.S. semiconductor supply and pose a national security concern. Therefore, the Biden government expects to spend $50 billion in subsidies to revitalize U.S. semiconductor leadership. Intel, which had pledged to invest $20 billion in two fabs, is going to play an important role in the U.S. semiconductor renaissance. It might be the right move in the short term, as subsidies will increase the incentive for building fabs, but, arguably, the long-term goal of Biden’s plan might not be attained for the following reasons.

First of all, the shift of semiconductor manufacturing facilities from the U.S. to Asia – first to Japan and then to Taiwan and South Korea – over the past decades was driven by competitive advantages, just like other industries.

The production of chips is extremely capital and skilled-labor intensive. The capital expenditure for a 3 nm fab is $19 billion, which will see depreciation in just five years. This requires a high profit margin as well as a huge volume of sales to compensate for the high depreciation costs incurred from the new investment for advanced process technology. However, Intel failed to grab a share of the fast-growing mobile device market over the past 15 years, while, in the meantime, the PC market has been shrinking. In addition, the failure of Intel in 7 nm chips put the company at a relative disadvantage in competing with TSMC and Samsung. Therefore, the cost of staying at the leading edge in advanced semiconductor manufacturing is affordable only to TSMC and Samsung, which have already planned to build such fabs.


Other advantages of Asian manufacturers include satellite suppliers clustering, better customer service, and human resources. These produce a more cost-efficient edge over their competitors in the United States. The unit cost of chip production, not subsidies, is the fundamental factor behind competitiveness, which leads to success in the long run. In addition, a pure-play foundry – one that produces chips for other companies, rather than design its own products – is not a high-profit business model. A recent report by OECD estimates that the average gross margin of the pure-play foundry in 2018 is around 20 percent. This is why, over the past decades, Intel has gradually outsourced production to Asian fabs in order to concentrate on higher margin products.

At present, the division of labor in the semiconductor industry is quite defined. The United States dominates the upstream market with a lot of IP and machines required to produce integrated circuits (ICs), while Japan leads in raw materials, especially special chemical materials. Taiwan and South Korea are more cost-efficient in production.

However, these countries are all facing China’s catch-up in technology. History has shown us that if the Chinese know how to manufacture a product or service, sooner or later, China will take over the market due to cheap labor, lack of regulatory compliance, government subsidies, low taxes and duties, and compulsory technology transfer or theft. Today, Chinese-dominated industries range from materials, such as steel and chemicals, to consumer products like clothes and smartphones. Even China’s online and social media companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, WeChat, and ByteDance (the owner of TikTok), can compete with the West.

China consumed 143.4 billion worth of chips in 2020, a 9 percent yearly increase, and only $22.7 billion worth (15.9 percent) were produced in China. China has set an ambitious target for domestically-made chips to account of 70 percent of total consumption by the year 2025 and poured a new round of investment into semiconductors. The Chinese government has also set aside $155 billion in its latest five-year plan in support of the IC industry. We can expect another wave of transfers, legal or not, in intellectual property and talent to China over the next few years.

While China’s current problem lies in its inability to manufacture high-end chips, its semiconductor companies shorten the learning curve very quickly through technology transfer, including, among other means, hiring experts from abroad and using compulsory technology transfer – or even theft. Chinese companies are poaching from all over the world all available technology and talent along the full spectrum of IC design and production, including related machines. For example, three recently founded Chinese companies, X-Epic, Shanghai Hejian Industrial Software, and Amedac, have hired veterans from Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems to develop Chinese-made electronic design automation (EDA) tools. Other semiconductor companies in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea have been targeted by China’s hacking and talent poaching.

Therefore, it is clear that the U.S. government alone cannot stop China from advancing its semiconductor industry. Given the small portion of semiconductors made in the United States, the current U.S. policy neither limits China from the acquisition of high-sensitive chips and technology, nor outweighs Xi Jinping’s call for technology autonomy in semiconductor production. The governments of the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea must coordinate efforts to respond to aggressive tactics from China.

