Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China may match or beat America in AI

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 114 posts

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#81

Post by erva »

acdha wrote: post #77
erva wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound like an anti-intellectual, but it could be a mistake to assume that innovation comes from academia. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a convincing chapter (I think it is Chapter 13: Lecturing Birds to Fly) in his book "Antifragile" about this very thing. Then there are cultural differences that could be at play concerning innovation. It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taki…

I don't think that line of reasoning is completely wrong but I think it's often over-emphasized as some sort of durable higher truth rather than a simplification of very complicated social factors, and usually this tends to significantly under-weight the ability to change things — e.g. many Americans are used to thinking that we have a huge cultural lead for entrepreneurship but the popular opinion there hasn't adjus…

I agree. I wasn't using it as de-facto; rather as an idea that may calm the panic of "OMG They have more X than we do!" "They have more X than we do" only works to determine an outcome if all other things are perfectly equal, which they are not. My primary point was the idea that academia does not necessarily mean applied innovation.

That said, how long does it take for a culture to change part of its core structure? Cultures seem to me evolutionary and, aside from rare radical mutations, very slow to change. Then again, with over a 1.3 billion people there are sure to be plenty of sub-cultures with enough size to be a driving force for the whole.

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#82

Post by chrnic27 »

mljoe wrote: post #42
throwawayecchai wrote: post #6

Chinese Government is all over the Silicon Valley these days trying to get into US AI developments, using all sorts of nefarious tricks. A case in point. There is a conference, SYNC 2017, in Computer History Museum tomorrow (July 14th), organized by Pingwest, which itself seems like a Chinese Gov. front if you look at the team. They have several good speakers, and some Chinese, Gov fronted, fake VC types. Till 2 days…

To be fair, China is a AI powerhouse in its own right. China is investing a lot of its money domestically on this problem as well. Lots of legitimate papers come from purely Chinese teams. ResNet was developed by a purely Chinese team. A lot of very important open source machine learning software out there is written almost entirely by Chinese nationals. It's important to note this because shutting down Silicon Valle…

> ResNet was developed by a purely Chinese team.

And by luck. If they didn't do it, someone else would have done it, whether it be US, UK, or Canada. Proof? Look at the developments and publications from that same team. There are not consistent breakthroughs.

This is similar to the stock market and investors. Someone will get lucky and win, but unless they can do it consistently, it's luck.

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#83

Post by eternalcode »

kyleschiller wrote: post #19

If you're going to comment about the "Chinese takeover" please take 2 minutes to at least read the first paragraph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril 'The Yellow Peril (also Yellow Terror and Yellow Spectre) is a racist color-metaphor that is integral to the xenophobic theory of colonialism: that the peoples of East Asia are a danger to the Western world. As a psycho-cultural perception of menace from the Eas…

I am offended by your comment. So, maybe you should also please take a second to consider if it might be motivated by racist tropes.

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#84

Post by colorint »

rrggrr wrote: post #29

70% of the US budget is inexorably allocated to entitlements, interest on debt, and welfare. The rubicon of 100% US Debt-to GDP will soon be crossed. Many US states are hanging on to solvency by a thread. Corporations and banks have sequestered hundreds of billions in cash waiting for signs of US fiscal stability. And what does the media want to talk about? Russian spies and Chinese A.I. Rome burns and everyone is as…

The Reinhart-Rogoff research indicating that there's a public-debt-to-GDP Rubicon was wholly discredited by grad students; turns out there is no relationship between debt-to-GDP and growth.

http://darribas.org/WooWii/Assignments/OriginalPaper.pdf

The broader point is, if I issue money and then issue obligations on that money, there's no practical difference between the two issues. That is, public debt of countries that are sovereign in their currency, and only issue debt in their currency, cannot have public debt overhang. It's just a red herring, based on a false analogy between governments (currency issuers) and households (currency users).

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#85

Post by rrggrr »

colorint wrote: post #84
rrggrr wrote: post #29

70% of the US budget is inexorably allocated to entitlements, interest on debt, and welfare. The rubicon of 100% US Debt-to GDP will soon be crossed. Many US states are hanging on to solvency by a thread. Corporations and banks have sequestered hundreds of billions in cash waiting for signs of US fiscal stability. And what does the media want to talk about? Russian spies and Chinese A.I. Rome burns and everyone is as…

The Reinhart-Rogoff research indicating that there's a public-debt-to-GDP Rubicon was wholly discredited by grad students; turns out there is no relationship between debt-to-GDP and growth. http://darribas.org/WooWii/Assignments/OriginalPaper.pdf The broader point is, if I issue money and then issue obligations on that money, there's no practical difference between the two issues. That is, public debt of countries th…

Historically, rates above 200% (eg. Argentina) lead to disorderly corrections (crisis).

Michael Pettis regarding the research you cite states: "What is usually missing from such discussions, however, is an explanation of how too much debt leads to slower growth." ... "A country has too much debt when stakeholders begin behaving in ways that reduce growth. The controversy over the research by Rogoff and Reinhart should not be allowed to obscure the nature of the link between debt and economic performance."

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-misleading-...

So, absent a proven behavioral line in the sand, we have only measures of debt to try to surmise at what point debt impacts growth and stability.

Its really chicken and egg.

