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China’s AI Awakening

technologyreview.com

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Re: China’s AI Awakening

#161

Post by yorwba »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #153
yorwba wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PISA test (at least when I took it) measures math skills in calculation, i.e. the kind of applied mathematics that academic departments write off as too trivial. Nonetheless, those are the skills that are required for Deep Learning as well as accountancy. 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'…

> those are the skills that are required for Deep Learning Why do you believe that?

Rereading that, I should have worded it as "those are skills that are required for Deep Learning research". There are of course a bunch of other skills you need to be successful, but you won't get far without being comfortable with linear algebra and calculus.

To answer your question, I believe that because I haven't yet seen a Deep Learning paper which did not couch its results in terms of those, even if it might not have been strictly necessary. If you do not understand the basics of current approaches, you'll have a hard time developing them further.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#162

Post by forapurpose »

jorblumesea wrote: post #73
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…

The US will continue to cut funding for research and higher education in general. This will give China the edge in almost every level and attract top researchers back. The US is losing its edge.

> The US will continue to cut funding for research and higher education in general

And for K-12 education, which is necessary for preparing students for higher education. What proportion of Americans go to schools which give them little chance at high-tech jobs?

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#163

Post by forapurpose »

oblio wrote: post #99
eighthnate wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are leading in solar, renewable, nuclear, patents, electric vehicles, high speed rail, hydropower, # of cities, industrialization, # of new universities, etc. China is leading in pretty much everything right now. They are the top trading partner of pretty much every significant country. And they are planning on building another 100 cities in the next 10 years. It is ridiculous how much change china is going thro…

China was kind of domineering, but on a global historic scale they could be considered somewhat non-violent. They even got invaded twice while being the top economic power of their time. There are quite a few aspects I don't like about China, but warmongers, they are not. If anything, the modern era should be a boon to them, since developed countries are virtually conquerable at a certain scale, via modern technology…

> warmongers, they are not

Perhaps they were not, though they were so dominant that they had no security fears and had other levers of power.

Contemporary China has militarily threatened or even had conflicts with most of their neighbors, including Japan, The Philippines, Vietnam, India, and Taiwan, and also the U.S. Communist China fought a war with Russia in the mid-20th century, invaded S. Korea (with the N. Koreans' assent), and invaded and annexed Tibet. They have built-military and quasi- military bases in Sri Lanka (not sure of the status of that one), Pakistan, and Djibouti. They've built infrastructure supporting potential military logistics throughout Asia.

The Chinese government's talking point is in the comment above: China does not interfere in other countries affairs and they seek a 'peaceful rise', citing their history as if President Xi restricts himself to what was done in the Qing, Ming or prior dynasties centuries ago. Almost all warmongers in history, or the ones with any sense, have made the same claims about peace; look up some German propaganda from the 1930s.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#164

Post by forapurpose »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #80
TeMPOraL wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government basically mandated the Moon landings, and they happened within 12 years from Sputnik. So I'd say yes, sometimes a government can just mandate progress.

Dont DARPA and other US gov research groups have a pretty long track record of successful projects? Computers, nukes, ICs, space, internet, self-driving cars, etc. They seem to be some of the most well used research money -- precisely the government mandating progress.

> Dont DARPA and other US gov research groups have a pretty long track record of successful projects?

And many failures too. You can't just buy whatever innovation you want with money; if that were true we wouldn't still have energy problems and powerlines for distributing it.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#165

Post by fooker »

bluetwo wrote: post #119
dirtyaura wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably high-value business problems that are currently being solved by AI and ML methods: 1) serving personalized ads, 2) efficient stock and commodity trading 3) fraud detection

Sure, and I would add to the list recommendation (Amazon/Netflix)... But I'm looking for things where the technology has yet to be applied.

>I would add to the list recommendation

You bought a 3000$ DSLR yesterday.. Why not buy a 1000$ one today?

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#166

Post by _ptgt »

jorblumesea wrote: post #73
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…

The US will continue to cut funding for research and higher education in general. This will give China the edge in almost every level and attract top researchers back. The US is losing its edge.

Is there any evidence that higher spending in education actually improves student learning outcomes? I'm pretty sure we spend more per capita on our students than China does atm anyway.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#167

Post by TeMPOraL »

evilduck wrote: post #124
TeMPOraL wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government basically mandated the Moon landings, and they happened within 12 years from Sputnik. So I'd say yes, sometimes a government can just mandate progress.

The US Gov also poured an absolutely ridiculous amount of money into the space race, peaking around 4.5% of the federal budget for a couple years.

Which had one of the best ROIs of the things US spent money on. Space access and space-related tech is responsible for so many advances we enjoy today that's hard to even try and list them (some of them you can read about here, though: http://wtfnasa.com). So you kind of prove my point - that a government can literally mandate progress if they back it up with funding :).

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#168

Post by TeMPOraL »

forapurpose wrote: post #164
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont DARPA and other US gov research groups have a pretty long track record of successful projects? Computers, nukes, ICs, space, internet, self-driving cars, etc. They seem to be some of the most well used research money -- precisely the government mandating progress.

> Dont DARPA and other US gov research groups have a pretty long track record of successful projects? And many failures too. You can't just buy whatever innovation you want with money; if that were true we wouldn't still have energy problems and powerlines for distributing it.

If you don't allow for failures, you won't get successes either. That's the problem of today - research is increasingly being done in market-driven style, which strongly favors short-term work that the sales department can turn into perceived miracle over long-term, uncertain but possibly high-impact projects.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#169

Post by usrusr »

exelius wrote: post #23
tw1010 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a country outside the US (not China) but every time people from the US talk about us they have this same story, which seems to come from US news sources, which is nowhere close to what is actually going on. That makes me wonder, is the same thing going on for China? I keep hearing on HN this same story "China is anti-democratic and anti-innovation, nothing interesting goes on there". But how much of that is…

Americans tend to have difficulty believing that others can possibly have different values. Part of the core of American beliefs is that Democracy is the natural state for all nations; and I'm not sure that's entirely true. It feels like there is a tipping point of population size where an individualistic society just tramples over the tragedy of the commons, and collectivist societies introduce controls and social p…

> I expect World War 3 will eventually be fought over these differences

Only if war from general misery due to overpopulation and ecological collapse doesn't get us first. I hate thinking about the future.

Re: China’s AI Awakening

#170

Post by tellarin »

nrhk wrote: post #98
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…

Is it though, your talking about a federation of democratic and culturally different nations to two locked down regimes with homogeneous societies. I don't think Europe could do what China and Russia did even if they tried.

You're very mistaken if you think either Russia or China are homogeneous societies.

And I'm not sure Russia can be considered a locked down regime in recent years. Unless you mean specifically Putin's grasp on power.

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