Given that different semiconductor technologies are scattered among the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, and the degree of technology protection among manufacturers may differ, it is difficult to fully prevent advanced semiconductor technology from entering China. If the Biden administration wants to fully contain the high-speed progress of semiconductor technology in China, further containment policies and multi-country coordination are needed. Unless the U.S. can form a “semi-Quad” alliance, a mechanism like Quad or Five Eyes, and coordinate policies with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, fair competition and resilient trade in semiconductors will be difficult to realize.

https://thediplomat.com/2021/05/time-fo ... -alliance/

[Budge]

Baidu:

"Chinese multinational technology company Baidu just released its first quantum computer on Thursday.

The first superconducting quantum computer, "Qian Shi" can integrate hardware, software, and many applications. Baidu also introduced the world's first all-platform quantum hardware-software integration solution - Liang Xi - that provides access to various quantum chips via mobile app, PC, and cloud.

Qian Shi is expected to solve data that a standard computer cannot calculate and problems that cannot be solved. This development is also thought to be a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, computational biology, material simulation, and financial technology.

Qian Shi offers a stable and substantial quantum computing service to the public with high-fidelity 10 quantum bits (qubits) of power. Apart from Qian Shi, Baidu has recently developed the design of a 36-qubit superconducting quantum chip.

Accessing quantum computers will be easier
Baidu seems to keep making a difference. Another quantum solution that plugs into Qian Shi is Liang Xi.

"With Qian Shi and Liang Xi, users can create quantum algorithms and use quantum computing power without developing their own quantum hardware, control systems, or programming languages," said Dr. Runyao Duan, Director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at Baidu Research.

"Baidu's innovations make it possible to access quantum computing anytime and anywhere, even via smartphone. Baidu's platform is also instantly compatible with a wide range of quantum chips, meaning 'plug-and-play' access is now a reality."

Over 200 technology patents in the quantum field
These latest innovations are backed by Baidu Research's Institute for Quantum Computing, whose technological footprint covers a wide range of areas, including quantum algorithms and applications, communications and networks, encryption and security, error correction, architecture, measurement and control, and chip design.

MOST POPULAR
Across more than four years of research and development, Baidu has submitted over 200 core technology patent applications in the quantum technology field.

About Institute for Quantum Computing at Baidu Research
The Institute for Quantum Computing at Baidu Research was established in March 2018 by Dr. Runyao Duan. He is also the founding director of the Quantum Software and Information Centre at the University of Technology Sydney.

As Baidu claims, they aim to integrate quantum technologies into Baidu's core business, with the institute developing towards the goal of becoming a world-leading Quantum Artificial Intelligence (AI) research.

The Institute for Quantum Computing at Baidu Research aims at building full-stack quantum software and hardware solutions and focuses on the breakthrough in fundamental Quantum research.

Baidu campaigned to succeed in the vision of a world where "Everyone Can Quantum.""

https://interestingengineering.com/inno ... 26-08-2022

[SOL]

China has won AI battle with U.S., Pentagon's ex-software chief says

China, the world’s second largest economy, is likely to dominate many of the key emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics within a decade or so, according to Western intelligence assessments.

Nicolas Chaillan, the Pentagon's first chief software officer who resigned in protest against the slow pace of technological transformation in the U.S. military, said the failure to respond was putting the United States at risk.

"We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion," he told the newspaper. "Whether it takes a war or not is kind of anecdotal."

China was set to dominate the future of the world, controlling everything from media narratives to geopolitics, he said.

Chaillan blamed sluggish innovation, the reluctance of U.S. companies such as Google (GOOGL.O) to work with the state on AI and extensive ethical debates over the technology.

Google was not immediately available for comment outside business hours.

Chinese companies, Chaillan said, were obliged to work with their government and were making "massive investment" in AI without regard to ethics.

He said U.S. cyber defences in some government departments were at "kindergarten level".

https://www.reuters.com/technology/unit ... 021-10-11/



The Pentagon’s first-ever chief software officer abruptly quit earlier this month, and now we know exactly why: Nicolas Chaillan, former CSO of the United States Air Force and Space Force, told the Financial Times that the United States has “no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years” when it comes to cyberwarfare and artificial intelligence.

