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U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

reuters.com

331–340 of 361 posts

Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#331
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the world would be a far, far better place if the entire Chinese nation were to disappear off the surface of the earth. Really? I find this argument hard to believe. Also this is what I worry about. The US China conflict has a real likelihood of becoming a full on race war against Chinese people in America, thanks to sentiments like the one above.

I appreciate the mildness of your response to that provocation, but it's a garden variety troll whom we've banned many times. Please just flag and move on.

I can't flag comments for some reason. Is there JS I need to load?

Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#332
post #329
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Dems are NOT on board. I remember one of the earlier debates and, when asked, I think most (all?) candidates had China much later in their priority list, after issues like healthcare, immigration, economy, Russia and so.

>NOT on board >had China much later in their priority list Pick one? >healthcare As someone who is self employed and spends more than $20k for healthcare every year for a relatively healthy family of 4... you can just fuck right off if you don't think healthcare is a major major priority in this country. People need to be HEALTHY in order to be HAPPY. There are so, so, so many people who can't afford to go to the doc…

Whoa - its possible to have dental care and go to the doctor for most things, and not cost $20K per year.

So, healthcare/insurance is not really a priority for people - until it is. Until something major/fixable but very expensive occurs. Then its a priority.

So forgive people for being a little blind on the subject. Its insurance after all - you're betting the other guy your house will burn down, and hoping they win. Very strange issue, and not entirely obvious what the best solution might be.

If we could pay for everybody's unlimited medical care, maybe we'd do that. But it might not be affordable. So what kind of 'rationing' do we concede to? Because that's where the issue ends up.

Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#333

I guess I am a somewhat neutral bystander here. I'm from India and the way I see it, these sorts of actions, will simply force China and Chinese companies to develop alternatives to US products. For the short to medium term these blacklists will hurt Chinese companies severely, perhaps even put some of them out of business. However, in the long term 15-20 years, I would imagine, China would have fully caught up with…

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Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#335

One thing that I really like about the Trump administration is that finally the WH has decided to act against the systemic threat posed by China. Can someone who is well versed in politics shed some light on if this is a trump specific phenonemon or had there been a sea change and the dems are now on board too ?

Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of either party, so my view is hopefully a bit objective. Trump ran on the economic policy ideas popularized by "liberal" economist Paul Krugman. I posted a comment on HN a while back with links to Krugman's various columns, with a header above each group that included the rhetoric used by Trump to tout those policies. Krugman has been calling for trade policy changes against China for quite…

I agree that the US has wasted immense money in foreign wars with not enough gained to economically justify it.

I also agree that part of China's rise is due to it's economic strengths and strategic investments. In addition to that, they 1.5 billion people, of which there's bound to be a lot of amazing innovators.

The documentary American Factory is a great documentary that shows how the efficiency in China is also helping them out compete the US. (sidenote: produced by the obamas company)

On the note of the defense sector, DARPA has funded so much research (they invented the internet) that has helped innovation and defense companies help provide jobs for many engineers and high tech peoples, which helps the growth in that sector. Defense spending is also how we maintain our safety. But I do agree, that a lot of it is immensely wasteful. I think defense spending is important and useful, but like what you're getting at- the amount we spend stupidly instead of investing or strategically is too extreme

Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#336
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong with the "large margin" terms. A lot of Chinese universities have stepped up in the recent past. You can take a look here : http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2019/index?ai&v... 3 of the top 10 (all in the top 5 even) are Chinese in origin. This is a list of publications at the top venues in AI / ML for the past two years. If you extend it to past 5 years, you get a slightly better picture, but…

The keyword is "high impact". The link you provided is only ranked by publication count, it doesn't consider the impact factor of journal/conferences. If you look at stats from ICML this year[0], the only Chinese institution TsingHua is ranked #13 in the top #20 list. Take a look at recent major advances in deep learning: information bottle neck, mask-rcnn, transformer, normalizing flow, all originated from US/Canadi…

Sure, but at the same time there is a real bias towards established methods and research groups. It's hard to find traction as a newly established group doing original research - and "impact factors" are highly overrated since what ends up happening is the paper with most publicity and flash surrounding it is deemed more impactful. The fact that they went from almost zero representation at the international venues to such a high number should be indication that they are on the rise.

In addition, I think the sheer number of students and resources at their disposal will ensure China have a continuous pool of talent to draw from. The US has become increasingly hostile and competitive for ML researchers in terms of academic pressure, and returning to China has been incentivized for a while now.

Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing to understand about China is that domestic alternatives to international products, especially in 'sensitive' industries (basically anything technologically significant) is ALREADY a core government goal and a major cornerstone of their tech, IP, and political policy . The CCP has stated on many occasions--going back years --that their goal is to eliminate any reliance on non-Chinese firms. This has more urg…

The other thing to understand though is that in a dictatorship people do not have economic freedom or the incentives to truly do the hard work necessary to build this industries. If the United States cuts off support for China and these industries, China will fall far behind unless it can steal the technologies. This is the fate of most dictatorships.

