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

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41–50 of 470 posts

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

#41

I wonder if given the recent "moral" loss of US, we will see a post-WW2 Soviet vs USA style defection of scientists & engineers between USA and China? When you read the reasoning of people that defected from UK/US to soviet with nuclear secrets it's kinda hard to grasp now, but back then I can definitely understand that a mix of "the soviets are not that bad" and "are we really that good?" could've made people switch…

People can be become indifferent, which is a win for China.

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

#42
post #9

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.

I looked at France and Germany, there was a clear downward trend for a long time, yet it bumped before the pandemic, got super low for the 2-3 years of it, and is steadily rising again.

Comparatively they are still incredibly safe countries, and the sentiment of insecurity has always been disproportionate to reality and politically exploited.

But people feeling the social climate deteriorating is also spot on, the economy not doing great and rising inequalities is largely part of it so I don't think it will improve in the short term.

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

#43

Deepseek is great. What fundamentally prevents an open source coalition from producing great AI systems for everyone?

In the west, there is almost no money for open source.

Is there elsewhere?

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

#44
post #15

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.

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

#45
This is unfortunate, but understood.

I worked in a university research spinout US-China multinational AI hardware startup, and (without getting into confidential information, but only speaking of general engineering practice) I can mention that both nations' government concerns could be barriers.

And some rules can be counterproductive for the one making the rule, even from a competitive perspective -- not even turning a win-win into a lose-lose, but turning it into a lose-win where you are the "side" who loses.

Another thing I'd like like to say, as a US person, who interfaced throughout the org chart at the multinational startup, is that my colleagues in China, as well as those who were recent immigrants, were generally very smart and knowledgeable, and also very nice people.

It's especially tragic when nations feel they have to act adversarily on tensions, because (as seen in this case) the respective individual citizens are not natural enemies, but rather, they are natural friends. They are also valuable fellow contributors, to the shared wealth of our shared world.

In recent weeks, the world is fortunate that DeepSeek has shared some of its AI advancements, even in the context of themselves being denied the latest hardware with which to work. I hope that this sharing will continue and increase, in all directions.

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

#47

I wonder if given the recent "moral" loss of US, we will see a post-WW2 Soviet vs USA style defection of scientists & engineers between USA and China? When you read the reasoning of people that defected from UK/US to soviet with nuclear secrets it's kinda hard to grasp now, but back then I can definitely understand that a mix of "the soviets are not that bad" and "are we really that good?" could've made people switch…

As an EU-based employer, I'm seeing a post-WW2 soviet vs usa style defection of engineers between USA and Europe. By the way, if anyone US-based is in this situation and wants to "defect" to an EU-job, send me a message, I can help you.

My hiring manager mates are seeing this in Australia too.

Sydney's beaches and weather helps a bit too.

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

#48
Why does the US still allow Chinese nationals to study at its universities and work at its companies? Seems like a big risk that cutting edge research and trade secrets will go to America’s main adversary. Industrial espionage by China has a long history, and China has more valuable things to steal from America than the other way.

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

#49
post #15

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.

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

#50

Is what they call “AI” actually dangerous or is just some common misconception about how powerful language models imply skynet taking over the world?

It’ll enable mass surveillance, and hence it is the wet dream of authoritarian governments like China.

They can intercept every call and every message now, but they can’t read it all or build a file on a billion citizens. Human intelligence doesn’t scale, but AI inference does.

In the very near future (maybe the present!) every call will be listened in by an AI with a system message along the lines of “Report any anti-government or potentially rebellious behaviour. Summarise the conversation for each party and add it to their permanent file.”

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