Regulate AI, but don’t hand the 21st century to China
There's a real tension at the heart of this piece, and I think it's worth sitting with. Nobody serious is arguing for no rules on AI, but the authors worry that the rules we're writing could slow Western labs just as Chinese companies are pouring state money into their own models. That's not a trivial concern. The stakes are genuinely high. Whoever sets the standard for the next generation of AI may well set the standard for the economy and the military.
I'd want to know more about which regulations they think go too far. A lot of the current proposals in Europe and the US are about transparency and safety testing, which most people in the industry accept. The harder question is whether export controls and compute caps end up punishing our own researchers more than they punish Beijing.
I lean toward the view that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Regulate the known harms, keep the frontier open enough that innovation doesn't stall, and don't pretend China's state-backed model is unbeatable. The future isn't predetermined, but it will be shaped by choices we make now.