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South Korea announces $860M AI fund after AlphaGo 'shock'

nature.com

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Re: South Korea announces $860M AI fund after AlphaGo 'shock'

#101

Post by eru »

vmorgulis wrote: post #34
w1ntermute wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of what an engineer said about Quaero[0], a Franco-German attempt to create a competitor to Google search: > Going head-to-head with Google with a project involving well-funded, energetic entrepreneurs would be foolish. Attempting the same with a multigovernment collaboration is beyond description.[1] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero 1: http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/loser-whats-the-…

Yes and Exalead was involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exalead I guess they are still widely indirectly funded by the state. A better strategy would to distribute the money to more companies a bit like VCs do.

Or just leave the money with the people in the first place?

Re: South Korea announces $860M AI fund after AlphaGo 'shock'

#103

Post by gumby »

WhoBeI wrote: post #95
endymi0n wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Every "research" effort that goes money first (and especially throwing it at already established entities), design, goals and culture second is going to end up the same way. It doesn't have anything to do with South Korea or Germany to be honest.

Mmm.. the german governments funding of the Max Planck institutes seem to work well. As I understand it the Max Planck Society gets funding and then distributes that to projects meeting certain quality requirements. I think they do mostly base research, the kind that private companies tend to avoid as there rarely is any direct profit to be had.

That speaks to w1ntermute's point. Max Planck Institutes are dedicated to basic research (Grundlagenforschung). Thus they don't have an "objective" as such. Plus, by the very nature of fundamental research, it's hard to determine "success" (except in the aggregate, and after a long period of time -- which the MPG has had time to demonstrate.

The "google-killer" or "SK AI project" or the "5th generation project" for that matter are quite different. First, they start with an ill-defined yet concrete goal, which makes success well nigh impossible. Second, they start from the position of a large sum of money being necessary -- which naturally attracts inappropriate as well as appropriate bids; the deciders are often more political than with the MPG (which itself, consisting of a group of people, must have its own politics, but presumably less intensely). Also this money is often a one-time or short term allocation rather than a long term investment as with the MPG.

The one example I can think of in which this actually worked was Airbus, but that took decades, massive sums, and a stubbornness to change the structure a lot along the way. Not sure I can think of another example.

Re: South Korea announces $860M AI fund after AlphaGo 'shock'

#104

Post by vmorgulis »

eru wrote: post #101
vmorgulis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and Exalead was involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exalead I guess they are still widely indirectly funded by the state. A better strategy would to distribute the money to more companies a bit like VCs do.

Or just leave the money with the people in the first place?

Yes, better.

Re: South Korea announces $860M AI fund after AlphaGo 'shock'

#106

Post by dnautics »

yongjik wrote: post #85
dnautics wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hwang woo suk and stem cells?

That's different. Hwang's case was the story of a fraudster, who built his empire based on deceit, bribery, using his students like slaves, and generally knowing which buttons to press to incite a wave of nationalism mixed with personality cult. That is, he was one of his own kind. A legend, if you could call him that.

He wasn't totally a fraudster - snuppy was real after all.

Re: South Korea announces $860M AI fund after AlphaGo 'shock'

#107

Post by ConfuciusSay02 »

tn13 wrote: post #44
sikim wrote: post #11

As a South Korean who experienced/heard about many government-backed researches, I strongly feel that this will go nowhere. Most of the time, there's always some bribery involved and project never finishes or come even close to that of the tech companies in US. The government then realizes it can't be done even with more money and puts the money elsewhere just to repeat the same thing. The examples that I can think o…

That is true about ALL governments my friend. Obama just threw few billions at self driving cars which will not go anywhere.

Direct government funding, or indirect funding via guaranteed contracts or similar, resulted in innovations such as:

- The internet

- The microchip

- Cellular communications

- GPS

- Solid state memory

- Capacitive sensors

Just the technologies that more or less every other Silicon Valley innovation is based upon.

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