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Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

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Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#71

Post by hungerstrike »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #64
Top19 wrote: post #60

Please HN don’t censor this comment. I legitimately believe that the US and China are on the road to war, and this war will draw on in all the powers of the world. This comment might be mocked, but if you read into history you can see how unbelievable war seemed within weeks of a conflict. The day WWI broke out the French and German ambassador were trying out each other’s cars and drinking wine in Alsace. This resear…

How many wars were started over tensions concerning research centers / science? WW1 was started by an assassination, WW2 by an aggressive annexation of countries and race-based extermination. If China and the US go to war, it'll probably be over aggression in North Korea; not over a corporately funded scientific research center.

That's a gross oversimplification of the reasons for 2 world wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#72

Post by kercker »

dontreact wrote: post #66
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many wars were started over tensions concerning research centers / science? WW1 was started by an assassination, WW2 by an aggressive annexation of countries and race-based extermination. If China and the US go to war, it'll probably be over aggression in North Korea; not over a corporately funded scientific research center.

The parent comment is not claiming that war will start because of a research lab. (S)he is saying it is against the interest of the US to start an AI lab there because AI will be critical to the war effort if there is war.

Maybe that Google sets up an AI lab is not in the interest of the US, but it is in the interest of Google.

Google is a multinational company and its employees come from diverse countries. Although it is headquartered in the US and its founders are American citizens, its core interests may not fully align with the core interests of the US.

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#73

Post by kercker »

opportune wrote: post #51
kercker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your argument rather lame. First, Chinese government is not Nazi and Google is not IBM. You can't just say that a government is Nazi just because you hate that government. Second, even if Google openly broke with Chinese government, it still has offices in China. I doubt that Google opens an AI center in China to "allow its DeepMind technology to be used to spy on Chinese citizens and dissidents", and I do thi…

At its core, the goal of the two regimes (China, Nazi Germany) is the same: control information so that the existing regime is portrayed in a good light that preserves stability. Just because China isn't genocoding Jews doesn't mean they don't have hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, disadvantaged minorities, and a completely authoritarian government. As is, you would never hear of the North Korean concentr…

Can you give some credible sources on "Tibetan and Uighur genocides that are ongoing"?

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#74

Post by kercker »

reacweb wrote: post #68

Since the beginning, Google has claimed it was an AI company. They have killed their mantra "do no evil" and now they are putting labs in a country with lower values of ethic. Recently they were selling their robotic activity because it was too frightening. All their actions are consistent with a single aim: build an AI like in singularity or terminator.

Maybe you should not use anything Made in China, 'a country with lower values of ethic', because anything Made in China you consumed contribute to the economy of the China.

If you continue to use made in China, your criticizing Google setting up an AI lab in China is just hypocrisy.

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#75

Post by alexmlamb2 »

Top19 wrote: post #60

Please HN don’t censor this comment. I legitimately believe that the US and China are on the road to war, and this war will draw on in all the powers of the world. This comment might be mocked, but if you read into history you can see how unbelievable war seemed within weeks of a conflict. The day WWI broke out the French and German ambassador were trying out each other’s cars and drinking wine in Alsace. This resear…

I kind of think war could happen, not for the reasons you listed, but because the odds of the US winning such a war might be good but will only go down with time, which is the kind of dynamic that leads to aggression.

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#76

Post by VeronicaJJ123 »

In my humble opinion this is the beginning of end of USA. Unless USA gets rid of its anti-Asian immigration bias this is going to be the trend.

While India's higher education is fucked up China is making some progress. Very soon it will be far easier to find reasonably good ML/AI talent in China than in California not to mention much lower costs. Also, given the large population problems where human inputs and human actions go as training data I think China would be a very fertile ground.

A lot of those engineers are going to leave Google and start their own companies and eventually the entire Eco-system is going to move there.

This has already happened with the low end tech jobs with India. If you are having a 30 people QA team in USA you are probably stupid. Just hire some Indian company at 1/5th the cost.

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#77

Post by astebbin »

paradite wrote: post #45
astebbin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your logic is not sound. North Korea was recently described as a worse human rights abuser than Nazi Germany, by a Holocaust survivor no less [0]. In spite of this commonly-held perception, no country has declared war on them, for many of the same economic and military reasons that no country has or would declare war on China. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/north-korean-gulags...

