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MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

reuters.com

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Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#111

Post by whatshisface »

thereare5lights wrote: post #108
microdrum wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The US is not an imperialist power? Are you kidding me? We have military bases and troops all over the world. Our black ops interferes in the internal affairs of any country it wants with virtually no oversight. We use our economic might to twist arms and bend other countries to our will. We have a ridiculous treaty with Cuba that cedes use of Guantanamo Bay to us in perpetuity for $2000 a year. We pretty much invade…

>We pretty much invaded Iraq for the oil.

I have heard that before, but did we ever get any oil out of it? Was there ever any chance of getting any oil out of it?

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#112

Post by techie128 »

eob wrote: post #61

I was a PhD student at MIT CSAIL a few years ago and recall an incident where a visiting scholar from a corporation who had donated money had to be asked to leave because he essentially scraped every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home. What was amazing to me was that he was allowed to return a few months later with the explanation “it was just a cultural misunderstanding” I want to be ca…

Being a big believer in Open Source and Freedom of Knowledge, I think we, as humans, would progress much more quickly if we broke down barriers to knowledge sharing. It would help everyone progress much more quickly. Keeping knowledge secret, especially in research, which is usually publicly funded is not the right thing.

We can debate all we want but the reality is that China has progressed and its people have benefitted through better living standards. Now those people are investing in other countries creating jobs and improving living standards across poor countries. Weirdly enough one such beneficiary has been India and African countries. Just 5 years ago India could not domestically manufacture cell phones. Now there are over 260 factories with 95% of the phones being produced in the country. This has been a big benefit to India and its people.

Funny how that worked out?

I am not sure what counts as "stealing" in terms of IP. I am a firm believer in protecting IP but at the same time you cannot argue that freely sharing knowledge has its own benefits. IP laws (especially patents) need to be revisited to make sure they serve their purpose and reasonably help inventors benefit from their inventions.

Edit: I must also clarify that this goes both ways. The way Chinese don't end up sharing knowledge is bad. They also do not respect IP law and contracts which needs to drastically change. If they would have respected those and given a fair playing field for foreign companies, I don't think this would be a big issue today.

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#113

Post by president »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #93
dfgert wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe US completes fairly and openly? Don't you see news on China import embargo and capture of it's executives.

I don't think that novaRom was not saying that we compete fairly. I read novaRom's comment to say that we can't win if we play fairly. I also read 'AI Superpowers' and I agree with the book's premise that long term China will win the 'AI war' economic competition because their society allows broad use of data and since they are more of an online Internet-connected society they have much more data to use for training…

Correct, both the U.S. and China plays dirty tricks. In fact the whole world plays dirty tricks. The only difference is that the U.S. is expected to be the role model of the world, and will always look worse than others even when carrying out an equivalent dirty act. China, Russia, and others know this and they use this to their advantage.

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#114

Post by elefanten »

coldtea wrote: post #105
zelon88 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also don't see TMobile stealing robots from China or Facebook luring Baidu developers to "interviews" for interrogation.

You don't?

No, you don't. Zero examples come to mind.

Which US tech companies have literally attempted/stolen proprietary lab tech from a Chinese tech co?

Are brain drain interviews the same as being invited back to your native country for a job interview and being detained?

And that's just comparing magnitude, not even talking about frequency.

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#115

Post by techie128 »

ghobs91 wrote: post #69
CodeSheikh wrote: post #16

I wonder if US carriers can start discouraging consumers from using Huawei, ZTE cellphones. They know the IMEI numbers.

It's not the cellphones they're worried about, its the network infrastructure. A cellphone simply has access to the carriers internet connection, whereas building a carrier's infrastructure on Huawei equipment means Huawei can spy on whoever is using that network.

Not necessarily. If the devices used end to end encryption the pipes will be just dumb pipes.

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#116

Post by elefanten »

eastendguy wrote: post #109
coldtea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example, these are the golden standard. Which would be the US equivalent? https://www.dji.com/gr/products/drones Here's another -- better than Google by a wide margin: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/1/18290215/huawei-p30-pro-ca...

DJI is impressive - but is DJI leading because of AI? To me, that is mostly manufacturing. And this is indeed an area where "the west" is severly lacking. (Disclaimer: I am no drone expert, so this is a real question) The verge says the camera is "...somehow even better than Google’s Night Sight". That is nice - but not a "wide margin".

