this will be an extremely good fit, china and google. Their ideologies for the most part are the same.
Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
61–70 of 88 posts
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not asking why China would limit it, I'm asking what Google gains from it. If Google's top talent in China will mostly be poached within the next 10 years, is it really worthwhile to open a research center there? MSRA is a very good example, but at the end of the day, it's still a training ground for Chinese researchers. Paradoxically, the more important it is that Chinese researchers work on at Google China, the…
On one hand, I have to agree that China's closed/censored society is directly at odds with the product offering of a company like Google ... on the other hand, does one simply disengage from such a massive market as China? Perhaps Google is betting on a future when there is greater freedom for the Chinese people.
I think Google just wants to recruit AI talents from China and uses research from the AI center in China in markets it is not banned.
If so, they don't need to interact with the government that much like when they offered a search service to Chinese netizens.
I can think some companies that just do this. Hulu has an office in Beijing, although it doesn't offer video streaming service in China. And Grab has an office in Beijing too, although it only targets Southeast Asia market.
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
All capable governments are spying on their dissidents. However, the CCP also detains dissidents on the basis of its spying even in low-profile cases[1], and has been using prisoners (in other words, more dissidents) as a source of organ "donations" for a long time[2]. All the articles I've read about this topic are about specific religious groups (Uyghurs/Falun Gong). The Chinese treatment of Islam is so openly host…
Would you say providing public education and moving people from dangerous area to safer places as a way of cleansing their cultures? If you are really interested in China, you should just go somewhere and see for yourself. Media from China and anywhere else in the world are just slanted mirrors. When some Uyghur terrorists hit a train station in southern China and killed innocent civilians, some western media titled…
>Would you say providing public education and moving people from dangerous area to safer places as a way of cleansing their cultures?
Wow somebody is drinking the govt koolaid. How about we move you and your family from a "dangerous area" to a safer place and provide you an "education" against your will?
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#64Please HN don’t censor this comment. I legitimately believe that the US and China are on the road to war, and this war will draw on in all the powers of the world. This comment might be mocked, but if you read into history you can see how unbelievable war seemed within weeks of a conflict. The day WWI broke out the French and German ambassador were trying out each other’s cars and drinking wine in Alsace. This resear…
How many wars were started over tensions concerning research centers / science? WW1 was started by an assassination, WW2 by an aggressive annexation of countries and race-based extermination.
If China and the US go to war, it'll probably be over aggression in North Korea; not over a corporately funded scientific research center.
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#65When we'll look back 20 years from now, we'll we see Google in the same light as we did IBM after helping the Nazi with their computers? Will Google allow its DeepMind technology to be used to spy on Chinese citizens and dissidents?
Was it known the nazis were evil when IBM helped them? Did IBM even know what their stuff was used for?
Different times, different situations. The US was full of anti-semites too, and didn't hesitate to put anyone with Japanese heritage into concentration camps after Pearl Harbor - and nobody cared. That stuff has been covered up / hardly mentioned, ever since. And the US and its citizens doesn't seem to have a problem putting "enemy combatants" into concentration / torture camps after 9/11 (Guantanamo Bay). And that's just the stuff we know of. There's also the much more mysterious CIA dark sites, who knows what went on in there.
I'm not saying China is any better from a moral standpoint, but the US and the businesses in there - often working together - aren't any better. See also the Snowden leaks, that proved the big tech companies were in cahoots with the NSA, amongst other things to profile for "enemy combatants" in the US.
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#66Please HN don’t censor this comment. I legitimately believe that the US and China are on the road to war, and this war will draw on in all the powers of the world. This comment might be mocked, but if you read into history you can see how unbelievable war seemed within weeks of a conflict. The day WWI broke out the French and German ambassador were trying out each other’s cars and drinking wine in Alsace. This resear…
How many wars were started over tensions concerning research centers / science? WW1 was started by an assassination, WW2 by an aggressive annexation of countries and race-based extermination. If China and the US go to war, it'll probably be over aggression in North Korea; not over a corporately funded scientific research center.
The parent comment is not claiming that war will start because of a research lab. (S)he is saying it is against the interest of the US to start an AI lab there because AI will be critical to the war effort if there is war.
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#67Perhaps this is because I don't have the hard facts and figures right in front of me, but I have a hard time believing that foreign tech investments in China really pay off. The Chinese strategy seems to be to woo big foreign companies, build a critical mass of local users who want the product, ban or otherwise limit the foreign company's influence in China, then develop a home-grown Chinese version of the foreign co…
Google the phrase "forced technology transfer".
The basic strategy is to woo Western companies with extremely cheap labor and vague promises about access to the Chinese market, in order to get the companies to export most/all of their capital equipment and business expertise overseas. Then this is used as leverage to force them to adopt PRC-friendly policies (see Apple and government censorship in China, for example) and IP transfer to Chinese firms. Keep in mind that in China there is no objective judicial system as in the West to mediate disputes between the government and firms; once your assets are there you are at the mercy of the PRC.
It's really important to understand that this is a long-term geopolitical strategy by the PRC to supplant the US as the dominant global superpower, and a big part of it is siphoning off the industrial and manufacturing capacity of the west (see One Belt One Road Initiative).
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#68Since the beginning, Google has claimed it was an AI company. They have killed their mantra "do no evil" and now they are putting labs in a country with lower values of ethic. Recently they were selling their robotic activity because it was too frightening. All their actions are consistent with a single aim: build an AI like in singularity or terminator.
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#69A lot of people still are questioning the motion. But it's fair and simple: Google needs to tap local Chinese AI talents. Their size is grow so large that it can't be ignore. And you don't have to read it between the lines, it's front and center on the Google's official blog post[1], stated by Google Chief Scientist for AI/ML Feifei Li:
China is home to many of the world's top experts in artificial intelligence (AI)
and machine learning. All three winning teams of the ImageNet Challenge
in the past three years have been largely composed of Chinese researchers.
Chinese authors contributed 43 percent of all content in the top 100 AI journals in 2015
and when the Association for the Advancement of AI discovered that
their annual meeting overlapped with Chinese New Year this year, they rescheduled.
Re: Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not asking why China would limit it, I'm asking what Google gains from it. If Google's top talent in China will mostly be poached within the next 10 years, is it really worthwhile to open a research center there? MSRA is a very good example, but at the end of the day, it's still a training ground for Chinese researchers. Paradoxically, the more important it is that Chinese researchers work on at Google China, the…
It's far easier to find ML talent in China than it is in the US. That's what they gain from it.
I made a video that actually analyzes the data behind this. Basically the entry-level of the field is about 50% Chinese and the more experienced levels are about 10-20% Chinese. On the other hand only perhaps 5% of work actually comes from Chinese labs.