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

wsj.com

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

#341

Post by sebazzz »

gyomu wrote: post #63
kasey_junk wrote: post #27

The interesting thing in this article isn’t that China is telling people to avoid the US for national security reasons. Many states, including the US have similar guidance to people who work in jobs sensitive to national security. What’s interesting is that China is viewing AI tech as a technology vital to their security.

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…

I've only seen billions be poured in LLMs and with those you're not going to control your drones.

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

#342

Post by seanmcdirmid »

petesergeant wrote: post #311
dataviz1000 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are natural friends December, flying out of Thailand I spent one night in Bangkok. Looking for a bar late for one or two drinks after I settled into my hotel I saw two guys, one Chinese and other Russian, stumbling out of a building a few doors down from my hotel. I asked, "Is that a bar or a brothel? I'm looking for a bar." They laughed saying they were looking for a bar too and it was a brothel which is why…

> Is that a bar or a brothel In many parts of Thailand it's really not an either/or situation

A lot of bars in Asia will have working girls. I used to go to a Russian bar in Beijing called Chocolate Bar (ya, that was its actual name), which had a Russian stage show that is kind of cool if you’ve never seen one before. There were a bunch of girls in the back from Ukraine (or Russia), Mongolia, and China. Beijing had a lot of that actually, but I think Xi cracked down, although I stopped going to bars after getting married.

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

#343

Post by lancebeet »

rcpt wrote: post #171

Really just unbelievably stupid that the US has decided to brain drain itself for no reason at all.

I hear this type of statement often, but people rarely mention the scope or who the brain drainees are. In my experience, it's exceptionally rare that American talent comes to Europe compared to the opposite, and I see little reason why that would change in the near future. When it comes to Chinese individuals returning to China from the US, this isn't exactly traditional brain drain, and it's also something China has actively, sometimes aggressively, been pursuing the past decade or so.

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

#344

Post by seanmcdirmid »

echelon wrote: post #83
neilv wrote: post #45

This is unfortunate, but understood. I worked in a university research spinout US-China multinational AI hardware startup, and (without getting into confidential information, but only speaking of general engineering practice) I can mention that both nations' government concerns could be barriers. And some rules can be counterproductive for the one making the rule, even from a competitive perspective -- not even turni…

> I hope that this sharing will continue and increase It will continue until they pass us. They're coming from behind, and releasing models as open source essentially wipes the board of hundreds of American startups. Growth hackers and solopreneurs like @levelsio can be nipping at the heels of $300M funded companies who poured all of their points into training models, making expensive mistakes, and overpaying for com…

Chinese companies have been diligently releasing a lot of models. I guess they could try shoving the genie back in the battle, but if it works out for them, I doubt they will just stop when/if they get ahead of everyone else.

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

#345

Post by tokioyoyo »

maxglute wrote: post #331
tw1984 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Binji…

I honestly think many Americans have not updated their perceptions of T1/T2 Chinese cities since like 2005.

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

#346

Post by xanderlewis »

xyst wrote: post #197

The increasing isolationism amongst all countries is concerning and depressing. A WW3 may indeed come to fruition if we continue on this path. It won’t be the older folks paying for this but rather our children or grandchildren. Future is bleak.

Europe is more united than ever, thanks to Ukraine.

Or, rather, thanks to Russia.

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

#347

Post by AngryData »

blindriver wrote: post #68

I worked at a well-known company that told us we couldn't bring any work electronic devices to China, because there was a risk malware could be installed on it. They advised us not to bring any personal electronic devices either, like phones because they could be confiscated at the border and returned with malware installed on it. It makes sense that this happens. I'm curious why they haven't attempted to tighten the…

Why would they need to? They have direct Chinese competitors to Tesla who are selling more units for far cheaper prices and innovating far faster. Tesla has a bunch of political baggage with a now drugged out and unstable CEO and nothing they are providing has a leg up on Chinese alternatives. People who can't even legally buy chinese models in their own country want Chinese cars now because they are so cheap and modernized.

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

#348

Post by slaw »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #339
janalsncm wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

58.5% of BYD vehicles were PHEV in 2024. BYD still made more pure EV than Tesla in 2024.

https://www.statista.com/chart/33709/tesla-byd-electric-vehi...

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

#349

Post by mikrotikker »

AngryData wrote: post #347
blindriver wrote: post #68

I worked at a well-known company that told us we couldn't bring any work electronic devices to China, because there was a risk malware could be installed on it. They advised us not to bring any personal electronic devices either, like phones because they could be confiscated at the border and returned with malware installed on it. It makes sense that this happens. I'm curious why they haven't attempted to tighten the…

Why would they need to? They have direct Chinese competitors to Tesla who are selling more units for far cheaper prices and innovating far faster. Tesla has a bunch of political baggage with a now drugged out and unstable CEO and nothing they are providing has a leg up on Chinese alternatives. People who can't even legally buy chinese models in their own country want Chinese cars now because they are so cheap and mod…

The leg up is the teslas don't explode all the time and you don't see thousands of Tesla's parked in a field to make it look like the sales are great.

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

#350

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ipaddr wrote: post #265
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When? There’s no evidence that is the case. It has been eighty years since a nuclear weapon was used in an act of aggression. It would appear a state sort of only really comes to have nuclear weapons when it has got its act together sufficiently to be well enough behaved to not use them. A sort of maturation process, if you will. The meek[1] shall inherit the Earth, and all of that. If we’ve got data, let’s go with t…

It has been threatened recently by a few nations. It almost got set off by mistake. Increasing the odds by introducing hundreds of players some willing to gas their own people is rolling the dice. The few countries that have the ability has been responsible but that does not mean that will always be the case or new players will be as responsible.

What does any of it matter?

In about five billion years the sun will run out of hydrogen and expand, engulfing Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth.

In the mean time, you could respond to the argument I actually made.

The level of organisation at the state level required to build a working nuclear weapon, along with the forces working against that, eg. how difficult it’s been for Iran to get across the line, and the fact of the near miss you mentioned, allows most of us, it would seem, to sleep well at night.

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