China may match or beat America in AI
economist.com
economist.com
Given that in the next four years it is likely that more than half of the PhDs awarded by top US schools are awarded to foreign nationals[1], and our current government policy is to restrict immigration as much as possible, we are on a path to insuring that soon the world will have a much better pool of talent to draw on to do the research than the US will.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/20...
Then there are cultural differences that could be at play concerning innovation. It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taking and innovation. Whereas, western cultures seem to promote risk-taking and innovation. That is not to say that there aren't risk takers in China and risk averse individuals in the West...just that overall there may be asymmetry. And, very little asymmetry can create very big differences.
So, have all the smartest people you want, doing all the research you want; but if they have no pressure to put that research to practice, nor a desire or support to take the risks associated with implementation then you might as well have nobody doing anything.
Just a thought.
The use of “misnomer” in that sentence is, itself, misnomer. What you describe is, perhaps, a mistake, but not in naming.
In the case of China, I don't think there's any question that it used to have higher barriers to innovation but I'm not comfortable concluding that this will be true for that much longer given how many people are trying to change it. Every time I read one of Bunnie Huang's gongkai posts[1] it really seems like the view in 20 years will be radically different.
That said, how long does it take for a culture to change part of its core structure? Cultures seem to me evolutionary and, aside from rare radical mutations, very slow to change. Then again, with over a 1.3 billion people there are sure to be plenty of sub-cultures with enough size to be a driving force for the whole.
It isn't that innovation necessarily comes from academia, but that academia is a reflection of how wealthy and educated the population is. Innovation comes from the wealthy and the educated. So as china gets wealthier, they will innovate more.
> It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taking and innovation.
That's an "observation" based on racism and nonsense.
> just that overall there may be asymmetry.
Based on what evidence? It's just silly things people say - "The west is more individualistic". A society based on "white supremacy" is "individualistic"? How is basing one's ideology on "race - a genetic/communal" concept individualistic.
All these things are essentially nonsense created by people who want to sell books/etc. There is no truth.
You could write a book saying the west is collectivistic and china is individualistic by cherrypicking any data.
> So, have all the smartest people you want, doing all the research you want; but if they have no pressure to put that research to practice, nor a desire or support to take the risks associated with implementation then you might as well have nobody doing anything.
What makes you think they won't?
Greed works on the chinese as much as westerners. The things you need to "innovate" are wealth and security. Innovation is a luxury. The chinese will innovate as they get wealth and security.
The chinese are risk averse and yet they love gambling. They are risk averse and chinese have immigrated all over the world.
This is correct, but that doesn't mean causation. Look at any civilization and look at what came first wealth or academia. It seems to me that wealth creates academia.
> That's an "observation" based on racism and nonsense.
Saying something is "racist" does not constitute an argument. I didn't say whether it was "good" or "bad" to have a culture that promotes or suppresses risk taking...no one can. It is not "racist" to say that two things are not exactly the same.
> The things you need to "innovate" are wealth and security. Innovation is a luxury.
Dead wrong. Wealth and security create complacency. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is not just some stupid quip.
>What makes you think they won't?
I don't. My entire post was a postulation, which is why I used phrases such as "it could be", "general observation" and "there may be", etc. It appears that you are merely looking for a fight instead of having a conversation.
Yes. That's was my point. You get wealthy, then you get "civilized".
> Saying something is "racist" does not constitute an argument.
No. But saying an "observation" based on "racism" is an argument.
> I didn't say whether it was "good" or "bad" to have a culture that promotes or suppresses risk taking...no one can.
Well you did imply it...
> Dead wrong. Wealth and security create complacency.
Not dead wrong. Dead truth. It can for some people, but it also gives people FREE TIME to pursue other things. I didn't say EVERYONE would become innovative. My point is that you need wealth and security to be innovative.
>"Necessity is the mother of invention" is not just some stupid quip.
Like all quotes. It is. And without wealth and security, not much time or resources to innovate.
> I don't. My entire post was a postulation, which is why I used phrases such as "it could be", "general observation" and "there may be", etc.
