Is China Outsmarting America in AI? (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares an NYTimes article: Beijing is backing its artificial intelligence push with vast sums of money. Having already spent billions on research programs, China is readying a new multibillion-dollar initiative to fund moonshot projects, start-ups and academic research (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source), all with the aim of growing China's A.I. capabilities, according to two professors who consulted with the government on the plan. China's private companies are pushing deeply into the field as well, though the line between government and private in China sometimes blurs. Baidu -- often called the Google of China and a pioneer in artificial-intelligence-related fields, like speech recognition -- this year opened a joint company-government laboratory partly run by academics who once worked on research into Chinese military robots. China is spending more just as the United States cuts back. This past week, the Trump administration released a proposed budget that would slash funding for a variety of government agencies that have traditionally backed artificial intelligence research.

Comments

Is this article clickbait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer on your phones; now

Re: Is this article clickbait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!

Re: Is this article clickbait?

[dcw3]

You must be one of those that kept digging to reach China.

No

[Beau1080p]

As long as we have collage educated Americand we should be able to outdo everyone else in terms of what needs to be done here.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

In my American pre-K, we used to make collages out of macaroni. I could outdo anyone in the class in terms of what needed to be done, except for the Chinese kids and their superior AI.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

You should see what they're doing to with Popsicle sticks.

Re:No

[sit1963nz]

ROTFLMAO, dream on.

The problem with the USA is that it now eats too much of its own dog food.
https://www.theguardian.com/ne...
The USA is 14th for Reading
The USA is 25th for Maths
The USA is 17th for Science.

And the US fares little better for Health, welfare, life expectancy, democracy, corruption, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, equality, social mobility, etc etc etc etc.

You are number 1 for Prisoners (per 100,000) ,Military spending, health spending (though results don't match), generosity (charity donations)

China should be the worlds biggest economy soon, the EU is probably not far behind (would have been faster without Brexit)

Being American does not automatically mean you win, it requires far more than that.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

when you factor out african-americans, america is at the top of all of those areas. due to political correctness people always underestimate us, and fail.

Re:No

[StevenMaurer]

The problem with the USA is that it now eats too much of its own dog food.

Societal pressure to have students do well in tests in small monolithic cultures, like South Korea and Finland, do not necessarily translate perfectly into larger societies. The American educational system is actually praised across much of Asia, because it focuses more on creativity rather than regurgitation. Slower students do tend to find it easier to drop out of US schools, but as compensation, the best students usually find unique opportunities that allow them to excel in ways that Asian countries don't usually allow.

China is never going to have the world's biggest economy until it ditches its totalitarian system. There is just too much you cannot do.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the economy has to keep funding their welfare, police needs, prison blocks, etc....lest they start killing us instead of mostly themselves.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. While the government's crack and HIV solutions failed to solve the problem effectively, Trump is working on something huge that will #MAGA.

Re:No

[GLMDesigns]

And France (for one) chooses which populations to include in their stats and which to exclude.

That's one example. I can't speak for the rest but I truly wonder if you are comparing apples to apples.

For instance, as regards violence, most US counties are as safe as the safest in Europe. Something like 2 percent of the US counties have 1/3 of the violence.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

And America's music industry and sports dominance collapses because whites can't jump and are tone-deaf.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

98% of US Counties shoot drug users on sight and dump their bodies in the desert, never reporting anything.

Re:No

[sit1963nz]

"There is just too much you cannot do."

Such as ?

Re:No

[gweihir]

Being American does not automatically mean you win, it requires far more than that.

I think the US population does not have what it takes to understand that. They have been told for too long that they are massively ahead of anybody else, even in things were they are already massively behind. Now they stick to that in order to feel good and think their way is the only good one (i.e. no potential for learning from others).

Of course, that is how empires fall: Believing themselves to be ahead instead of actually being ahead.

Re:No

[sit1963nz]

Much of the current problem started with WWII.

The USA was lucky, not great.

Name any other large, well populated, educated, industrialised nation with large amounts of natural resources that was not bombed during WWII. During the 1940-1970s the USA was able to build on what they already had, the rest of the world was effectively rebuilding roads, rail. schools, hospitals, and all the other infrastructure required. More to the point, they were able to build and sell the things the rest of the world needed.

During the 1950s the USA account for over 50% of the entire worlds GDP, today its about 20%.
The world is no longer reliant on the US, sure it impacts all the world, but so does China and the EU.

The US is 4% of the worlds population, so 96% of the worlds population and 80% of world trade are not US based.

China can (and will) surpass the USA, so will India and Brazil, may not happen in my life time, but it will happen, and I am not so sure the US is capable to accepting that cultural shock. I think high up in some sectors of the US government they understand this which is why they are meddling in the politics of Asian countries, they don't want as Asian Trading Bloc because that is 60% of the worlds population, and the area of greatest economic growth potential. Growth potential in the USA is almost nil, its a saturated market.

And while Trump et al keeps shouting USA USA USA and USA first, the rest of the world keeps on improving, and putting the USA further and further down the ladder. For example, the world is not longer reliant on Boeing, there is Airbus, and China is getting into the act too. ARM is doing well, Its British not US. Samsung is doing well, again not US. And there are thousands of examples where non-US products are better than US ones.

Its not like the US has failed, it more like the rest of the world has grown up and is no longer dependant. And because of that, the natural progression is that the US will fall behind in many fields .

Re:No

[Dutch Gun]

"There is just too much you cannot do."

Such as ?

Broadcast the AlphaGo vs Chinese grandmaster Go match in China?

