The Next Big US-China Trade War is Over AI Talent

The thing about trade wars is they really stop you from trading…

Reports have piled up about how Big Tech companies have turned on their money hoses to poach top AI talent from each other. They’ve also turned on the charm — both OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have reportedly been personally involved in courting candidates and offering lavish salaries. But a larger and more intractable talent war is brewing between the US and China.

U-S-A-I 

China has had a habit of overtaking the US in technology, like EV adoption or 5G rollout. But when it comes to the hype-beast of generative AI, the US holds the reins. That’s partly because of how the tech industry is set up — Big Tech companies are developing AI in-house, but they’re also forging partnerships with startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, and France-based Mistral AI, because the cloud and computing infrastructure needed to run AI models is dominated by Microsoft, Amazon, and to a lesser extent, Google.

Meanwhile, the US wants to box China out of AI development, arguing that it might use it for military or otherwise nefarious purposes. Its ever-escalating chip trade war is aimed at depriving China of physical infrastructure, and the US is reportedly considering banning exports of AI models (although that seems a little nonsensical). The US is even fighting by proxy: The New York Times reported in November that US officials were feverishly dissuading Dubai-based G42 to cut its AI links to Chinese businesses.

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