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YC China and Qi Lu

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#21

Post by throwaway_9575 »

jumelles wrote: post #15

YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

I don't mean to be blunt, but YC, as an institution, doesn't really care about anything besides money. They're venture capitalists. That the CCP is putting Muslims in high-tech concentration camps is of little concern compared to how much they think they can make in the Chinese market.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#22

Post by friedman23 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19
friedman23 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing business in China is unethical.

Doing business with the Chinese government is unethical. Doing business with Chinese entrepreneurs and providing services to the Chinese people is a humanitarian imperative. Without going to far into the political weeds, the US has never delivered freedom effectively at the end of a gun, but rather through McDonalds and Coca Cola.

All Chinese businesses are subordinate to the PRC. It is my personal opinion that we have reached a point of technological progress where totalitarian control of massive states such as China is simply possible when it wasn't a few decades prior to the advent of modern computing.

I do not have any faith that any amount of trade with China will cause the government to reform in any meaningful way and I'm confident that China will remain a dictatorship a thousand years from now.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#23

Post by crb002 »

jumelles wrote: post #15

YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/uyghurs-victims-of-21st-cent...

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#24

Post by telltruth »

Sam, this exec BS doesn't look good on you. If Qi Lu is the "one of the most impressive technologiest" you have known then I would say you can be impressed pretty easily. Qi Lu is the guy who couldn't do a squat with Yahoo so he jumped ship to Microsoft. His main achievement there was to rename their product to "Bing". Finally not getting anywhere for almost a decade, he finally got pushed out and so he jumped on the Baidu train to get dip in to Chinese internet boom. Again no special achievements whatsoever at Baidu and virtually everything he touched was half assed and pure PR vaporware. You also have to remember this guy is not technologist. He doesn't write code, do design or understand modern software architecture. He is a suit which big multinationals need for a public face, sales and marketing purposes.

So let's be honest here. YC needs to tap in to Chinese market's booming startup scene. You can't do that without having native Chinese guy leading these effort. You ideally need a suit who has network and hopefully also understands the little details, you know, like code. But you got only the suit who has network. You will try to do best with what you got. That we get it.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#25

Post by jumelles »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19
friedman23 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing business in China is unethical.

Doing business with the Chinese government is unethical. Doing business with Chinese entrepreneurs and providing services to the Chinese people is a humanitarian imperative. Without going to far into the political weeds, the US has never delivered freedom effectively at the end of a gun, but rather through McDonalds and Coca Cola.

> Doing business with Chinese entrepreneurs and providing services to the Chinese people is a humanitarian imperative.

There is literally no way to do this without the cooperation of the Chinese government.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#26

Post by varsitywork »

jumelles wrote: post #15

YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

Exactly. I am not sure what Sam Altman is up to here, but this may be something that Silicon Valley companies and the free world will regret deeply in the future. He mentions

> to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.

Yes, but technologies at the hands of a dictatorship is dangerous. This morning, there was just a thread about Chinese surveillance/censorship technologies being sold to other countries. Lord help us if the Chinese government somehow gets its hands on a superior weapons tech, or smarter AI.

He also says

> Qi will also take over as the Head of YC Research, YC’s non-profit research lab.

We've heard several prominent lawsuits in recent months on how Chinese nationals stolen and transfered US techs into Chinese companies (possibly government involvement). Qi Lu literally said "The Chinese government understands what AI can do, and they show a lot of commitment for sustained and long-term investment...AI is part of China’s national five-year plan, and just a few months ago, the Chinese government published a comprehensive white paper to call out a systematic investment in AI." https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/09/baidu-coo-says-chinas-gov.... We're literally handing the Chinese government some of the Western world's greatest knowledge and inventions.

This is scary scary thing. I am not sure what YC is thinking, allowing Sam Altman to do this.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#27

Post by monfrere »

curiousDog wrote: post #16
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #10

Ah, this is the same Qi Lu who was basically responsible for the creation of Bing, then got Office and AI in a reorg, and then somehow got pushed out by Satya and went on to be CTO of Baidu for awhile. The YCR connection makes sense, since he has a lot of experience in AI where much of YCR is now at, but it will be interesting to see how he will interact with Bret Victor's group. Are they going to start a YC-like inc…

Bing really is a pile of garbage though (perhaps a little better these days but no where near as good as Google). I'm surprised he wasn't fired sooner. Was he friends with Ballmer?

How is Bing a pile of garbage? It takes some effort to come up with a search for which it or ddg are markedly worse than google. FWIW I still use google.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#28

Post by ardy42 »

jumelles wrote: post #15

YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

> I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

Especially since the PRC government is getting much more aggressive in forcing Western companies to kowtow to their political stances even in their operations outside of China. Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologize for posting a Dalai Lama quote on Instagram [1], and a Marriott employee was fired after he "liked" a post about Tibetan independence [2]. This happened despite both websites being blocked in China.

The implications for companies with new Chinese operations that also operate an open web forum is left as an exercise for the reader.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/mercedes-bows-to-chinese-pressure-afte...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-employee-roy-jones-hit...

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#29

Post by toomuchtodo »

jumelles wrote: post #25
toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing business with the Chinese government is unethical. Doing business with Chinese entrepreneurs and providing services to the Chinese people is a humanitarian imperative. Without going to far into the political weeds, the US has never delivered freedom effectively at the end of a gun, but rather through McDonalds and Coca Cola.

> Doing business with Chinese entrepreneurs and providing services to the Chinese people is a humanitarian imperative. There is literally no way to do this without the cooperation of the Chinese government.

Than you be pragmatic and make concessions.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#30

Post by jumelles »

ardy42 wrote: post #28
jumelles wrote: post #15

YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

> I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market. Especially since the PRC government is getting much more aggressive in forcing Western companies to kowtow to their political stances even in their operations outside of China. Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologize for posting a Dalai Lama quote on Instagram [1], and a Marriott employee was fired afte…

Agreed 100%. To me it's madness that Marriott and Benz wouldn't stand up for the right to speak one's mind.
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