You don't but that's a lot of "implying" what you think.
> It appears that you are merely looking for a fight instead of having a conversation.
I would but you seem quite defensive. I wasn't calling you racist. I said the observation was based on "racism". Lumping 1.4 billion into one "stereotype" is the definition of racism.
Also, as I noted, I debunked most of your "it could be"s.
It's not a general observation. It is an idea promoted by westerners to make them feel superior. Creative, innovative thinking is not the norm anywhere. Everyone who thinks new thoughts is an outlier by definition, in every society.
It's about environments that are able to support new ventures in businesses, technology, and what have you. China is increasingly such an environment.
Are you saying no software has trade secrets?
Sure, you can go through some tutorials and learn to build a CNN, or even read more recent research papers and hit bleeding-edge ImageNet benchmarks, but nothing currently public is going to get you close to Google's SDC.
You can't pretend this is just about people either, India's at 1.3B and they're far from becoming a world leader.
common counterpoints: secrets can be operationally necessary, secrets can create economic value.
Not anyone can do AI at scale.
For that you'd have to wait until next year. Many low level skills necessary in ML are being automated. It's getting closer to being easily used by hackers.
A little off topic: here in the USA, every medium and large company seems to be morphing into an 'AI company' which I think is generally a good thing since individually they can all take advantage of control over their own application stacks and data sources. Many people concentrate on the advantages of huge companies like Google/Microsoft/Facebook in AI development, but there is plenty of opportunity for smaller companies to enhance their own systems with machine learning.
If that's what gets you going: Russia could also match or beat America in AI.
Instead, what is needed is user labeled images, videos, text, speech and of course, simulations (games, VR) for virtual robotics and reinforcement learning agents. These kinds of data and simulations are open sourced and growing. Once there is a sufficient collection of training data, it's cheap to train your neural nets.
Even today, there is much more data than scientists care to use. For example, ImageNet is over 1TB, but a smaller portion of it is used routinely (it has 21841 topics but usually just 1000 of them are used in research papers). So it's not the lack of images that's keeping them. China would have no advantage here. Everyone has approximately the same level, the best paper of last year is the average of this year. That's about AI in general - but regarding self driving cars and ads Google is cooking in secret so it might be a little more ahead.
umm:
google image search, all html embedded/related metadata, adwords itself serving as a refined metadata/tagging and ontology database building engine, recaptcha 'how many buildings are in this picture' puzzles, android debug settings where things are uploaded, google drive cloud storage, gmail, the google speaker gizmo and voice activated phone agent, google voice voip, google chat, maps annotations to pictures/gps coordinates, etc etc etc and yadda yadda yadda...
not sure what else you need as far as those sources..
Competition is good.
They have enough labor to do supervised learning on a grand scale that the U.S. can't compete with.
The U.S. can't compete.
I have worked in the field of AI since the early 1980s, and experienced the 'AI winter' which was a natural reaction to over-hyping of technologies like expert systems that required too much manual effort to write and maintain.
Deep learning applications are developed with less manual effort and produce much more value.
The 'AI world' is very different now than in the 1980s.
Ironically, underlining in this article is that acknowledgement of such often unethical or act in doubt are perhaps essential and critical to AI's future development. To that, China is at a clear advantage than America, and the rest of civilized west world.
A strong economy is also necessary to propel the development, or Russia would also be at a advantage similar to China's, or North Karea's. But only China has the economy incentivization similar to West's.
Among all the things, this is the fundamental advantage China has over other nations. Chinese government can do things that no other are capable.
"Civilized"? Come on, the civilized "west" was performing human experiments. If china is doing it, then so are we.
Lets stop with the hubris. We aren't civilized. We are savages just like any other savages.
A case in point. There is a conference, SYNC 2017, in Computer History Museum tomorrow (July 14th), organized by Pingwest, which itself seems like a Chinese Gov. front if you look at the team.
They have several good speakers, and some Chinese, Gov fronted, fake VC types.
