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China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

wsj.com

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Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#11

Post by zeroCalories »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

> They also worry that executives could be detained and used as a bargaining chip in U.S.-China negotiations, in an echo of a fight over a Huawei executive held in Canada at Washington’s request during the first Trump administration. Does anybody doubt that this is a reasonable concern? The Feds would probably throw the book at those guys for every form of IP theft, "conspiracy to commit economic espionage," "theft o…

Yeah this seems perfectly reasonable. While the targeting of Huawei was legitimate, I'd be pretty disappointed in the blatant corruption of targeting AI leaders that do the same thing as people in the west.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#15

Post by tz18 »

No, this is just about keeping people from defecting and taking secrets / cash with them. Many Chinese people working for state controlled companies or similar (schoolteachers were one ridiculous example I think) in super mundane jobs have their passports taken away or exit bans for "national security" reasons.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#16

Post by seabass-labrax »

The article leaves it until the very end to point out the risk of high-performing employees being poached, but I'd say it seems like a huge liability for China. The USA would be well-placed to identify vulnerable Chinese individuals working in AI development and offer them a large sum of money to 'defect'. It would be both a propaganda win for Trump's administration and a relatively cheap way of removing these individuals from the Chinese economy.

If the South China Morning Post is to be believed[1], the salaries for software engineers in AI-related fields are far lower in China than in the USA, despite already being "two thirds higher" than other software engineers in China.

[1]: https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3253492/china-...

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#17

Post by bluefirebrand »

atq2119 wrote: post #9
germandiago wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often say states behave as mafias. It is a matter of becoming influential enough so that they treat you as a criminal. In the meantime, the streets every day less and less safe, at least in Europe, bc of real criminals, the ones that kill or systematically steal even in organized crime and they do very little about it.

In the European countries that I've bothered to look, crime statistics are actually down. It's just the perception of crime that is up. Think about who might benefit from creating this kind of misleading perception.

It can be misleading in other ways

For instance it is trivial for a country to reduce crime statistics simply by making things that used to be crimes legal

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