The Western AI safety playbook doesn’t transfer to China

Crossposted from my blog . Last month, I spent two weeks in China talking with people about AI safety. I learned a lot and realized the biggest mistake might not be failing to help AI safety in China, but doing so in ways that could backfire. I also learned important context that I expect will be valuable for the West. Epistemic status: Some of these points are my opinion or the opinions of people I spoke to, and are worth further investigation rather than treated as gospel. Summary The Western way of building the field does not transfer one-to-one. The West built its ecosystem through a combination of philanthropy and decades of developing AI safety foundations, leading founders and employees of frontier labs and nonprofits to act (however misguided) on this philosophy. China does not have the same initial conditions and can’t simply accept non-Chinese philanthropy. In China, foreign nonprofit money is restricted by law, and the bar for a Chinese partner to take it on is very high. Safety work in China will mostly come from state-backed institutes, universities, companies and volunteers. Concordia AI, which I assumed for years was a nonprofit, is a social enterprise. Academic exch