China's Risk-Taking With AI Gives It Edge Over U.S.

US companies are currently ahead in the AI race, with wildly popular offerings like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Photo Insert: As AI tools have become widely available to the public, experts have expressed concerns about how they can be misused, and what could happen as AI becomes more powerful.

But as competition intensifies, China could very well overtake the US, according to a top venture capital veteran, Prarthana Prakash reported for Fortune.

Vinod Khosla, founder of Menlo Park, Calif.–based Khosla Ventures, one of OpenAI’s early investors, thinks the US would lose out if it slackens the pace of work on AI. “We shouldn’t take for granted [that] we will lead in AI technology 20 years from now,” Khosla told Bloomberg.

He added that China has an edge over the US because the country can “take many more risks, make many more errors.” Khosla warns “we need to win this race,” adding “democracy and freedom of speech and a whole bunch of things all of us believe in” are also at stake.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been vocal about his fears surrounding the misuse of AI and has said that an AI pause would only be advantageous for China.

As AI tools have become widely available to the public, experts have expressed concerns about how they can be misused, and what could happen as AI becomes more powerful.

A group of tech executives and academics signed an open letter in March calling for a six-month hiatus in developing advanced AI systems because of their “profound risks to society and humanity.”

The letter now has over 27,000 signatories. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was among the first to join the letter, but Khosla thinks his real reason for advocating for an AI pause was so that his companies could get up to speed with new developments.

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