Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

"Yet look beyond machine learning and consumer services, and the picture for Europe is less dire. A self-driving car cannot run on data alone but needs other AI techniques, such as machine reasoning, which is done by algorithms that are coded rather than trained—an area in which Europe has some strength. Germany has as many international patents for autonomous vehicles as America and China combined, and not only because it has a big car industry."

Important point. Not only see I more hope for deep innovation in the manufacturing sector than in selling people the most targetted ads, this also has the potential to create much more equitable outcomes for everyone in the economy.

I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful of people? Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake?

As a European(and German) citizen, I am much less concerned about taking the slow and steady route here. I have no interest in seeing Europe destroy its privacy or using AI to malevolent ends just to stay ahead in some fictional horse race.

People told us in the 80s that if we didn't move ahead with the service economy we'd be stuck in an archaic industrial society, and Thatcher was hailed as the reformer. I see parallels here to the AI debate. Now, where has this gotten the UK outside of London? For me, AI looks more and more like the hype around finance and services around that time. I'm okay with being a somewhat slow and bureaucratic grumpy German, if we get to be the guys who put advanced technologies into boring machines without much fanfare that's fine, people seem to keep buying them.

> I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful of people?

In principle, in the sense of being able to give all of your citizens the ability to complete any task which previously only experts could achieve.

Google Übersetzer ist oft schrecklich und schlechhören(?) oft meine Worte, aber es ist immer noch deutlich besser als ich auf Deutsch, obwohl ich das Äquivalent einer guten Note an der High School habe.

> Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake?

Americans certainly have; its part of both utopian and distopian fiction. This fiction has been a guiding force with regard to what the AI looks and acts like in many cases, for example Alexa’s adverts were clearly trying to sell it as the ship’s computer in Star Trek.

>In principle, in the sense of being able to give all of your citizens the ability to complete any task which previously only experts could achieve.

I'm not concerned on the consumer side of things. We're all part of a global economy. If you want to buy AI services in Germany you can do that easily, just as I can use Google without a problem despite Germany not exactly being at the forefront of the tech. Having Google or Facebook physically located in your country, from a consumer standpoint, actually doesn't really matter at all.

Honestly this whole arrangement has always puzzled me from an American perspective. Americans sacrifice quite a lot in terms of equality, privacy and so forth to be at the forefront of this stuff, and we can just use it all the same because we're good customers. I'll be sad the day the US decides it doesn't want to be in charge!

Ah, I think I see the point here.

Software (including A.I.) developed outside of your culture won’t reflect your culture. We already see this problem with regard to racism and sexism — A.I. which cannot detect black people at all, or hand-written healthcare software which cares more about insulin than periods — so for example, if you leave it to America and China, you won’t have any education software (with or without A.I.) which can cope with the difference between a Gymnasium, a Realschule, and a Hauptschule.

USA companies are also already having a lot of trouble with the cultural difference between the “easier to seek forgiveness than ask permission” attitude they’re used to in America as compared to anywhere which enforces rules because they exist for a reason. Google Street View in Germany, for example. I don’t know about Chinese companies, but I assume they also have cultural assumptions that won’t apply outside China.

> I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful of people?

Yes and yes?

> Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake?

If they develop AI driven warfare techniques and we don't, they'll beat us. We must close the AI gap! (fwiw this terrifies me)

I'm not terrified at all. If you leave the word AI out of the discussion this has already been the case for the last 70 years. The US squarely has us beat in warfare techniques. Europe already has not been a superpower in a long time, and this hasn't been to the detriment of the European people.

This whole debate reminds me also of the Japanese developments in the 80s. Everybody thought we'd be lost as they jump into the next superhuman age, funnily enough also involving grandiose computing projects.

I have the feeling this happens every generation and that the only thing that changes is the location.

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