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China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

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Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#331
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One note, if you’re working for a top AI company in China, your quality of life other than work hours is already good enough to not to want to leave. It’s not 1990s/2000s anymore. Urban life in China, excluding pandemic times, is better than urban life in the states. The same applies to other sectors as well. Top talent is genuinely valued in China.

Are you kidding? Guess why most those recently emerged Chinese high tech companies (DeepSeek, Game Science, Unitree etc) are all located in Hangzhou? Because property prices are insane in tier-1 Chinese cities like Shanghai which is just 200km away from Hangzhou. You know it is a huge ponzi scheme when even those well paid high tech engineers couldn't afford a modest apartment in those major cities. $3m USD buys you…

TIL hangzhou/new tier1 is a "modest" city. It's a sick world class city.

Yeah, PRC RE in T1/2 cities stupid expensive, but highly compensated PRC talent always have option to rent for dirt cheap in T1 and buy something nice in T2/T3 city with a few years wage. Many highly paid Hangzhou tech workers renting in nice districts while buying equally nice in less expensive cities close by, i.e. renting nice condos in Binjiang for $2000 USD and buying 150sqm apartments for 400k USD in Yanghzou on single salary. Let's be real shitty T2 and nice T3 cities that puts most north American cities to shame, factor in cost of living relative to wage and it's much better QoL than most tier1 north American cities if you prefer urban life. Living really well in PRC on high end tech salary (i.e."AI leaders") is babymode if you're not a retard insisting on living in tapped out T1. Granted tech wage cucks in some western cities get to live in large houses which isn't available in PRC, which has it's appeal.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try YouTube. Just use your eyes.

I did. When I went to China and left the major cities all I saw was rows of high rises next to train stations with nothing around them. Funny, that's never on YouTube.

I did. When I lived in China and traveled outside of Shanghai it was eye opening. People living in slums with no running water or toilets. No trains. No buses. No taxis. The nicest people ever but makes you realise that the whole eliminating poverty claim is utter BS.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#333

Given that most jobs in the US pay 10X or more what the same job pays in China, they are probably concerned that trips to the US will be one way.

That would be nice, but I’m pretty sure it’s a complete pain in the ass for anybody to move to the United States no matter how valuable they are

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#334

I wonder if given the recent "moral" loss of US, we will see a post-WW2 Soviet vs USA style defection of scientists & engineers between USA and China? When you read the reasoning of people that defected from UK/US to soviet with nuclear secrets it's kinda hard to grasp now, but back then I can definitely understand that a mix of "the soviets are not that bad" and "are we really that good?" could've made people switch…

Remember though, China is still a totalitarian dictatorship at least as bad as the USA. It's not the same situation.

I think a more practical framing is to ask what you enjoy doing in the US that you wouldn’t be able to do in China.

As a practical matter, the things that affected me the most when I traveled are the great firewall, language barriers, and time zone issues.

For example, I don’t protest the government. If that was an important part of my life China would be a bad choice.

Probably another question you might ask is what are the things you’d be able to do in China that you wouldn’t in the US.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#335
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great public transit. Affordable housing. Huge variety of delicious food. Low crime. People who care enough about the social good to wear masks in crowded places during a pandemic.

600m people in China live in poverty despite claims of the CPC eliminating it. Traveling around China you see this. Showing off main cities is not proof that people don’t live in poverty. Low crime is simply not true. Most crimes are not reported or swept under the rug as local statistics are reported back to the central government and no one wants to look bad. But wow if you have Weibo you can see some pretty horrib…

Irrelevant argument because how rich people (subjects we're talking about) live in rich areas (i.e. main cities) =/= how poor people live in poor areas. Frankly average Chinese poverty in T4+ villages is pretty quaint compared to seeing junkies everywhere. It's more humbling, not disturbing. Of course you can find statistical outlier crimes on social media, but daily life is not filled with the levels of social decay and shithole experiences in western urban areas that PRC diasphora frequently makes comparisons to on social media. It maybe a bubble, but it's a cozy bubble that rarely gets pierced in daily life for the well off.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#336
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great public transit. Affordable housing. Huge variety of delicious food. Low crime. People who care enough about the social good to wear masks in crowded places during a pandemic.