Okay. Let me break down my arguments in 2 parts: [1] China is not similar to Nazi because the extent of "cleansing" is not on the same scale as Nazi (even if you count death sentences on illegal cult members) [2] China is not similar to Nazi because it does not initiate new wars against other countries (Tibet was incorporated as a result of ongoing conflicts between China and other countries for decades, so it is not…

I think you've taken more from the original comment than was given. Only you have compared Communist China to Nazi Germany on the basis of foreign policy, so that line of argument is irrelevant.

Historians criticize IBM for helping the Nazis to identify and exterminate political and ethnic minorities, not for improving their ability to wage war. In that respect, Western companies like Yahoo and Cisco have already been caught in similar arrangements with the Chinese Communist Party [1][2]. Hopefully Google's AI center will not continue this disturbing trend.

As to the scale of the CCP's "cleansing" to date, it's hard to know - they don't release any numbers, and foreign journalists are aggressively bullied, arrested, and deported if they try to find out [3][4].

We do know that China regularly humiliates and cracks down on members of its Muslim minorities [5], and that the Communist Party regularly intervenes in the appointment of Buddhist and Catholic religious leaders [6][7].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/worldbusiness/07i... [2] http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2015/03/china%E2%80%99s-go... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/bbc-crew-attac... [4] https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/05/28/foreign-journ... [5] https://www.economist.com/news/china/21721680-bans-abnormal-... [6] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-14533879 [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_China#Diplo...

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#78

Post by woolvalley »

opportune wrote: post #24
kercker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AI center is not a product like a search engine or Windows, or an e-commerce site. It helps China cultivate talents, why would China limit its influence. MSRA accomplishes many things worthwhile such as ResNet in China, and it prospers now. Some researchers enter MSRA, and some leave. They enter or leave not because the government force them to do so, they enter or leave because they can tell where opportunity res…

I'm not asking why China would limit it, I'm asking what Google gains from it. If Google's top talent in China will mostly be poached within the next 10 years, is it really worthwhile to open a research center there? MSRA is a very good example, but at the end of the day, it's still a training ground for Chinese researchers. Paradoxically, the more important it is that Chinese researchers work on at Google China, the…

By working at the foreign china office for 1 year they can move to the USA on L visas, which don't have the limits that H1B visas do.

Then they can offer them higher compensation in a country that is not polluted.

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#79

Post by prewett »

Top19 wrote: post #60

Please HN don’t censor this comment. I legitimately believe that the US and China are on the road to war, and this war will draw on in all the powers of the world. This comment might be mocked, but if you read into history you can see how unbelievable war seemed within weeks of a conflict. The day WWI broke out the French and German ambassador were trying out each other’s cars and drinking wine in Alsace. This resear…

Why would the US go to war with China? What would we gain from it? The US would like real access to the Chinese market, but war isn't a good way to do that, because the Chinese population would refuse to buy anything from US companies. Additionally, the first thing that would happen in a war is that China would stop manufacturing things for US companies, which would massively disrupt the companies, probably cause a stock market crash (for whatever that's worth) because of lowered future profit, and create a shortage of consumer goods. We actually benefit from the way things are now, we get cheap consumer goods, and we get sort-of access to the Chinese market.

Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

#80

Post by setecgastronomy »

opportune wrote: post #6

Perhaps this is because I don't have the hard facts and figures right in front of me, but I have a hard time believing that foreign tech investments in China really pay off. The Chinese strategy seems to be to woo big foreign companies, build a critical mass of local users who want the product, ban or otherwise limit the foreign company's influence in China, then develop a home-grown Chinese version of the foreign co…

> but I have a hard time believing that foreign tech investments in China really pay off.

If it didn't pay off, apple wouldn't be the most valuable company in the world.

> The Chinese strategy seems to be to woo big foreign companies, build a critical mass of local users who want the product, ban or otherwise limit the foreign company's influence in China

What else do you expect them to do? Cede their entire market to foreigners? Every country did the same thing. The europeans did it. We did it in the US. The japanese and the south koreans. It's really common sense.

> If Google accomplishes anything worthwhile at this research center, won't China just shut it down and re-employ those researchers at a domestic company?

If they did, why would google invest in china? It's been 40 years. If investing in china wasn't lucrative, it would have ended a long time ago.

> Why do high-tech companies even continue to try to break into China?

The real question is why is it that we get the exact same type of comments in every thread about china?

Go through every china related thread on HN and every single one has the exact same comments. Why?

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