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Eric Schmidt and Bob Work: Our AI 'Sputnik Moment' Is Now (breakingdefense.com)
schwit1 shares a report from Breaking Defense: China's just announced an AI strategy designed to assure it will be dominant in the host of technologies by 2030. "If you believe this is important, as I believe, then we need to get our act together as a country," [Alphabet Exec Chairman Eric] Schmidt said this morning. In a Q and A session at the event organized by the Center for a New American Security, Schmidt said he thought the U.S. will maintain its lead over the People's Republic of China for the next five years, but he expects China to catch up about then and pass us "extremely quickly." How important does China think AI can be? Former Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told Breaking Defense the Chinese estimate they can boost economic growth with AI by 26 percent by 2030. "It's quite stunning," Work said. And, of course, the PRC's government has published a national strategy and released it to the world. What's the best response by the United States, I asked Work after Schmidt spoke. The federal government needs to answer this question at its highest levels, as happened after the Soviet Union stunned the world and launched the first satellite, Sputnik, Work said.
Disregarding the fact that that's a pretty specific estimate (not "20-30 percent" or "around 25%") which tends to make people believe it more (that's why when you negotiate, you should try to give a precise amount; it makes it appear as if you have more justification for the numbers); I'm not sure exactly what their claim means.
I think it means; take China's already staggering (and probably a little inflated) growth rate, and increase it by 26% EVERY YEAR.
That's instead of taking whatever growth would've happened between now and 2030 (at ~6%/year compounded, we're talking a very big amount) and increase it by 26%. This amount, while still very large is a lot smaller than increasing their ~6% growth rate by 26% every year (~6% x 1.26 = ~7.56%). Compounded annually it's huge.
In any case, the only thing that'll stop the juggernaut of Chinese "communism" from making economic vassals of us all is if there is some structural flaw in their system that'll reveal itself as it gets more developed/richer. Like, if the people who claim that Asian educational systems are not capable of turning out the kind of people who make discoveries as opposed to implementing them; if those people are right. Or if the Chinese masses, once they've moved up the hierarchy of "needs", decide that wealth without "freedom" is not worth it and change the system (hopefully without bringing the whole world down).
Reasonable people could disagree on these points and I'm not sure what will happen. If the U.S. hadn't shown how democracies can be perverted by demagogues (even stupid fraudulent ones); I would think the rise of autocratic China should be avoided at all costs. If they only had rule of law (instead of power and corruption) and at least a pretense of the protection of human rights, I might even consider them the rightful leaders of mankind.