“ChinAI #255: Panic buying, speculative booms, and whack-a-mole — what lengths will Chinese companies go to get an NVIDIA A100 chip?” by Jeffrey Ding

Greetings from a world where… policy is policy and businesses is business [政策是政策，生意是生意] …***We’ve hit a bit of a lull in paid subscriptions lately, so please consider subscribing here to support ChinAI under a Guardian/Wikipedia-style tipping model (everyone gets the same content but those who can pay support access for all AND compensation for awesome ChinAI contributors). As always, the searchable archive of all past issues is here. Feature Translation: After the Aug 2022/Oct 2023 controls, how are Chinese companies getting high-end AI chips Context: It's October 20, 2023, and the hottest betting action in Hong Kong (just 60km from the world's top gambling hub in Macau) is on who will get the 300 newly arrived 8-card A100 servers. Total value: 800 million RMB. This is three days after the U.S. extended the scope of export controls on chips to include close substitutes for the NVIDIA A100 (which [...] --- First published: February 26th, 2024 Source: https://chinai.substack.com/p/chinai-255-panic-buying-speculative --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Narrations of the ChinAI Newsletter by Jeffrey Ding. China is becoming an indispensable part of the global AI landscape. Alongside the rise of China’s AI capabilities, a surge of Chinese writing and scholarship on AI-related topics is shedding light on a range of fascinating topics, including: China’s grand strategy for advanced technology like AI, the characteristics of key Chinese AI actors (e.g. companies and individual thinkers), and the ethical implications of AI development. While traditional media and China specialists can provide important insights on these questions through on-the-ground reporting and extensive background knowledge, ChinAI takes a different approach: it bets on the proposition that for many of these issues, the people with the most knowledge and insight are Chinese people themselves who are sharing their insights in Chinese. Through translating articles and documents from government departments, think tanks, traditional media, and newer forms of “self-media,” etc., ChinAI provides a unique look into the intersection between a country that is changing the world and a technology that is doing the same.