Till 2 days ago, it was titled SYNC 2017 - Unbounded: Building Across Borders. Yesterday, it's title was changed to SYNC 2017 - US China AI Summit
It is pretty clear that if they had gone with the US China AI Summit in the beginning several of their speakers may not have agreed, but now it is too late for anyone to change mind.
Edited: To change from "Chinese" to "Chinese Gov." to clarify I'm referring to the Chinese Gov and not Chinese people
I'm not sure how those speakers couldn't just cancel, sure they'd lose any speaking fees but I've never heard of lock-in speaking contracts for conferences. Or if they care so much they could just modify their speeches to not supply anything of value. Or perhaps they should have done their homework ahead of time.
In any case I'd hardly call it a "nefarious trick" regardless of who was doing it. I'm hesitant to throw out "racist", but you seem to be leaning that way...
Nefarious or not, it does seem a bait and switch - won't you agree.
I had signed up to attend, initially, now I'm not so sure.
I have no love of the Chinese government, but this is a free exchange of ideas that is open to the public (for a $40 ticket). Given the actions of the Chinese government to date, if this is how they plan to get more technical data going into the future I'm hoping they do more of this and less hacking of proprietary/classified info. :P
I think most of these comments are referring to the former, a dislike/distrust for the PRC government, not Chinese people.
> reports in NYTimes and other reputable media
IIRC POTUS calls that fake news?
...you mean it's Chinese people? What on earth makes this a "Chinese front" rather than just a company with a Chinese team?
Of course not all of them are such, but many are. Just look at the team behind many of these, team's credentials and experience, and in many cases their addresses and actual offices.
It's important to note this because shutting down Silicon Valley/US access to Chinese VCs and companies won't necessarily just harm them. It would harm us as well. It does need to be looked at though, just carefully.
And by luck. If they didn't do it, someone else would have done it, whether it be US, UK, or Canada. Proof? Look at the developments and publications from that same team. There are not consistent breakthroughs.
This is similar to the stock market and investors. Someone will get lucky and win, but unless they can do it consistently, it's luck.
I do know a decent number of top Chinese VCs looking into investments in Silicon Valley. Those funds are typically started by Chinese entrepreneurs who made a fortune in things like the internet wave or real estates.
There do exist branches of Chinese government, or nation-owned organization making investments in US. But they are not the top VCs, and I haven't seen any of them taking a stake in a top US AI startup.
There are a couple of reasons why Chinese money is flooding into silicon valley. First, there is too much cash in the domestic market and not enough good tech investments to make. Second, there is a fear that Chinese economy might crash someday so having oversea investment diversifies the risk.
From what I know we don't have government background or funding. PingWest is a privately owned and funded media company in China. We run one of the most influential tech blogs there. Our US team organize SYNC events every year in the Valley and some pop up SYNC events elsewhere.
We changed the title simply because it fits the event and our speakers lineup better.
organized by Pingwest, which itself seems like a Chinese Gov. front if you look at the team.
Rome burns and everyone is asleep or mad with partisan fever.
Helpful article: https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-debt-to-gdp-ratio-197...
It also doesn't sit in isolation. The BLS statistics add another 200 or so percent for about 300% debt-to-GDP when you include household, state and muni debt.
Unlike China, the US citizen lender argument isn't helpful. US debt holders are free to move their money into other assets.
The only argument in favor of the current debt levels is that no other nation can float enough liquidity to compete with US debt. For that reason alone the sky isn't falling.
The shortcomings for Social Security are easy to fix. I don't know about Medicare and it's actuarial prospects.
Crossing the 100% debt/gdp ratio is not a Rubicon. Lots of countries have done this and been none the worse for having done so. The U.S. famously exceeded 100% debt/gdp ratio during WWII. It was able to come down from that.
Current debt obligations for the U.S. are in low interest bonds. The borrowing of the money has not crippled the nation. Spending it poorly on stupid wars, a massive surveillance/security apparatus in the form of DOD, CIA, etc. has been a problem. Currently, as a percent of GDP taxes in the U.S. are quite low.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
Rubicon? I don't recall the sacred oath not to cross a 100% debt-to-GDP ratio. What's the importance of that particular round number, which many countries including the US have crossed in the past, except for rhetoric?