Chaillan, a 37-year-old tech entrepreneur, added that cyber defenses at many government agencies are at “kindergarten level,” and that companies like Google were doing the US a disservice by not working with the military more on AI, since Chinese companies were making a “massive investment” in AI without getting all hung up on the ethics of it all. And while quitting your job because America has already lost the AI race is a bit dramatic, Chaillan isn’t the only one who’s concerned about China’s dominance in this arena.

Earlier this year, the National Security Commission on AI, a project chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, also boldly declared that China is poised to surpass the US as the world’s “AI superpower.” In a statement signed by Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Stephen Hawking, among thousands of scientists, the commission said, “AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is — practically if not legally — feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.”


For years, pundits have been comparing the AI race to the space race — and warning that the US is losing it. It’s a handy analogy, since it helps Americans put current conflicts with countries like China and Russia into the familiar context of the Cold War. Many have argued that we’ve found ourselves in a second Cold War and that the country that wins the AI race will take the throne as the dominant superpower. But the AI revolution isn’t just about fighting wars or geopolitical dominance. What we’re racing to build will transform almost every aspect of our lives, from how we run businesses to how we process information to how we get around.


You could also look to present-day China to see what the near future of a more AI-centric society might look like. As Kai-Fu Lee argues in his book AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, China has been more aggressive at implementing AI breakthroughs, especially in surveillance and data collection applications, thanks in part to government support and a lack of oversight that’s let some tech companies there leapfrog the competition and dominate entire industries. WeChat and its parent company, Tencent, are perfect examples of this. On WeChat, privacy does not seem to be a priority, but the vast quantities of data the app can collect are certainly helpful for training AI.

“Imagine, if you will, that Facebook acquired Visa and Mastercard and integrated everything into the functions, as well as invested money into Amazon and Uber and OpenTable and so on and so forth, and made an ecosystem that once you log into Facebook, all these things are one click away and then you could pay for them with another click,” Lee told New York magazine. “That is the kind of convenience that WeChat brought about, and its true worth is the gigantic data set of all the user data that goes through it.”

This is the sort of winning-at-all costs approach that appears to give China a leg up in the AI race. China also appears to be playing catch-up when it comes to establishing standards for algorithmic ethics. Just last week, the country issued its first-ever guidelines on AI ethics. The US has long known that algorithms can be racist or sexist, and the Pentagon adopted its guidelines on ethical AI nearly two years ago. And as we’ve learned more recently, the AI that companies like Facebook and YouTube use to serve up content can also be used to radicalize people and undermine democracy. That’s why — especially in the wake of Facebook’s whistleblower scandal that revealed internal research showing that its products were harmful to some users, including teenage girls — lawmakers in the US lately seem more interested in talking about how to regulate algorithms than how to beat China in the AI race.

The two things aren’t mutually exclusive, by the way. Chaillan, the former military software chief, has certainly earned his right to an opinion about how quickly the US is developing its cyber defenses and artificially intelligent computers. And now that he’s taking his knowledge of how the Pentagon works to the private sector, he’ll probably make good money addressing his concerns. For the rest of us, the rise of AI shouldn’t feel like a race against China. It’s more like a high-stakes poker game.

This story first published in the Recode newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!

https://www.vox.com/recode/22725044/chi ... gon-wechat

[SOL]

When it comes to its technological and economic future, the US generally believes:

The USA’s prosperity and relative technological and economic prominence is guaranteed no matter what
The most powerful nations in the world will democracies, where free speech and elected officials will (albeit not perfectly) enact the will of the people
Bumbling forward with the same model for academic and private-sector innovation will still be able to keep the USA ahead of competitors in technological development
I believe these to be fatal assumptions.

The decade ahead will make it clear that the United States must, as it has in the past, earn its prosperity and its technological leadership – something that many Americans now take completely for granted. This will involve a focus on the competitiveness of the US economy – and a willingness to continually earn its place in the international order.