600m people in China live in poverty despite claims of the CPC eliminating it. Traveling around China you see this. Showing off main cities is not proof that people don’t live in poverty. Low crime is simply not true. Most crimes are not reported or swept under the rug as local statistics are reported back to the central government and no one wants to look bad. But wow if you have Weibo you can see some pretty horrib…

> Showing off main cities is not proof that people don’t live in poverty.

The claim was:

> Urban life in China, excluding pandemic times, is better than urban life in the states.

“Showing off main cities” is a perfectly reasonable thing to do to support this claim.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#337
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason why states are pouring billions into AI isn't to generate silly emoji, help people rewrite their emails, or make a web app without learning how to code. It's for autonomous drone warfare. Invading a neighboring nation doesn't seem too appealing if it means sending tens/hundreds of thousands of your young people (a resource that's getting scarcer and scarcer most everywhere in the world) to the meat gr…

Bro ai via programming with people is already good enough to fight wars with drones in the air. You don’t even need LLMs or machine learning black boxes. Basically the reason is because there’s so little noise in the air. If it’s black and metal and flying and doesn’t match the iff signal than simple “if then” logic can verify it’s a bogey.

This is partly true, Automated object detection already exists. If LLMs haven't fundamentally shifted Ukraine war yet then it's plausible it has limited value in progressing drone warfare.

I disagree you can simply automate it via IFF though... basically because IFF is easy grounds for counter drone attacks. Establishing IFF just makes your enemies job easier unless you have heavy anti drone tech which no country does yet.

Automating "this person holding a gun in a given GPS grid is hopefully not holding a stick and is hopefully not a friendly/civilian... and calculate odds they should be executed" is not something easily done by a drone. Especially when there's electronic warfare and drones don't have the luxury of spending lots of time looking.

In Ukraine for example people wear 50 different uniforms because they buy them on the internet or come from random countries. And they carry similar AK rifles. What's an LLM going to do? Kill random people with ~50% accuracy using a very finite supply of drones? Or just have humans fly them from the rear.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online propaganda is insanely powerful too. Not sure if many noticed, but the English put out by Chinese teams is often perfect these days.

Online propaganda seems to have been using AI since circa 2020. There’s no way all of those comments were natural, particularly the pro-US ones.

Elgin AFB and Reddit

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not in their interest to do so. Tesla is the EV leader and exports many vehicle from China to other countries. Additionally, Elon has a direct line to Trump, it makes no sense to burn bridges.

In what sense is Tesla the EV leader? BYD sold 4.3M EVs last year and is up 40% from 2023. Tesla only sold 1.8M and is down from 2023. From where I’m sitting, Elon is very lucky the US government is protecting his business with tariffs, but that only affects US sales. They haven’t made a new car since 2020 either (cyber truck doesn’t count).

Most of those BYD numbers are hybrids.

Re: China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your take on near-term stability for American immigrants in Europe? I was looking at options for moving last year but the work visa situation seemed fairly precarious (although that’s a relative thing in comparison with what may end up happening here in the US).

As someone who has been looking; the EU Blue Card through Germany seems pretty stable and straightforward, with a 21/27 month path to permanent residency, depending on language ability: https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/types/e... The politics there are a little concerning at the moment but should be stable for at least 4 years. With residency, the rest of the EU becomes a lot easier if things chan…

I want to be vocal about it for third world country people like me.

If you own a home in your own country, please stay there. From my experience with EU it is not worth it. On the surface it looks crazy good. But west has their own share of problems.

The cultural mix is difficult, second class citizen is always going to be a thing. There won't be racism or anything like that. It just the aura of people change when they speak with natives vs non-natives.

Ask this important question before moving to EU: is it worth trading your family, culture, connection, and your ability to communicate for a foreign land where you are going to be second class citizen, your struggle will only give a glimmer of hope for your children?

Left EU for my home. Never returning there. The promise of paradise isn't appealing at all.

Experience it once in your life, but do not stay.

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