That seems incredibly naive. of course they do have the incentives, wanting to get rich. They do have the economic freedom, at least enough to do very creative software and hardware engineering. The evidence is there.

Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#338
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>NOT on board >had China much later in their priority list Pick one? >healthcare As someone who is self employed and spends more than $20k for healthcare every year for a relatively healthy family of 4... you can just fuck right off if you don't think healthcare is a major major priority in this country. People need to be HEALTHY in order to be HAPPY. There are so, so, so many people who can't afford to go to the doc…

Whoa - its possible to have dental care and go to the doctor for most things, and not cost $20K per year. So, healthcare/insurance is not really a priority for people - until it is. Until something major/fixable but very expensive occurs. Then its a priority. So forgive people for being a little blind on the subject. Its insurance after all - you're betting the other guy your house will burn down, and hoping they win…

>Whoa - its possible to have dental care and go to the doctor for most things, and not cost $20K per year.

How do you figure that?

My health care premiums are $1350 a month for a 10k deductible and 30% co-insurance. My dental premiums are $200/mo.That is $1550/mo WITHOUT any out of pocket costs even. I'm a the premera bronze plan. This isn't even a gold plan. There are a couple plans that are _slightly_ less expensive but a bit more restrictive.

So please, how am I magically supposed to lower my costs and still be covered in case of a catastrophic event? Or serious illness like cancer? Are you suggesting I buy the $100/mo plans that cover basically NOTHING and would do NOTHING if a member of my family got cancer?

Come on. Lay it on the table. Tell me what to do?

>If we could pay for everybody's unlimited medical care, maybe we'd do that. But it might not be affordable.

Hello JoeAltmair, please meet THE REST OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD which is able to do it.

And let me give you a little analogy here. A big company like.. Microsoft, for example, is able to probably negotiate their health care premiums quite a bit because of a large base of people right? Way lower than "my cost" which is 4 people.

Now let me do something really crazy here.. bear with me.. what if we pooled over 300 million people together to have a massive base where the taxes that pay for the program are able to cover the people with little-to-no medical issues and the more extreme cases? Holy shit, what an idea.. how has no one ever thought of this before............................. are you still following me?

Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#339
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will not find a person that despises current POTUS more than me, but I'm also very positive about the fact that China is finally being identified as a real and present threat. Unfortunately current POTUS is doing his very best to implement ineffective measures, it would have hurt China a LOT more to enter into TPP (I know, horrible treaty otherwise) than the stupid tariffs that were imposed. At the end of the day…

"we say that our values (as imperfect in their application as they might be) are worth more than money" The US keeps selling weapons to the Saudi Arabia that uses them to wage a war of aggression in Yemen, that has brazenly murdered a journalist working for an American newspaper, that executes opposition figures based on fake charges of terrorism, that treats women and gays as inferior. What sort of values are you ta…

You're entitled to your opinion, and free to state it, and that's exactly one of the values our constitution enshrines.

The others can be found here:

https://constitutionus.com/

for the philosophical underpinnings read this:

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/

If you live in the US and don't like what's going on right now, I suggest you register to vote and help others do the same. For all the evident problems laid bare by the current administration, it's completely within the people's power to build a more perfect union.

Re: U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure why everyone glorifies basic manufacturing work like it’s the pinnacle of American labor. War requires a lot of basic manufacturing capacity, and geopolitically those aren't good things to lose.

> War requires a lot of basic manufacturing capacity A lot (if not most) of military machinery is still manufactured in the US. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman build our planes. General Dynamics, Oshkosh, and others build our tanks. Raytheon makes some of our missiles. In fact, here's full list of who's building our defense tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_... -- As you…

> A lot (if not most) of military machinery is still manufactured in the US...We've done a very good job of keeping our most critical and sensitive manufacturing jobs inside the states.

I'm aware of this, but I'd assume that they're all setup for peacetime manufacturing rates and would have difficulty scaling up. My concern is more about a lack of slack manufacturing capacity (and skills!) that could be repurposed in wartime.

IIRC, the US's slack manufacturing capacity was one of main things that won the war for the allies in WWII.

> It's mostly consumer goods manufacturing that's moved abroad. I don't see any particular benefit in bringing it back stateside.

That's true for some things, but not others. I'm thinking specifically about consumer electronics and some related areas. Where the capacity could be redirected towards military products (e.g. electronics for smart bombs and drones).

Even more broadly, consumer manufacturing may carry with it supply chains that are more militarily useful to have than the consumer product manufacturing capacity itself.

> Making things in low-wage countries like Vietnam or China dramatically slashes costs for the consumers, allowing us American consumers to live a more lavish lifestyle.

I think we've been letting this consideration drive too much of our decision making. It's one factor, but not the only one that matters.

Also, you have to think about the day when Vietnam or China runs out of people who are willing to work cheaply enough feed a system of labor arbitrage.

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