Have you ever thought about what Russia's influence in the AI sector would be by now if they would have focused on developing it instead of starting a war? Developing it while pretending a peaceful cooperation with the West?
It might well be that China supports Russia's war effort so much because it knows that this way Russians will have zero time and resouces to focus on being an AI leader, and through it, a threat to China.
The biggest win for the US and China is that Russia will now never be at the cutting edge in AI development. The longer this war goes on, the better it will be for both the US and for China.
Even Europe will be more advanced than Russia during the next couple of decades.
Putin's Russia does not have a good track record of developing strategic projects with big R&D component. If anything, they spectacularly failed in space, in nanotechnology and other fields which were designated as strategic 15 years ago. All Russian successes were in commercial sector so far thanks to many technology entrepreneurs and ignorance of Soviet boomers - the generation currently in power. Despite the enormous brain drain, Russia may be now in a better position to start and make significant progress in something. Russia is traditionally better in mobilizing the nation in times of war than in peaceful times and it shows now, when they were able to scale military-industrial complex capacity very quickly.
Have you ever thought about what Russia's influence in the AI sector would be by now if they would have focused on developing it instead of starting a war? Developing it while pretending a peaceful cooperation with the West?
It might well be that China supports Russia's war effort so much because it knows that this way Russians will have zero time and resouces to focus on being an AI leader, and through it, a threat to China.
The biggest win for the US and China is that Russia will now never be at the cutting edge in AI development. The longer this war goes on, the better it will be for both the US and for China.
Even Europe will be more advanced than Russia during the next couple of decades.