EA - The state of AI in different countries - an overview by Lizka

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The state of AI in different countries - an overview, published by Lizka on September 14, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Note: I wrote this some weeks ago for the AI Safety Fundamentals Governance Course syllabus and figured I'd share it here. It might be outdated, and corrections are appreciated!Some are concerned that regulating AI progress in one country will slow that country down, putting it at a disadvantage in a global AI arms race. Many proponents of AI regulation disagree; they have pushed back on the overall framework, pointed out serious drawbacks and limitations of racing, and argued that regulations do not have to slow progress down. Another disagreement is about whether countries are in fact in a neck-and-neck arms race; some believe that the United States and its allies have a significant lead that would allow for regulation even if that does come at the cost of slowing down AI progress.This overview uses simple metrics and indicators to illustrate and discuss the state of frontier AI development in different countries - and relevant factors that shape how the picture might change.Key points:The top AI labs and models today are based in the United States and the United Kingdom.Key breakthroughs in AI research have largely come from the United States and Canada.China leads in the number of scientific publications and AI patent filings, but these numbers are complicated and rankings could be misleading; controlling for quality shows a U.S. lead.The following factors suggest that the United States and its allies will retain an advantage going forward:The United States invests more in AI than any other state.The United States and Europe have more access to top AI talent.The semiconductor supply chain is dominated by the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and the Netherlands. Moreover, the United States and allied countries have imposed significant export controls (and will likely continue introducing new controls) on semiconductors. These are already affecting Chinese companies' access to the most advanced AI chips.Censorship and other political and economic factors might hinder AI progress in China - and have already gotten in the way of AI development.If the United States and allied countries institute regulations that slow down AI development, they might similarly slow down AI progress in China, as Chinese advances in AI seem to significantly rely on research published abroad.Where frontier AI progress is happening right nowThe top AI labs and models are based in the United States and the United KingdomIn terms of product performance and funding, the leading AI labs right now are arguably OpenAI (which produced ChatGPT and GPT-4), Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and Meta AI. These are all U.S. companies or subsidiaries of U.S. companies. If we widen the scope of "leading" to include all labs that produced machine learning (ML) models called "significant" in Stanford's 2023 AI Index report, we still find that most of these labs are based in the United States.We can also measure national AI capabilities by comparing the number of important models produced in different countries. The 2023 AI Index reports that, according to their definition of "significant," the United States stood out with 16 significant ML systems, followed by the United Kingdom with 8, China with 3, and then Canada, Germany, France, India, Russia, and Singapore.Key breakthroughs in AI research have largely come from the United States and CanadaSince the "deep learning revolution," deep learning has become the main paradigm in AI progress. Three of the scientists whose work contributed to this transformation (and who received a Turing Award for their work) - Bengio, Hinton, and LeCun - are based in Canada and the United States.This reflects a broader pattern...