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How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#441

Post by _heimdall »

Ekaros wrote: post #392
yosefk wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese are ahead at too many things at this point to think they're only good at copying

And it is not like making a copy for cheaper isn't something that requires skill and innovation. Or then iterate on that copy. Didn't Roomba just fail to these copies. If west was truly so much more innovative and better shouldn't they as company be infinitely ahead still?

That depends heavily on where the cost saving came from. For a long time China made cheap copies with extremely cheap labor, though that may no longer be the case as it seems they're innovating on the manufacturing process these days.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#442

Post by [deleted] »

yosefk wrote: post #357
vasco wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. This implies copying what someone else did. Rather than inventing something new. I know it's not what you meant but if it wasn't made by God it's because it's already made by someone else. The sentence says to me more about copying than some relentless pursuit. The people who invented the thing to copy, those were more relentless presumably. And then…

The Chinese are ahead at too many things at this point to think they're only good at copying

[deleted]

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#443

Post by silver_silver »

everfrustrated wrote: post #422
GolfPopper wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pursuing quarterly profits and forgetting to look up "Forgetting to look up" implies a desire or intent to do so. The United States - former leader of the collective West - made the choice decades ago to sacrifice everything on the altar of quarterly profits. All that remains are the consequences of that decision.

This is slightly reductionist. If consumers _actually_ cared about quality or US-made over price this wouldn't have been possible.

My counterpoint is that it’s not possible to buy appliances which last for decades anymore, because the entire industry has changed. Consumers eventually don’t have a choice

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#444

Post by shrubble »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #406
krona wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't wait to see the first Nobel prize in physics being awarded to a scientist who is actually a product of Chinese academy. Any moment now.

Nobel prizes are almost as sus as Oscars now. Corina Machado tells you all you need to know.

Reminder that there are two different organizations that award “Nobel” prizes; one is the actual organization and the other is the Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden. Not the same people, etc.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#445

Post by [deleted] »

nebula8804 wrote: post #284
this_user wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west is still underestimating China. There is a great anecdote, I think it's from the book 'Apple in China', about their engineers visiting a Chinese production plant. Some changes needed to be made to the place. The Apple people estimated that that would take two weeks. They came back the next day. It was finished, the Chinese had done it overnight.

I often wonder what is it that's driving the Chinese to work themselves to death to get this stuff done? Surely there must be some limit. I guess we can see it in the low birth rates, the youth unemployment, and I guess the desire to just survive because there's just so many people there. But still, I just don't get how Chinese just keep going and going. What is their end goal on a person to person level? Are they ju…

[deleted]

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#446

Post by corford »

chii wrote: post #200
tokioyoyo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be very fair, Chinese companies are also pursing quarterly profits. They're just better at scaling things up and down very fast because of immense supply chain options.

> immense supply chain options. so this begs the question - why isn't the west's own supply chain options as immense? My unresearched answer is that the gov't policies of the west doesn't induce it, while china's gov't does (which includes targeted subsidies, tax incentives and state driven finances). The "hidden" cost is that the workers in this supply chain isn't as well paid and isn't as powerful as the workers fr…

40+ years of deliberate policy choices to prioritise growth through finacialisation rather than domestic industrial production

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#447

Post by woctordho »

dluan wrote: post #208
standardUser wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more China advances domestically, especially in this area, the less it has to gain from invading Taiwan. China is getting to the point where the conquest is finally doable (rapidly advancing and massive military, plus a weak US president), but the potential gains are diminishing year to year. I'd speculate that if they don't invade during Trump's term, they never will, and will pursue a different course down the…

Reunification in Taiwan has nothing to do with chips, and militarily PRC was able to do so a long time ago. The political will in PRC to "kill other Chinese" is zero.

Their is always a political will in China to kill other Chinese since thousands of years ago. This works vastly different from the western humanitarian philosophy.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#448

Post by NotGMan »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #425
yanhangyhy wrote: post #323

Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything. There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent proj…

> This is how we approach everything. > This is because it is not only a government policy, but also a Chinese way of thinking. Nothing can interrupt this process. Is there any evidence that this kind of homogeneous "national character" is objectively real? Or is it just another story that people tell themselves?

Does it need to be homogenous? In the end, only a few people are needed to create companies and drive the vision.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#449

Post by darkstar_16 »

dleeftink wrote: post #355
yanhangyhy wrote: post #323

Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything. There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent proj…

Hopefully, this century, we can shed some of the 'dominating' mindset that has led to technological exclusionism in the first place. Not that catching up to the state-of-the-art isn't warranted, but that progress will become pocketed once more if we keep falling for the same economic traps.

It's interesting how this comes up when the west is the one that is trying to catch up :)

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#450

Post by darkstar_16 »

krona wrote: post #383
yanhangyhy wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not wrong to think that way. But now there’s less and less left for China to “copy,” and it’s hard to argue that many things aren’t being invented by China itself. Perhaps the real question is this: why is it that places that used to be technologically advanced no longer produce new, original inventions? Is it fear of China copying them? Did the U.S. decide not to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet because…

Can't wait to see the first Nobel prize in physics being awarded to a scientist who is actually a product of Chinese academy. Any moment now.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but it will happen sooner or later.
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