131–140 of 181 posts
Pro tip for folks looking to take a job with a Chinese company: this will prevent you from jumping to some jobs in the US. The defense sector will want you to be not employed by the Chinese for at least a year before letting you work on defense-related jobs (yes, they will audit your employer).
Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace. An objective measure is PISA results [1]. When comparing with even the best performing US state, Massachusetts, China has many more top performers in Math, as a proportion of population [2]. (In 2015 only four provinces of China participated, but their combine…
now if you are talking statistics, in particular applied statistics, most of those departments are retooling by hiring ml folks from csee departments. but the bread and butter courses required to get a stat phd remain the same as they were a decade ago - 2 core inference courses, 2 core math-stat measure theoretic courses, 2 courses on experimental stats. literally no stat dept mandates an ML course, though a few do allow ml as an elective. now, all of this can and will change over the next few years, but its very early days.
essentially, predicating ai dominance on raw math skills is a mistake. there’s no significant correlation.
Sorry, my questions might reflect that I don't know much about China / Chinese culture. I'm curious about compensation. Can Chinese AI researchers earn equally well in China as abroad? Or are they going to suffer from brain drain eventually? How does the Communist Party / society deal with large pay gaps? Are Chinese companies with AI departments looking for international talent that's not at the uppermost level?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...but anyone sitting here scoffing that China can’t make itself a world leader in a field by simply pouring money and support onto the problem needs a serious history lesson. They have before, and there is every indiction they will again, here with this. What are they currently leading?
One area is scientific computing: based on, for example, the Top500 list, or their recent successes with the Gordon Bell prize (basically best paper prize for the biggest supercomputing conference). Of course there are a lot of political factors in both of those achievements. But money definitely translated into results. (I'm not arguing that China is the best nation in this area either, but they are clearly a leader…
What I never understood, if China is so great, why then do large parts of their upper middle class/upper class buy property in foreign countries and send their kids to school their? It's not as if the American upper class are purchasing houses in Beijing for their kids.
The United States was once seen as uncultured, unrefined, and frankly quite weak by most of Western Europe until the late 1800's. And in many respects it was. Now the US is the richest country in the world, and is where wealthy non-Americans send their children and make land investments. My point is that trajectory is more relevant to these discussions than current state of affairs. The quality of life of the average…
Also, even if housing forsake prices in Beijing are at New York levels, rents are just at Wichita levels. No foreigner is going to buy into that level of crazy, especially when buying property in china accords them no residency benefits (they will never get hukou, heck, green cards basically don’t exist).
I'm getting a bit of a flashback to the Japanese Fifth Gneeration Computing project (I wasn't around back then; I've read about it though). Then, too, an East Asian country (Japan) known for excellence in one field (manufacturing) initiated a state-funded research project into a promising technology (AI). Then, too, the West reacted with alarm, fearing the Asians would leave them in the dust. Then, too, the project w…
Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace. An objective measure is PISA results [1]. When comparing with even the best performing US state, Massachusetts, China has many more top performers in Math, as a proportion of population [2]. (In 2015 only four provinces of China participated, but their combine…
pardon my ignorance, but what is the specific correlation of math skills to dominance in AI ? yes, AI/ML/dnn uses substantial amounts of linear algebra, much the way accountancy uses large amounts of arithmetic. but we don’t see mathematicians racing to be accountants. i have specifically written to several math departments in the US asking if they do any sort of AI/ML related graduate research. Even schools that off…
You could make an argument that high performers on the PISA test would find AI and accountancy too boring and would go into pure mathematics instead; but I don't think those proportions would be different between countries, so a higher potential (schoolchildren with good math skills) should still translate into more AI researchers, on average.
Another key trend to consider - China's labor costs are growing up to 2x per year: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/welcoming-our-... China's push for AI is a recognition that the loss of one advantage (cheap human labor) could be replaced by another (cheap machine labor).
In any case, the advantage of cheap human labour has already been replaced by what you call 'cheap machine labour'. China has been able to dominate manufacturing in large part by giving companies access to cheap capital, which allows them to invest in machines. Silicon chips aren't made by hand. PCBs aren't soldered by hand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The United States was once seen as uncultured, unrefined, and frankly quite weak by most of Western Europe until the late 1800's. And in many respects it was. Now the US is the richest country in the world, and is where wealthy non-Americans send their children and make land investments. My point is that trajectory is more relevant to these discussions than current state of affairs. The quality of life of the average…
I think a missing piece of the puzzle is: It’s not clear to me that my property rights would be respected, should I be able to buy property in China (which, as a foreigner, I can’t do anyway, the government only leases it to you at best). Western countries have a much better record in this regard.