1) Huawei phone has more cameras and sensors 2) Google's version is ~6months old

So yeah, some caveats there

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#117

Post by sidr »

ryacko wrote: post #98
eob wrote: post #61

I was a PhD student at MIT CSAIL a few years ago and recall an incident where a visiting scholar from a corporation who had donated money had to be asked to leave because he essentially scraped every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home. What was amazing to me was that he was allowed to return a few months later with the explanation “it was just a cultural misunderstanding” I want to be ca…

What grey area? It was bad enough they decided to send him home.

But not bad enough that they could resist the pressure to have him back with just an excuse of "oopsies".

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#118

Post by alehul »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #102
alehul wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touché! I suppose I'm partially criticizing the idea of a #1, but that aside, there's a fair point to be made that MIT would beat a smaller version of it on any nominal measurement rather than per-capita. Additionally, if you want to learn something academic that isn't technology, I'm not sure MIT or Caltech would win (or even be applicable), hence UChicago as a possibility for a general "best at academics" universit…

If you want to learn something, top-tier universities aren't much better than many other options. They're top-tier by virtue of the glory they borrow from their students. We judge the "eliteness" of a school by what you can predict about an individual by the fact that they were admitted there. And by that measure, Caltech is significantly outperforming in "academics".

> If you want to learn something, top-tier universities aren't much better than many other options.

Very true. In fact, at colleges like Harvard and Columbia, higher grades are often easier to achieve than at the mid-tiers like Boston University and NYU.

With that said, there are colleges that force you to absorb copious amounts of information and fail you otherwise. UChicago is known for this. Is that not symbolic of being top in "academic excellence?".

What you're implying seems more like the "prestige" category, in which Harvard was mentioned as the winner above.

All of this aside the point, this doesn't explain how Caltech would be #1 in academic excellence for a college, above UChicago, and Caltech's larger equivalent, MIT.

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#119

Post by Brain_Thief »

techie128 wrote: post #112
eob wrote: post #61

I was a PhD student at MIT CSAIL a few years ago and recall an incident where a visiting scholar from a corporation who had donated money had to be asked to leave because he essentially scraped every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home. What was amazing to me was that he was allowed to return a few months later with the explanation “it was just a cultural misunderstanding” I want to be ca…

Being a big believer in Open Source and Freedom of Knowledge, I think we, as humans, would progress much more quickly if we broke down barriers to knowledge sharing. It would help everyone progress much more quickly. Keeping knowledge secret, especially in research, which is usually publicly funded is not the right thing. We can debate all we want but the reality is that China has progressed and its people have benef…

I agree with the general spirit of what you're stating, but the fact of the matter is that the Chinese government has proven conclusively that its vision of the future is not one that incorporates a free flow of information or the preservation of individual rights; the Chinese government as an entity is not a viable partner in the task of building the society of free information you envision - it is an obstacle standing in the way. Unfortunately, the Chinese government has chosen to use its economic prosperity to brutally subjugate ethnic minorities and construct an authoritarian nightmare that fully realizes Orwell's visions of state rule [1].

Every bit of available data indicates that the Chinese government would censor you and everyone you know if it had the ability to do so; the ruling party have demonstrated their willingness to violently destroy any person, group, or ideology that they disapprove of. Any other assessment of the situation is, at best, naive to the point of being dangerous. The twentieth century (not to mention the past ten years) has taught us that democracy is a fragile thing; it is extremely important that western citizens be vigilant and open-eyed when assessing who to deal with in educational, political, and business theaters.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/04/world/asia/xi...

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#120

Post by papermill »

hangonhn wrote: post #54
thaumasiotes wrote: post #12

It could be argued that if the news needs to introduce you as "an elite US school", you aren't really an elite school. That's an odd conclusion to draw about MIT though. Who's the target audience here? MIT really is internationally known.

It may surprise some of you but the idea of "elite school" is unknown to a good percent, possibly the majority, of people even in the US. I went to an "elite school" and my GF didn't think much of it. She just thought that it's a school where a lot of politicians and rich people send their kids but didn't infer any special status or qualifications from that observation. In some ways, she's absolutely right but cultur…

This is simply not true. Everyone in the US knows about Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc. They are culturally significant institutions. So much so that people use "MIT" as a stand in for "excellence". "MIT of X".

"kind of like the M.I.T. [sic] for magic."

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

If your gf didn't think much of your school, maybe it's not as "elite" as you wish it were. Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc are as elite as you can get in the US ( and the world ).

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