One point I want to stress from my @csetgeorgetown.bsky.social colleagues' new report today on PLA AI procurement (cset.georgetown.edu/publication/...): Internal security is #1. Read about the AI systems China is buying to surveil its own population and to track its soldiers' activity online.
This report is a great rundown of where the Chinese AI-powered robotics industry is, and a reminder that China hasn't put all of its "future of AI" eggs into the LLM basket, as the U.S. basically has.
There's a lot of good stuff in these Chinese 5-year plan spinoffs. But what's most interesting, I think, is what's not in there. Relative to the 5-year plans of yesteryear, there's very little about the need for China to acquire foreign technology. China's not playing catch-up so much anymore.
Xi Jinping urged China to achieve superiority in AI, and to use AI to turbocharge China's scientific research across the board, in a rare AI-themed Politburo study session last Friday. My translation of it for @csetgeorgetown.bsky.social is here: cset.georgetown.edu/publication/...
But Zhu and other Chinese AI experts have more surprises planned, in paths to advanced AI entirely separate from LLMs, as detailed in last week's @csetgeorgetown.bsky.social report cset.georgetown.edu/publication/....
Chinese AI luminary Song-Chun Zhu, writing over two weeks ago, sounds like a prophet in cset.georgetown.edu/publication/... , rejecting the U.S. "big data + big compute + large models" approach to LLMs in favor of "algorithmic innovation."
2025 is shaping up to be a busy year here @csetgeorgetown.bsky.social for translations of Chinese export controls, AI standards, compute and chip strategies, and more!
Watch for those and the rest of CSET's work on emerging technologies, China-related or not, here: bsky.app/starter-pack...
My favorite feature of @emergingtechobs.bsky.social 's brand-new repository of global AI governance and regulatory docs, AGORA? The China-focused "thematic collection" with the full text of 20 (and counting) Chinese AI governance regs & statements.
Ever wonder how to say "gate-all-around field-effect transistor" in Chinese? Who hasn't? (全包围栅极晶体管, of course!) My Chinese technical glossary is now live on CSET's emergingtechobs.bsky.social, and there are 16,000+ more translations of technical and specialized Chinese terms there to enjoy.
China's retaliatory export controls on exports of rare earths to the United States, released today? I translated them for @csetgeorgetown.bsky.social already: cset.georgetown.edu/publication/...
I signed up for Bluesky today! Did I choose the username "murphyben" because "benmurphy" was already taken? No! Quite the opposite. In deference to Chinese tradition, I'm listing my surname first, to honor my ancestors 🤥
