China's Underestimated AI Convening Power
Convening power is (very) important in AI regulations
Ever since Large Language Models (LLMs) became synonymous with AI, thanks to ChatGPT, the consensus is that LLMs created in China lag those from the US, and the gap will persist. For a variety of reasons – from tighter government regulations, to lack of quality training data, to difficulties in getting the best Nvidia GPUs (sanctions!) – I agree with this view.
However, this consensus obscures China’s underestimated convening power in AI. This power was on full display last weekend in Beijing.
What is Convening Power
I got my firsthand taste of convening power when I was working at the White House under President Obama.
Convening power, in a (colloquial) nutshell, is an institution’s ability to gather every person who matters on an issue and put them in a room, no matter how much these people may dislike or rival each other. As the symbol of American power, the White House wields massive convening power. This power is granularly applied to every issue, every industry, every country, and down to every room in the building.
During the Obama years, we’ve gathered big bank CEOs to solve the Great Financial Crisis, health insurance CEOs to reform healthcare, and foreign country leaders to strengthen bilateral relations. Depending on the importance of the problem, these gatherings will take place in the Oval Office or the Roosevelt Room (very important), the State Dining Room (very important), or a conference room in the adjacent office building (less important).
When trying to solve thorny issues with many competing factions, getting all the parties into a single room and meeting cordially is oftentimes the hardest part. The White House often plays that convener role. When the White House invites you, you show up, no matter who else is there, and everyone's on their best behavior. That’s convening power at the highest level.
In the AI context, this convening power was applied in early May by the Biden administration with a meeting of the CEOs of Microsoft, Alphabet, OpenAI, and Anthropic. They were given the Roosevelt Room treatment (very important).
You don’t need to have worked in or been to the White House to intuitively grasp how convening power works. Nor is the White House the only or best example of convening power. During the financial crisis of 1907, John Pierpont Morgan led the rescue effort and hashed out the plan with other bankers in his newly-built library in New York City; Morgan’s library was the pinnacle of convening power for that crisis, not the White House.
Convening power is quite similar, in fact, to the familiar Chinese concept of “face” or mianzi. The institution that commands the most convening power is, effectively, the one that commands the most “face giving”（给面子）.
In the field of AI, one organization that seems to command a surprising amount of convening power (or “face giving”) is the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI).
Beijing Academy of AI Conference
Last week, the BAAI held its 5th annual AI conference in Beijing. And the speakers lineup was a who’s who of the generative AI industry and scientific community. The fact that the conference took place on a Friday and Saturday deterred few from showing up. (In fact, hosting events on the weekends, from small meetups to large conferences, is a common occurrence and distinct cultural trait of the Chinese engineering and startup community – weekdays are for working on your company, not going to events that look like work.)
The conference organizers proudly boasted the lineup:
Four Turing award winners (Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Joseph Sifakis, and Andrew Yao)
Max Tegmark (MIT professor and president of the Future of Life Institute, which called for a six-month pause on AI development that Elon Musk signed)
Stuart Russell (Berkeley professor, whose seminal AI textbook every computer science student who studied AI has read or referenced at some point)
Co-founders of buzzy AI startups like Anthropic (Christopher Olah) and Midjourney (David Holz)
Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI, whose celebrity power drew media attention to the otherwise very technical and academic event from even the Wall Street Journal)
Many other scientists, researchers, and practitioners from the likes of Nvidia, Meta, Google, etc.
What’s noteworthy is that every speaker either attended in-person (like Tegmark and Russell) or spoke live remotely (like Altman, LeCun), even when speakers were given the option to pre-record. The head of BAAI, professor Huang Tiejun of Peking University, could barely contain his (justifiably) proud smile when introducing Yann LeCun by sharing the fact that he was dialing-in live from France where the local time was 4am, even though he was given the choice to record his presentation. (This revelation was met with loud cheers and applauses from the audience.)
That’s the ultimate gesture of “face giving.”
The BAAI – a nonprofit research lab with the backing of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Beijing city government – is punching well above its weight. Huang shyly suggested during his remarks that there is probably no other AI conference in the world that can convene a speaker lineup of the same caliber and star power; I think he is probably right.
Convening Power is Important in AI Regulations
If you are pessimistic about China’s growing opaqueness and skeptical of its AI capabilities, this BAAI conference may have surprised you. And if you are on the pro-regulation side of the generative AI debate, then the BAAI’s convening power is especially worth noting.
Being able to gather the best technical and scientific minds (as opposed to business and policy minds) is at the heart of getting AI regulations right. That’s why Altman, who's been flying around the world advocating for regulations, felt the need to speak live to BAAI’s audience and pitch talented Chinese AI researchers to contribute to the cause, even though his own company's products are deliberately made unavailable in China.
No serious person who believes that a global AI regulatory framework is warranted should also think that such a framework would work without China. If China chooses to actively lead this global regulatory undertaking, its convening power may be flexed in ways that few western policymakers understand or appreciate. The few remaining optimists of the state of US-China relations should almost cheer on the rapid emergence of generative AI as an existential threat that may force the US and China to cooperate on some level (in ways that climate change should but really hasn’t). The specter of robots killing us all may be our best chance of seeing Biden and Xi in a room together.
In no way am I suggesting that the BAAI somehow holds the same convening power as the White House. I’m sure if the Biden administration wants to gather the same group of scientists in the Roosevelt Room, they would all show up.
Just because you command the convening power, it does not mean you would always wield it. Thus far, the Biden White House has put a “light touch” on all things AI. Besides a four-CEO meeting I mentioned above, $140 million from the National Science Foundation to build seven more AI research institutes, the only other public gesture is endorsing the upcoming DEFCON 31 developer conference as the designated venue to publicly assess the AI safety of leading foundational models.
Personally, I think this grassroots approach – tapping into the energy and hands-on participation of developers, hackers, and businesses – is quite interesting and distinct from the Chinese and EU approach, which is decidedly top-down. Every well-meaning regulator is trying to thread the needle between AI safety and AI innovation (not to mention nation-to-nation competition). No one knows what the perfect balance is.
Whether it is the “EU way”, the “Chinese way”, or the “American way”, the end result depends on who shows up. And that is more easily observable. We now know who showed up to the BAAI Conference in Beijing. In a few months, we will see who shows up to do some “face giving” at the AI Village at DEFCON 31 in Las Vegas, and who just sends a pre-recorded video.
Your newsletter is ready to go paid. Another really great piece.