A prominent venture capitalist is questioning whether restrictions on high-end Nvidia (NVDA) chips are doing more harm than good for the US tech industry.
In an interview at Columbia Business School, Ben Horowitz emphasizes the need to accelerate US AI development while deepening cooperation between the government and the private sector.
“I think a balance of power and AI is good, which is why open source is good, which is why us developing the technology as fast as we can is important. It’s why the private sector integrating with the government in the US is important. China is much better at that than we are, so we have to get better.”
He also says that export controls on Nvidia chips are detrimental to the long-term growth of the AI and tech sectors. Horowitz argues that secrecy and chip restrictions have failed to stop rival nations from advancing.
“Keeping things a secret, I don’t think is going to work. I actually don’t even think keeping the chips to ourselves is going to work. So far, we thought that if we stop the export of Nvidia chips to China, that it will stop them from building powerful models. It really hasn’t.
So a lot of these ideas just end up retarding the growth of the US technology industry as opposed to doing anything for national security.”
Earlier this month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said it is “completely nuts” for the US to sell Nvidia chips to China. He said the one who wins the AI race could control the fate of nations
“And if we look at all the ingredients, China has many of them better than we do. They’re better at building energy. They’re better at building data centers. They have a thriving app ecosystem on the models. Chips are the one place where they are behind. And so if we give them those chips, they will be able to get ahead of us.”
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