Vitalik's Blog: The "Ring Model" Reveals the Reversal of the China-US AI Competition Landscape

Author | Vitalik

Compiled by | Aki Chen Wu said blockchain

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According to an article published by Vitalik, people believe that "China is a country that values closure and control, while American technology is generally more inclined towards open source than Chinese technology," but it now seems they are completely wrong. This is because it is difficult to change a culture's way of dealing with existing things, as well as the way of dealing with things that have already become entrenched. The appeal of the crypto space is that it provides an independent technological and cultural foundation to do new things without being overly burdened by the biases of the existing status quo.

This article will present Vitalik's proposed "Cultural and Political Year Wheel Model" and its profound analysis of the current global artificial intelligence and technology regulatory landscape.

Core logic: The attitude of culture towards new things is shaped by the social atmosphere at the time of their formation, while the attitude towards old things is determined by inherent inertia. Once these "cultural annuities" are formed, they are very difficult to change.

The increasing regulatory reality under the name of neoliberalism

Throughout my growth, there has been one thing that often confuses me: people repeatedly claim that we live in a "deeply neoliberal society" that highly advocates for "deregulation." However, what perplexes me is that despite the fact that quite a number of people do fight for neoliberalism and deregulation, the regulatory policies actually implemented by the government are quite different from these ideals. The total number of federal-related regulatory regulations has not decreased but increased, with various rules such as KYC (Know Your Customer), copyright regulations, and airport security measures becoming increasingly stringent. Moreover, since World War II, the proportion of federal tax revenue to GDP in the United States has also remained relatively stable.

1. Intuition Meets Reality: The "Year Wheel Model" Reveals the Reversal of the AI Landscape Between China and the U.S.

If you had told someone in 2020 that five years later, one would dominate the open-source AI sector while the other would excel in the closed-source AI sector, they might have stared at you, questioning whether you were throwing a trick question. This is because the United States has consistently emphasized openness, while China tends to be more inclined towards closure and control. From an overall technological trend perspective, American tech companies seem to prefer open-source models far more than their Chinese counterparts, which appears to be quite obvious! However, it turns out that this intuition was completely wrong.

What exactly happened? In this article, I will propose a simple explanatory approach, which I call the "tree ring model of politics and culture":

The specific content of the model is as follows:

A culture's approach to new things depends on the prevailing attitudes and incentive mechanisms of that culture at a specific time.

A culture's approach to old things is primarily driven by the inertia of maintaining the status quo (i.e., "status quo bias").

Every era carves a new "ring" on the tree of culture, and when this new ring is formed, society generates a series of concepts aimed at emerging phenomena. However, once these concepts are established, they quickly become fixed, deeply rooted, and difficult to shake. Subsequently, a new ring will continue to stack on this foundation, driving society to shape the next wave of cultural attitudes and responses to new topics.

Next, we can analyze the previous situation and other similar cases using the model mentioned above:

2. From the Internet to AI: How Cultural Inertia Guides Technology Regulation in China and the U.S.

The United States did indeed go through a period of deregulation, but the peak of this trend mainly occurred in the 1990s (if you look closely at the data charts, you will see this clearly). After entering the 21st century, the overall atmosphere has gradually shifted towards more regulation and control. However, if you look specifically at those things that "grew up" in the 1990s (such as the internet), you will find that they have retained the cultural imprint from their initial birth over the subsequent decades — a free and open internet. Once this concept is formed, it becomes deeply fixed like annual rings. The entrenchment of this idea has allowed the United States (and other countries influenced by it) to enjoy a relatively free and open internet environment for a long period.

Tax levels are usually constrained by government budgetary needs, which are largely determined by the rigid demands of healthcare and social welfare programs. In this sense, this fiscal "red line" (i.e., bottom line) was drawn over 50 years ago and has since been firmly entrenched, much like the rings of a tree, making it almost impossible to shake.

The laws and cultural attitudes towards the potential risks associated with various modern technologies or emerging phenomena are often extremely cautious and alert, even when their actual danger levels are far lower than those of certain extreme mountain climbing activities (the mortality rate of the latter could be much higher). This phenomenon can be explained using the growth ring model: dangerous climbing activities have a history of several hundred years, so their corresponding cultural attitudes were formed during a time when society's overall risk tolerance was higher, and over the long years, they gradually solidified and became part of societal concepts, difficult to shake.

Social media gradually matured in the 2010s, and its treatment in cultural and political contexts was viewed both as part of the internet as a whole and as a unique new phenomenon. Therefore, restrictive attitudes towards social media typically do not directly extend to the areas formed by the early internet. For example, although the overall trend of controlling the internet is strengthening, we have not seen significant stricter measures against unauthorized file-sharing activities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gradually matured in the 2020s, with the United States taking the lead and China playing the role of a follower. Therefore, for China, adopting a strategy of "Commoditize The Complement" aligns with its own interests. This strategy coincides perfectly with the growing preference for open source among various developer communities, thereby fostering a very friendly environment for open source AI in China. This environment is real and internally driven, but it is also highly targeted, limited to the field of artificial intelligence; while in other technology fields that were formed earlier, there still exists a widespread characteristic of closedness and "walled gardens."

Plant new trees: Innovation is more effective than changing the status quo.

More broadly speaking, the revelation contained within this is: once something has existed for a long enough time and the cultural concepts surrounding it have solidified, it will be very difficult to change that concept. What is easier to achieve is to create new behavioral patterns, allowing the new patterns to replace the old ones in competition, and ensuring that a good set of norms and cultural foundations is established in the early stages of the formation of this new model. This transformation can be realized in various ways: developing new technologies is one method, while experimenting with new social norms through the internet (whether online communities or physical communities) is another. And this is precisely one of the most attractive qualities of the cryptocurrency and Web3 fields to me: it provides an independent technological and cultural environment that is not overly constrained by existing "status quo biases," allowing for the freedom to explore and try new things. We no longer need to painstakingly cultivate those old trees; instead, we can inject new vitality into this forest by planting and nurturing new species of trees.