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China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

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Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#101

Post by ng12 »

echevil wrote: post #98
ng12 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your contention is. Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive? I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that free societies should not economically support oppressive ones.

> Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive? I believe it's way too harmful to simply categorize government into "free" vs "bad/corrupt/authoritarian/oppressive". There're a large number of other factors to consider. I agree Chinese government has tons of problems, just like US government has tons of problems of its own, just different. At the bottom line, Chinese gover…

You're not wrong, the Chinese government works well for you if you're Han Chinese living near an urban area who doesn't have any problematic political leanings. The problem is the world is the world is not made solely of such people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/world/asia/china-detentio...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2018/10/16/organ-h...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-dea...

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/beijing-encroachment-hong-kong-fre...

If you believe China lifting people out of poverty excuses a laundry-list of human rights abuses we'll have to agree to disagree.

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#102

Post by JackFaker »

echevil wrote: post #100
JackFaker wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to know if you can speak to how minority populations are discussed or addressed in a historical or modern context? I understand that there is something like 50+ recognized minority groups in China.

In a historical context, the minority groups are mostly people lived in different areas. Typically Han was in the central/east region in China, and there were other groups in north/west and sometimes south. There had been lots of wars in the past, and lots of peace as well. The fairly recent Qin dynasty was actually founded by a minority group in the northeast, and they ruled Han along with all other minority groups…

That is really interesting. Thank you.

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#103

Post by dang »

ng12 wrote: post #76
dis-sys wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it matters what the Chinese government is like that is just a cheap excuse repeatedly used in almost all high tech areas - 1. because the Chinese government is bad, China is not allowed to join projects like the international space station. 2. because the Chinese government is bad, allowing China to have access to any semiconductor techs from the west is not acceptable. 3. because the Chinese government is bad, exp…

I'm not sure what your contention is. Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive? I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that free societies should not economically support oppressive ones.

Please don't do nationalistic flamewar on Hacker News. This comment takes the thread a major step further into hell.

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#104

Post by dang »

dis-sys wrote: post #75
ng12 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what the Chinese people are like, it matters what the Chinese government is like. If AI comes out of China the Chinese government will have complete control over it, and that is a very bad thing.

> it matters what the Chinese government is like that is just a cheap excuse repeatedly used in almost all high tech areas - 1. because the Chinese government is bad, China is not allowed to join projects like the international space station. 2. because the Chinese government is bad, allowing China to have access to any semiconductor techs from the west is not acceptable. 3. because the Chinese government is bad, exp…

We've asked you before not to do nationalistic flamewar on HN, but you've kept doing it, as well as repeatedly becoming uncivil. If you continue to comment like this we're going to ban you. I'm not banning you for this comment because at least it contains factual information, but if the pattern continues, that's what will happen.

If the rest of the internet is going up in flames about this, that's more reason, not less, to take better care of HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#105

Post by dang »

All: Regardless of your feelings about China, if you do nationalistic flamewar on HN, or angry denunciation, or population slurring, we're going to ban you.

These threads have been getting noticeably worse lately and the worst sections of this one are vile.

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#106

Post by dang »

natch wrote: post #19

China has cultivated in its people a very troubling mental complex centered on national pride and driven by the Century of Humiliation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation To say they are fervent about righting the wrongs and perceived wrongs of the past is an understatement. It's pretty much a driving force of life with many people. It's a powerful dynamic. And it's one that's held close to the ches…

> China has cultivated in its people a very troubling mental complex

> China drills bitterness into its people about their past humiliations, and uses this to develop racist nationalism

I don't believe you meant to, but you crossed into nationalistic and racial flamewar with this comment. Imagine how it must feel to read something like this if you're on the receiving end. It's surprising how many of the replies below managed to remain thoughtful. When I read those comments and compare them to yours, it's clear who the model HN users are in this case.

I don't think you were being malicious, I think you underestimated the difference between musing in a personal conversation and broadcasting to potentially millions of people. For example, it isn't enough to protest that you didn't mean all Chinese, just the ones who . That is far too crude to undo the impact such claims make on the ones who are being categorized. If you can imagine yourself in that position, this is not hard to see; yet it is hard to imagine, because we're mostly so certain that none of it could ever be justified in our own case, so it feels like no big deal.

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#107

Post by echevil »

ng12 wrote: post #101
echevil wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive? I believe it's way too harmful to simply categorize government into "free" vs "bad/corrupt/authoritarian/oppressive". There're a large number of other factors to consider. I agree Chinese government has tons of problems, just like US government has tons of problems of its own, just different. At the bottom line, Chinese gover…

You're not wrong, the Chinese government works well for you if you're Han Chinese living near an urban area who doesn't have any problematic political leanings. The problem is the world is the world is not made solely of such people. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/world/asia/china-detentio... https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2018/10/16/organ-h... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-d…

Interestingly I just replied to someone else asking about minorities groups in China, you can find it just by searching for my handle. Long story short: It's fine to live in China as a minority group.

I've also expressed my opinion about some other issues like Xinjiang in another thread if you're interested:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439175

I'm not saying there aren't tons of problems with Chinese government. But from the point of view of a Chinese citizen, the human right issues are mostly excuses that western media use to attack Chinese government; a lots of those are false claims; and even for the parts that'd be truth, it impacts very few amount of people and it's generally not a big concern for vast majority of people living in China no matter Han or not (Not saying violating human right is fine but the issue has much lower priority for most people)

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#108

Post by dang »

baobrain wrote: post #50
jl6 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be actual Chinese people here on HN. Can any weigh in on the reality of this? It’s a heavy charge to make against an entire population.

I've been through 3-8th grade education in Chengdu at a top 100 school. The rest of my education was in the US, so I may be biased in one way or the other. From my perspective, I didn't really see it that way. Like any country, the history curriculum focuses on China's history, focusing primarily on ancient history (pre-Qing dynasty) for 3 semesters with one semester of modern Chinese history (Qing to present). While…

They make me and the other HN moderators uncomfortable too. Unfortunately, I don't know what to do about it at scale. We will continue banning the worst and asking the rest not to do this. But it's a matter of mass trends meeting mass psychology. I feel like Canute commanding the waves to stop, knowing that it won't work.

When you notice examples of this, we'd appreciate it if you (or anyone) would email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can at least post moderating comments in the thread. We can't come close to seeing all the comments, and sometimes I notice wretched stuff days later that it pains me to have missed at the time.

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#109

Post by dang »

yters wrote: post #32

You think other nations actually buy into peaceful globalism? Everyone is just looking for an opportunity to be the next global superpower and rule the world, and only play nice-nice insofar as it furthers this goal. Global trade certainly does not guarantee global peace. We had global trade before WW1 and WW2, and it did nothing to stop the most horrific wars ever seen in history.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18450681 and marked it off-topic.

Re: China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

#110

Post by dang »

_1qd4 wrote: post #79
wycs wrote: post #59

China is full of extremely bright, hardworking people. It is not a nation of brain-washed automatons. I think AI alignment is some of the most important work in the world, and I think spreading and translating AI alignment research in China, such as Stuart Russell's work, may well be more important than direct AI-safety research. Because of their huge population and much higher average quantitative ability among Han…

[flagged]

I'm not sure how you thought it was ok to comment like this here, but it isn't, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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