Finally, what makes you think corporations are holding cash waiting for fiscal stability, of all things? How would US dollars or bonds help them in case of US fiscal instability? Isn't it more parsimonious to think that they're waiting for return on investment? And that has much more to do with growth than with government debt.
10% goes to welfare. 6% goes to interest on debt. 16% goes to defense. 25% goes to CHIP/medicare/medicaid. (25% to social security, but that has a separate tax inflow and is a net positive to the budget.)
see: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-w...
http://darribas.org/WooWii/Assignments/OriginalPaper.pdf
The broader point is, if I issue money and then issue obligations on that money, there's no practical difference between the two issues. That is, public debt of countries that are sovereign in their currency, and only issue debt in their currency, cannot have public debt overhang. It's just a red herring, based on a false analogy between governments (currency issuers) and households (currency users).
Michael Pettis regarding the research you cite states: "What is usually missing from such discussions, however, is an explanation of how too much debt leads to slower growth." ... "A country has too much debt when stakeholders begin behaving in ways that reduce growth. The controversy over the research by Rogoff and Reinhart should not be allowed to obscure the nature of the link between debt and economic performance."
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-misleading-...
So, absent a proven behavioral line in the sand, we have only measures of debt to try to surmise at what point debt impacts growth and stability.
Its really chicken and egg.
Regarding specific claims in your linked article:
- Bond markets in such countries are subordinate to central banks; the most obvious case is Japan, where a greater-than-200% debt ratio is accompanied by, I believe, negative yields on public debt. Central banks (again, in countries that have nonconvertible sovereign currency) totally control short-term interest rates, and so indirectly control long-term rates. Creditors take the central bank's number and then risk-adjust and discount it for borrowers; for the government the risk is zero, so they just discount it.
- Ricardian equivalence is a stupid model. Have you ever made consumption or investment decisions based on a belief that public deficits will result in higher tax rates at some point in the future? I certainly haven't.
- "Workers organize to protect their jobs," but I guess the anti-union bent says a lot. Nevermind that spending equals income; a falling wage share is a far more plausible explanation for less-than-desirable growth in most situations.
- "savers [...] withdraw their bank deposits" The loanable funds model is not how banking works, but that's a much lengthier discussion. Suffice it to say, it's still the case that central banks set interest rates. I assume this is the reason the author brings this up, because otherwise the question is---they withdraw their savings and do what?
- Again, the only way the US government can default on US Treasury obligations is if Congress explicitly decides to do so. There's no mechanical or functional reason this might happen.
Historically, countries have not been sovereign in their currency. You'd have to be more specific about Argentina, though its biggest debt crisis was because its currency was pegged to the US dollar. Likewise, the current troubles in the Eurozone come from a lack of currency sovereignty. These things are unfortunate, and will probably lead to a dissolution of the EMU at some point, but they have no bearing on the US.
We can always print more debt instantaneously thanks to the FED. China can't print more humans.
We have our problems for sure, but china is facing far greater problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril
'The Yellow Peril (also Yellow Terror and Yellow Spectre) is a racist color-metaphor that is integral to the xenophobic theory of colonialism: that the peoples of East Asia are a danger to the Western world. As a psycho-cultural perception of menace from the East, fear of the Yellow Peril was more racial than national, a fear derived, not from concern with a specific source of danger, from any one country or people, but from a vaguely ominous, existential fear of the vast, faceless, nameless horde of yellow people opposite the Western world. As a form of xenophobia, the Yellow Terror is the white race's fear of the rising tide of colored people from the Orient.[1]'
It's entirely possible that you have a valid point to make, and maybe it's even an interesting and important one, but maybe also take a second to consider if it might be motivated by racist tropes.
Why do you think this has anything to do with racism? Is anything claiming an Asian country is doing better than a white country Yellow Peril? If not, why is this an instance of it?
Indeed. Textbook projection