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#86

Post by colorint »

rrggrr wrote: post #85
colorint wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Reinhart-Rogoff research indicating that there's a public-debt-to-GDP Rubicon was wholly discredited by grad students; turns out there is no relationship between debt-to-GDP and growth. http://darribas.org/WooWii/Assignments/OriginalPaper.pdf The broader point is, if I issue money and then issue obligations on that money, there's no practical difference between the two issues. That is, public debt of countries th…

Historically, rates above 200% (eg. Argentina) lead to disorderly corrections (crisis). Michael Pettis regarding the research you cite states: "What is usually missing from such discussions, however, is an explanation of how too much debt leads to slower growth." ... "A country has too much debt when stakeholders begin behaving in ways that reduce growth. The controversy over the research by Rogoff and Reinhart shoul…

As I said, countries that are sovereign in their currency and don't hold any foreign-denominated debt cannot suffer debt overhang. Or put another way (to specifically address your link, though I only got four paragraphs), there is no involuntary default risk if we're talking about a country issuing money and then issuing liabilities denominated in that money.

Regarding specific claims in your linked article:

- Bond markets in such countries are subordinate to central banks; the most obvious case is Japan, where a greater-than-200% debt ratio is accompanied by, I believe, negative yields on public debt. Central banks (again, in countries that have nonconvertible sovereign currency) totally control short-term interest rates, and so indirectly control long-term rates. Creditors take the central bank's number and then risk-adjust and discount it for borrowers; for the government the risk is zero, so they just discount it.

- Ricardian equivalence is a stupid model. Have you ever made consumption or investment decisions based on a belief that public deficits will result in higher tax rates at some point in the future? I certainly haven't.

- "Workers organize to protect their jobs," but I guess the anti-union bent says a lot. Nevermind that spending equals income; a falling wage share is a far more plausible explanation for less-than-desirable growth in most situations.

- "savers [...] withdraw their bank deposits" The loanable funds model is not how banking works, but that's a much lengthier discussion. Suffice it to say, it's still the case that central banks set interest rates. I assume this is the reason the author brings this up, because otherwise the question is---they withdraw their savings and do what?

- Again, the only way the US government can default on US Treasury obligations is if Congress explicitly decides to do so. There's no mechanical or functional reason this might happen.

Historically, countries have not been sovereign in their currency. You'd have to be more specific about Argentina, though its biggest debt crisis was because its currency was pegged to the US dollar. Likewise, the current troubles in the Eurozone come from a lack of currency sovereignty. These things are unfortunate, and will probably lead to a dissolution of the EMU at some point, but they have no bearing on the US.

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#87

Post by awkwarddaturtle »

erva wrote: post #60
ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

Here I was looking for the Dr. Strangelove equivalent of the "AI Gap" :-) Given that in the next four years it is likely that more than half of the PhDs awarded by top US schools are awarded to foreign nationals[1], and our current government policy is to restrict immigration as much as possible, we are on a path to insuring that soon the world will have a much better pool of talent to draw on to do the research than…

Not to sound like an anti-intellectual, but it could be a mistake to assume that innovation comes from academia. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a convincing chapter (I think it is Chapter 13: Lecturing Birds to Fly) in his book "Antifragile" about this very thing. Then there are cultural differences that could be at play concerning innovation. It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taki…

> Not to sound like an anti-intellectual, but it could be a mistake to assume that innovation comes from academia

It isn't that innovation necessarily comes from academia, but that academia is a reflection of how wealthy and educated the population is. Innovation comes from the wealthy and the educated. So as china gets wealthier, they will innovate more.

> It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taking and innovation.

That's an "observation" based on racism and nonsense.

> just that overall there may be asymmetry.

Based on what evidence? It's just silly things people say - "The west is more individualistic". A society based on "white supremacy" is "individualistic"? How is basing one's ideology on "race - a genetic/communal" concept individualistic.

All these things are essentially nonsense created by people who want to sell books/etc. There is no truth.

You could write a book saying the west is collectivistic and china is individualistic by cherrypicking any data.

> So, have all the smartest people you want, doing all the research you want; but if they have no pressure to put that research to practice, nor a desire or support to take the risks associated with implementation then you might as well have nobody doing anything.

What makes you think they won't?

Greed works on the chinese as much as westerners. The things you need to "innovate" are wealth and security. Innovation is a luxury. The chinese will innovate as they get wealth and security.

The chinese are risk averse and yet they love gambling. They are risk averse and chinese have immigrated all over the world.

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#89

Post by awkwarddaturtle »

bitcuration wrote: post #51

Mostly the advantage that China has, other than probably a large pool of math educated engineers and abundant data thanks to China's aggressive surveillance, is that things would be unethical or hard to move forwarded under current regulation, would be much easier in China. Ironically, underlining in this article is that acknowledgement of such often unethical or act in doubt are perhaps essential and critical to AI'…

> To that, China is at a clear advantage than America, and the rest of civilized west world.

"Civilized"? Come on, the civilized "west" was performing human experiments. If china is doing it, then so are we.

Lets stop with the hubris. We aren't civilized. We are savages just like any other savages.

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#90

Post by awkwarddaturtle »

rrggrr wrote: post #29

70% of the US budget is inexorably allocated to entitlements, interest on debt, and welfare. The rubicon of 100% US Debt-to GDP will soon be crossed. Many US states are hanging on to solvency by a thread. Corporations and banks have sequestered hundreds of billions in cash waiting for signs of US fiscal stability. And what does the media want to talk about? Russian spies and Chinese A.I. Rome burns and everyone is as…

China has an even worse problem because of their 1 child policy. An aging population with no safety nets who will have to depend on their lone child to support them.

We can always print more debt instantaneously thanks to the FED. China can't print more humans.

We have our problems for sure, but china is facing far greater problems.

Post reply on HN