It's kind of nasty that a fresh society of capable people has the drive to achieve technological excellence and the incumbents do whatever they can to delay this, even though it's inevitable and there's a lot to gain by empowering them. All in the name of "they are not us". World has gained so much from modern Chinese industrial revolution. Why suddenly everyone got cold feet? Nobody was stopping Germany or Japan on…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
461–470 of 645 posts
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
The final outcome is affected by the final 10%, you can even call it 1%, for which the semi-corrupt or "communistiquesque" countries never (seemingly) have the will or sheer talent for.
The level of cope... The US and the west in general is on a much more dire trajectory than China (which is facing its own demons, no doubt about that) There is not much left of communism in China besides the name, it's more akin to a government steered economy, which arguably is very similar to what the west had when we moved at our peak speed, albeit more authoritarian. They still have what we mostly lost: a long te…
>There is not much left of communism in China besides the name,
After living 2 years in China and visiting the country every year for the last 12 years, I disagree with you.
Many not minor things in China are still very aligned with communism.
How the university system works, land property, production in unpopulated areas and small towns, participation of the government in industry, etc…
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#463It was kinda inevitable.
A country with technical ability and ambition like China was never going to go "Oh only one company in netherlands can do it? Damn I guess we're snookered then".
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#464With Nvidia scaling down their consumer GPU production [0] I wonder if we will see consumer GPUs shipping from China in the future. Western companies seem to be abandoning the consumer/prosumer market which will have bad implications for hobbyists and aspiring professionals down the line. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-might-cut-rtx-50-gpu-suppl...
There are the More Threads GPUs.
They're kinda rubbish, but as a starting point / MVP for a parallel gaming hardware ecosystem its 100% viable.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#465The "Manhattan Project" part is that the research lab was confidential...which doesn't seem that unusual for a high profile research lab, but that aside. Comparing China's public efforts to build a computer chips industry to the US effort to nuke Japan is kinda wild. Outside of the bait part, the piece coming from Japan Times makes it that much spicier.
Was the manhattan project specifically stood up so that the US can bomb japan? Or was Japan just the first unfortunate target?
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
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So some or even many people explain America’s success as a result of diversity. If that’s true then either China will need to import a diverse population (axis of diversity is uncertain), or else diversity is irrelevant and they will succeed as a more or less undiverse population (whether people are actually Han doesn’t matter so long as they believe and the government classifies them as Han). It’ll be interesting to see.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#467I am kind of skeptical about the report, as there are almost no details revealed. Everyone knows that China wants to build its own semeconductor manufacturing devices. The question is how close it is to be used in real production. The report just throws out a very vague number, maybe ~2030, which I can give the same guess, too.
2030 is around the corner though.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I think the places where American inefficiency is most visible is in construction, urban planning, and healthcare. America blows a significant amount of its money by having its citizens drive everywhere with no option to take a train, bus, bicycle, or low-speed e-scooter. Americans take a crazy percentage of their income and just dump it into the stagnant automotive industry. Americans blow between $5,000-10,000 a ye…
Regarding your last point, back when my political views were "evolving", I had thought about if, instead of handing foreigners diplomas and kicking them out of the country as fast as possible, we should do the opposite: have student visas require that the recipient stay in the US at least five years after graduation, and then fast-track them through the permanent residency -> citizenship pipeline. It made no sense to me why we'd educate someone to get a degree in chemical engineering, possibly from a rival nation, and then send them back to where they came from. We should "brain drain" other countries, not the other way around.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
But will you still be able to afford using it once you have to pay the real price ? Once the venture capital dries up and the dumping stops ?
I'm pretty sure all of these LLMs operate in the black on inference costs. If I were to set up a DGX200 in my garage, say the 5 year TCO is a million dollars. Split that among 500 people and we can get it done for maybe $30/mo per user in total operating cost. I would bet that these LLMs are far more oversubscribed than 500 subs per server.
How much of the current usage is paying at least 1 cent per inference? AI providers are giving away AI for anyone to use. Only professionals and big companies, that are at most 1% of the market, are paying anything at this point.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve met one person whose job was funded via the CHIPS act - she was a lawyer. I bet China’s first priority when building semiconductors isn’t hiring lawyers.
I've never met a corn farmer, but somehow the corn ends up on my plate.
Where are the CHIPs then? Oh but at least our infrastructure was rebuilt. Right?