Lack of profits and the threat posed by western countries are raising concern about the sustainability of Beijing’s AI boom
Trillions of dollars have been wiped from China’s stock markets in recent months amid increasing anxiety about the future of artificial intelligence, as Beijing races against the United States for dominance in the sector.
The STAR 50 Index, which tracks technology and innovation companies on the Shanghai stock exchange, has plunged 40% since June. Other indexes of major companies dropped by about 20% over the same time period.
The precipitous drop has wiped out $2.4tn from the Chinese stock market since May, according to Bloomberg.
AI stocks account for over 40% of the stock market value in China and Hong Kong, according to Goldman Sachs, meaning that any dent in value will send shockwaves across the whole domestic market.
China treats AI more as infrastructure than something to directly profit off of, which is why this is a bit of a strange article. Their models are open weight generally, you aren’t legally allowed to replace a job with AI, and their models are optimized to be low-cost and efficient compared to western models. This isn’t a recipe for profit, but for public utility. It’s expected that The Guardian would frame their strategy from the viewpoint of capitalists seeking to maximize profits, though. It’s the same as when the CPC deliberately sank the cost of housing, which was being used as an investment vehicle, and capitalists complained about the market rather than highlighting the new affordability of housing.
The idea of AI as a public utility is pretty cool. But I admit you are an early advocate for this and encourage you to keep pushing it. Edit: my take is highlighting how economically unsustainable the models are under hyper surveillance capitalism, which compliments your take i think.
Is this AI thing a new Starwars campaign like the one that brought down the Soviet Union? If so, who’s to win? If anyone that is.
I still don’t know why it’s so hard for people to recognize that AI is incompatible with capitalism. You can’t just have an advanced autonomous system that increases competition drastically for extremely cheap and accessible be something profitable. It’s as if capitalism is forgetting that humans need to earn money to pay for things?
