U.S. and Chinese Frontier AI Model Performance

A frequent point of disagreement centers on whether export controls are likely to create a hard ceiling for China. Many U.S.-maintains respondents argue that they will: “As the training process becomes more time-consuming and resource-consuming from a computational point of view, lacking access to the most advanced chips could become problematic and significantly hamper the Chinese efforts.” China-progresses respondents often concede that achieving parity with, or surpassing, the U.S. is unlikely in the short term, but emphasize that “over a longer horizon, China has the capacity to invest heavily in domestic semiconductor supply chains, specialized AI accelerators, large-scale datacenters, and the supporting power grid upgrades needed for sustained training and inference,” and that this will likely lead to major gains for China relative to the U.S. regardless of import restrictions. Others point out that “Chinese AI developers achieve sustained gains through algorithmic efficiency…rather than reliance on cutting-edge hardware,” and that this factor, paired with the recent U.S. decision to allow Nvidia to sell near-SOTA chips to China, is also likely to blunt any U.S. advantage.

China-progresses respondents often argue that “catching up is much easier than leading,” because “even when the U.S. is first with a capability or training method, the underlying ideas tend to spread—through publications, open-source implementations, talent flows, [and] reverse engineering.” U.S.-maintains respondents contest this, with one predicting that the complexity of future models will make copying harder and another suggesting that “as long as American companies retain a slight lead, they may be able to harness their more powerful AI models to better automate AI R&D, resulting in a positive feedback loop.”

Many China-progresses respondents point to structural advantages in China’s ability to mobilize resources faster than the U.S. and argue that “China has longer term advantages in terms of infrastructure & energy,” with one predicting that China will “surpass [the] U.S. early because of lesser environmental regulation,” which will in turn allow for faster scaling. Others predict the drive to surpass the U.S. will “translate into [a] concentrated national effort on a few flagship projects—exactly the kind of effort that can produce occasional ‘top leaderboard’ contenders.” In contrast, U.S.-maintains respondents tend to focus on the detrimental effects of the Chinese political system, arguing that the “political requirements of model approval...[mean] they will stay a few steps behind” and that “China will plateau because of a declining economy as a result of [a] demographic precipice,” leading to political instability that will impede progress. Others question the sustainability of state funding. One asks: “The issue here is the business case for Chinese-developed AI technologies—who is going to buy them outside of China? It is hard to see enterprise customers in the United States or Europe relying on Chinese AI tech. This means government funding is going to be the critical element here. For the next few years, the PRC will probably keep pouring in funding. But beyond 2030?”

A key difference in underlying assumptions is whether AI progress will plateau. Several China-progresses respondents assume that it will, and that “as progress slows,” a “convergence between models” is likely because “once base capability is ‘good enough’...the marginal value of being first at the frontier weakens.” Or as another puts it, “Everyone is framing this is in terms of polarity and competition, but I think the more likely outcome is convergence around some commodity version, particularly given the norms of information sharing among the research community, coupled with corporate espionage, and asymptotic limits to growth.” U.S.-maintains respondents, however, typically assume growth in AI capabilities will continue apace and therefore rely on “extrapolating near straight line improvement for the duration of this question,” leading them to predict the gap will be maintained.

Several China-progresses respondents identified scenarios where the U.S.-EU rifts could accelerate Chinese progress. One warned it “may allow more transfer of European technologies to China. I am thinking specifically of ASML [the exclusive global supplier of Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines]. More access could jumpstart China’s chip development.” Another warned that “if by 2040 China includes Taiwan it will (presumably) have acquired the chip making capability that is today powering U.S. AI.”