It is already patently clear that the Western model of governance, the legacy of Pericles and John Locke and Washington, is by no means the only method to a prosperous nation, or to a competitive international economy. China has already proven this, yet many in the West assume that it’s only a matter of time before China becomes a modern democracy.

Given the stakes at hand (which I hope to address by the end of this essay), the West should consider its global position as far from secure. More challenging still, the West may need to understand that many of its dear and true values may hold it back from being relevant in an inevitably AI-enabled future.

The AI Race – Seven Weaknesses of the West
I’ll briefly run through the potential competitive advantages of China’s mode of political and technological governance. The points listed below are probably assumed to be strengths by most Americans, but they may, in fact, be massive weaknesses in global competition with China’s top-down methods:



https://emerj.com/ai-power/the-usa-china-ai-race/


The story makes for a good read. I posted a snippet above, but the image provides a good summary of the entire article.

[scott]

And the beat goes on...

One of China’s most promising chip designers has already navigated through the Biden administration’s export restrictions and concluded it will be able to continue tapping Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to produce its advanced silicon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ify%20wall

[chippermon]

And the beat goes on...

One of China’s most promising chip designers has already navigated through the Biden administration’s export restrictions and concluded it will be able to continue tapping Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to produce its advanced silicon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ify%20wall

Yeah. As you are well aware, Scott, there always seems to be a way to get around it. Often ways to work around are left open on purpose. Perhaps most often

[scott]

And the beat goes on...

One of China’s most promising chip designers has already navigated through the Biden administration’s export restrictions and concluded it will be able to continue tapping Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to produce its advanced silicon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ify%20wall

Yeah. As you are well aware, Scott, there always seems to be a way to get around it. Often ways to work around are left open on purpose. Perhaps most often

[SOL]

And the beat goes on...

One of China’s most promising chip designers has already navigated through the Biden administration’s export restrictions and concluded it will be able to continue tapping Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to produce its advanced silicon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ify%20wall

Yeah. As you are well aware, Scott, there always seems to be a way to get around it. Often ways to work around are left open on purpose. Perhaps most often

Hahahaha Scott, you have a knack of softly delivering your point

[scott]

New discovery paves the way for finding the holy grail of quantum computing
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech ... uting.html

[Yodean]

*****

Pesky humans are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

[jlhooter]

*****

Pesky humans are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

I am just scratching the surface with AI to see how it can help in my job. We'll see

[Yodean]

*****

Pesky humans are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

I am just scratching the surface with AI to see how it can help in my job. We'll see

Fellow sub langdj (tech dude, previous cloud architect) is quite adept at using chattygeepee and similar programs at his work, from what I remember.

[SOL]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4sDzid ... ickChapsas

[Yodean]

*****

A.I. is deflating artists at an exponential rate. The above is a conception of how those billionaires would have looked if they grew up in an ossified kleptocracy like Russia, and simultaneously engaged in excessive intermittent fasting from a young age.

[Budge]

A quote from Jared Dillian's "The 10th Man":

My theory on AI is that it’s going to drastically improve productivity, setting off another productivity boom like we had in the ‘90s, which will offset some of the inflation we are experiencing. The only thing you will need a lawyer for is the letterhead. The demand letter will write itself.

It will also displace a lot of jobs. There is nothing to fear here, and this is no time to fire up the universal basic income. We will destroy some jobs and create other jobs. Everyone had the same fears about the internet. The internet destroyed some jobs and created new ones, with lots more productivity. We were better off in the long run.

Weird things are going to happen. People will develop romantic relationships with chatbots. Get ready to hear more about this. Especially teenagers. Young people will form attachments to chatbots instead of other humans. Wives will “cheat” on their husbands with chatbots. People will get divorced over chatbots. Wait and see.

A friend of mine, Chand Sooran, observed that when the internet was invented, it obviated the need for memory. Now that AI has been invented, it will obviate the need for intellect. What remains? Emotional intelligence—dealing with other people. People skills will become even more valuable in an AI world.

emphasis added