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China’s AI Awakening

technologyreview.com

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Re: China’s AI Awakening

#141

Post by beisner »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #135
beisner wrote: post #94

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…

Well, unless you include air pollution, then quality of life isn’t better, especially in Beijing. 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).

Permanent residency is available for investors and people employed there. You’re right, it’s not unconditional. Property rights, in practice, are generally respected as in western countries, although there are some notable counter examples.

I think pollution in China will likely be a non issue in 10-20 years or so. Pittsburg used to be like Beijing, but as the National economy shifted away from industries causing pollution, it disappeared entirely. China is in the midst of this process.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#142

Post by seanmcdirmid »

beisner wrote: post #141
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, unless you include air pollution, then quality of life isn’t better, especially in Beijing. 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).

Permanent residency is available for investors and people employed there. You’re right, it’s not unconditional. Property rights, in practice, are generally respected as in western countries, although there are some notable counter examples. I think pollution in China will likely be a non issue in 10-20 years or so. Pittsburg used to be like Beijing, but as the National economy shifted away from industries causing pol…

I lived and worked in china for 9 years and never came close to qualifying for a green card. Comparing Beijing today to Pittsburg 50 years ago doesn’t really help the current tech market where skilled people are moving out of Beijing for life quality of life reasons (e.g. they have kids who have developed asthma). You also have to pay talent much more to live in Beijing to offset its pollution problems (and to those who say it isn’t that bad, you haven’t lived through winter yet).

We were told in 2010 that the government would solve China’s pollution problem probably by 2015, 2020 at the latest. Ya, well, that isn’t going to come to pass.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#143

Post by seanmcdirmid »

beisner wrote: post #140
indemnity wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While you’re technically correct about the government leasing property, in practice buying the rights to land for residential use is in practice effectively the same as buying the land. There are a lot of things like that in China, where the system is nominally socialist, but in practice things are just as capitalistic (if not more so) as they are in western countries.

This hasn’t been tested yet. There was a huge scandal in Wenzhou when the local government was going to charge market prices for renewing leases there (their property market started earlier with shorter leases before 70 years was settled on nationally). The central government had to step in and make the leases turn over automatically, because the precedent set in Wenzhou could tank markets nationwide.

I bet China eventually scraps the lease system and replaces it with a universal property tax, which would solve the other problem of keeping local governments funded long term (right now they just make money on sales), while naturally deprecating the property on a yearly basis, and also making pure speculation much more difficult.

But who can say. If china switches to a property tax system (not just the nominal one easily gamed in shanghai and chongqing today), it would break a lot of buying assumptions.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#144

Post by mazerackham »

noetic_techy wrote: post #137

Has China produced a single major AI breakthrough with all these cited papers? Just because they have a lot of papers written doesn't mean anything. Quality vs Quantity. You can take technology developed by others and copy it all you want, and assign all your grad students to write something publishable about it, but unless you innovate in it, I wouldn't say you are a world leader. At best you may see novel applicati…

ya, i mean, how could anyone think that those robots from China can think outside of the box right?

/sarcasm

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#145

Post by leemailll »

potbelly83 wrote: post #89

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 college entrance exam is too brutal for many, and China lacks that many top universities as US

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#146

Post by senatorobama »

Arun2009 wrote: post #82
nopinsight wrote: post #19

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…

As an Indian, India's performance in the PISA test is simultaneously both humiliating and horrifying. India ended up near the bottom of the test when it first took it. Cause for concern? Sure! What did the government of India do? They pulled out of the test citing that it was "unfair" to the Indian students. Around 70 odd nations apparently didn't have this problem. I have come to think that the country barely has a…

There is no hope for India. In 100 years it will be the same. Best hope is to migrate to Silicon Valley

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#147

Post by nopinsight »

dxbydt wrote: post #132
nopinsight wrote: post #19

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…

We are not talking about the level of professional mathematicians or ML theory researchers you mentioned [1]. An average person, in the overall population, is unlikely to pass or possess the prerequisites (e.g. two semesters of college calculus) to attend the linear algebra course in the first place [2] [3].

For simple, routine applications, one can call machine learning APIs without deep understanding of the math behind them. In most real world applications, however, input data tend to be messy and there are many complications and constraints to satisfy. For the foreseeable future, applying machine learning in the real world requires input from humans who understand the why's and the how's behind an API.

For more advanced work, reading papers is necessary and most of the recent machine learning papers contain substantial math (from the viewpoint of an average person, not a professional mathematician).

In addition, math skills, at the basic level that PISA measures, are highly correlated with logical thinking, which will be relevant for AI engineering for a long time to come.

[1] There are perhaps fewer than 100,000 professional mathematicians in the US out of over 100 million knowledge workers there. https://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematici...

[2] https://www.noodle.com/articles/the-problem-with-college-cal...

[3] http://hechingerreport.org/high-failure-rates-spur-universit...

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#148

Post by nopinsight »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #108

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…

The current crop of AIs is already starting to make a big impact in commercial and other spheres. All of the major tech giants in the US and China are using AI in their offerings and behind the scenes. There are substantial differences between the two eras.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#149

Post by paradite »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #130
eighthnate wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point. But you have to factor in american companies international reach. Chinese companies dominate china and that is extremely lucrative, but american tech companies dominate europe and the americas and the rest of the world. Europe and at americas combined have a larger population than china and a geographical landmass 3X larger than china. The real question is why europe ( 800 million people ) and latin…

Recent emeeging internet markets in china’s backyard like Myanmar and Cambodia are even more dominated by western internet companies. To the average Cambodian, internet means YouTube and Facebook. Chinese companies are completely MIA.

Interesting, care to share the source?

I was under the impression that Cambodians are mostly using devices from Chinese brands and hence exposed to pre-installed Chinese software (at least to a small extent).

For example, Xiaomi phones come without google play stores but Chinese app stores.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#150

Post by jostmey »

nopinsight wrote: post #19

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…

Even with the hostile environment in the US, I suspect China is far more hostile. I don't see China retaining top talent--these individuals might simply go to Europe, Canada, Japan or elsewhere.
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