China may match or beat America in AI • Hacker News Board

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#111

Post by awkwarddaturtle » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 6:21 PM UTC

erva wrote: post #110

awkwarddaturtle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to sound like an anti-intellectual, but it could be a mistake to assume that innovation comes from academia It isn't that innovation necessarily comes from academia, but that academia is a reflection of how wealthy and educated the population is. Innovation comes from the wealthy and the educated. So as china gets wealthier, they will innovate more. > It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to…

> academia is a reflection of how wealthy and educated the population is This is correct, but that doesn't mean causation. Look at any civilization and look at what came first wealth or academia. It seems to me that wealth creates academia. > That's an "observation" based on racism and nonsense. Saying something is "racist" does not constitute an argument. I didn't say whether it was "good" or "bad" to have a culture…

> It seems to me that wealth creates academia.

Yes. That's was my point. You get wealthy, then you get "civilized".

> Saying something is "racist" does not constitute an argument.

No. But saying an "observation" based on "racism" is an argument.

> I didn't say whether it was "good" or "bad" to have a culture that promotes or suppresses risk taking...no one can.

Well you did imply it...

> Dead wrong. Wealth and security create complacency.

Not dead wrong. Dead truth. It can for some people, but it also gives people FREE TIME to pursue other things. I didn't say EVERYONE would become innovative. My point is that you need wealth and security to be innovative.

>"Necessity is the mother of invention" is not just some stupid quip.

Like all quotes. It is. And without wealth and security, not much time or resources to innovate.

> I don't. My entire post was a postulation, which is why I used phrases such as "it could be", "general observation" and "there may be", etc.

You don't but that's a lot of "implying" what you think.

> It appears that you are merely looking for a fight instead of having a conversation.

I would but you seem quite defensive. I wasn't calling you racist. I said the observation was based on "racism". Lumping 1.4 billion into one "stereotype" is the definition of racism.

Also, as I noted, I debunked most of your "it could be"s.

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#112

Post by callmeal » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 6:59 PM UTC

rrggrr wrote: post #70

callmeal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are way off. 10% goes to welfare. 6% goes to interest on debt. 16% goes to defense. 25% goes to CHIP/medicare/medicaid. (25% to social security, but that has a separate tax inflow and is a net positive to the budget.) see: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-w...

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/...

The numbers in that page are exactly the ones I mentioned. So what were you trying to say?

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#113

Post by devy » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 8:26 PM UTC

throwawayecchai wrote: post #6

Chinese Government is all over the Silicon Valley these days trying to get into US AI developments, using all sorts of nefarious tricks. A case in point. There is a conference, SYNC 2017, in Computer History Museum tomorrow (July 14th), organized by Pingwest, which itself seems like a Chinese Gov. front if you look at the team. They have several good speakers, and some Chinese, Gov fronted, fake VC types. Till 2 days…

    organized by Pingwest, which itself seems like a Chinese Gov. front if you look at the team.

I am PingWest subscriber on WeChat and generally quite fond of their writing. Last night, I privately and specifically asked Thomas Luo [1][2], the co-founder of PingWest, whether they have connection to Chinese government. Thomas denied the claim. Also looking at his resume, there isn't much I would raise the flags of being a government front. So my question for you is this: what are you smoking?

[1]: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/thomas-luo#/entity

[2]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasluoyihang/

Re: China may match or beat America in AI

#114

Post by MarkMMullin » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 1:13 PM UTC

erva wrote: post #60

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

Here I was looking for the Dr. Strangelove equivalent of the "AI Gap" :-) Given that in the next four years it is likely that more than half of the PhDs awarded by top US schools are awarded to foreign nationals[1], and our current government policy is to restrict immigration as much as possible, we are on a path to insuring that soon the world will have a much better pool of talent to draw on to do the research than…

Not to sound like an anti-intellectual, but it could be a mistake to assume that innovation comes from academia. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a convincing chapter (I think it is Chapter 13: Lecturing Birds to Fly) in his book "Antifragile" about this very thing. Then there are cultural differences that could be at play concerning innovation. It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taki…

A key Chinese collaborator of mine on this https://hackaday.io/project/21966-quamera and I have chatted about the 'old' China and the 'new' China - he thought up, designed, and built a company around making a general purpose FPGA that allows for a wide range of imagers to be attached via standardized I2C/SPI or USB bussing. He's very much the new China, and while there are cultural differences, there's no question that an ever growing number can be either incredible collaborators or fearsome competitors - a lot of that choice is up to us.