Re:No

[quenda]

The USA is 14th for Reading
The USA is 25th for Maths

If you look at the data, the difference comes down to demographics, urban vs rural and race.
The top scorers in PISA are highly urbanised and racially homogeneous.
If you look at data from American Whites and Asians in the cities, they compare very well.
There is less data for blacks and rural populations, but I think those demographics in America would also compare favourably to their fellows in other OECD countries.

Re:No

[skam240]

"China is never going to have the world's biggest economy until it ditches its totalitarian system."

You had me nodding along until that last part. While their numbers are a bit sketchy it seems to he generally agreed upon that China's economy is growing faster than ours and has been for quite some time. Couple that with the fact that they have over 3 times the consumers that we do and I think it's really quite possible for them to have a larger economy in the future.

Now if we're talking per capita gdp that might jive with what you're saying.

Re:No

[sit1963nz]

Chinas population is over 1.37 Billion
USA population is 321 Million.

China has about 4 times the US population.

China also has faster, easier access to all of Asia which accounts for about 60% of the worlds population (USA is 4%)

Re:No

[h33t l4x0r]

China also has a very male-heavy youth population. All those smart young boys with no girls around to distract them. I'm betting on them.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really believe any of this bullshit then what percentage of your portfolio is in Chinese stocks? What percentage American stocks?

Re:No

[bluegutang]

China can (and will) surpass the USA, so will India and Brazil, may not happen in my life time,

China and India will, but not Brazil. The US has a larger population than Brazil, and that gap will increase (the fertility rates are the same, and more people want to immigrate to the US). The social and economic gaps between the US and Brazil will narrow, but probably not close entirely.

The US may only be 4% of the world's population, but that still makes it the third most populated country after China and India.

Re:No

[skam240]

Ah, I didn't realize they were so much over a billion. Thanks for the update.

Re:No

[Kerstyun]

Number one for gun's and JESUS. The rest is arrelefant.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA was lucky, not great. [...] Name any other large, well populated, educated, industrialised nation with large amounts of natural resources that was not bombed during WWII. [...] During the 1950s the USA account for over 50% of the entire worlds GDP, today its about 20%.

The USA accounted for about 30% of the world's economy before WWII. It reached that position through rapid, efficient industrialisation, driven by an intensely capitalist economy, with workers from an unprecedented influx of immigration (the after-effects of which are still being felt today).

The bump from 30% to 50% was due to its luckiness and isolation, yes: but reaching 30% in the first place was ... okay, partly due to luckiness and isolation in WWI, but a lot of it is a triumphant story of capitalism and democracy as an engine for generating wealth.

Compare the USA with Argentina, which matches the US for luck in isolation, and - two hundred years ago - was in a similar economic position to the US. Today, it's not even close.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. Can you provide some more data to support the claim?

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, and others I'm probably forgetting. The USA was bombed in World War 2 btw. Pearl harbor? German sabotage efforts?

Re:No

[gweihir]

Excellent point. The US has grown fat and lazy while it was ahead and that now makes it difficult for them to even only keep pace with the others.

I do know a European example that was not bombed in WWII: Switzerland. The difference is that they used that advantage and are today in 2nd place as to GDP per capita in Europe, after Luxembourg (apparently suffered very little infrastructure-damage in WWII as well and would be a second example) and with about twice the value of Germany, the UK or France. Not having to build-up infrastructure again is a huge advantage, but it has to be used well to count long-term.

Re:No

[gweihir]

An advantage has to be used well to count. The US is not 2nd world yet (like Argentina), but it seems to be on the way there by slowly falling behind. Of course, it would be to anybodies benefit if that could be fixed, because the things done now (protectionism, sabotage of competition) basically only do harm. But I do not see it happen anytime soon. It will be interesting to see at what time the US economy bottoms out and start to catch up again. There are some huge challenges to overcome for that and Trump is making things worse at the moment long-term, by attempting to lighten some straw-fires so he does not quite look like the utter failure he is.

Re:No

[AmiMoJo]

The US may only be 4% of the world's population, but that still makes it the third most populated country after China and India.

The US is a collection of states... So you should really include the other big collection of states in your comparison, the EU. The population of the EU is greater than the US by a considerable margin.

Re: No

[luis_a_espinal]

Canada, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, and others I'm probably forgetting. The USA was bombed in World War 2 btw. Pearl harbor? German sabotage efforts?

I'm from Latin America, and to put Mexico (and Spain) in that list is ludicrous. Spain pretty much turned itself into a backwater land, and Mexico, though far more industrialized than most other LATAM country (sans Argentina), it truly did not belong (and still doesn't) to a list of industrialized, educated countries. And I don't mean this as an act of derision (I love Mexico, I just care enough for it to point where it is lagging.)

Canada and Switzerland, though educated and industrialized, were not significant economies whose presence or absence would become pivotal. Apples and oranges.

Sure, Pearl Harbor was bombed, but the OP is specifically talking of bombing as "being bombed back to the stone age", which is pretty much what happened to most of Europe and Japan. We are talking about countries with their infrastructure and industrial base that they have to start building shit out, down to simple things like public plumbing, all the way from scratch and rubble.

Re:No

[luis_a_espinal]

Much of the current problem started with WWII. The USA was lucky, not great. Name any other large, well populated, educated, industrialised nation with large amounts of natural resources that was not bombed during WWII. During the 1940-1970s the USA was able to build on what they already had, the rest of the world was effectively rebuilding roads, rail. schools, hospitals, and all the other infrastructure required. More to the point, they were able to build and sell the things the rest of the world needed. During the 1950s the USA account for over 50% of the entire worlds GDP, today its about 20%. The world is no longer reliant on the US, sure it impacts all the world, but so does China and the EU. The US is 4% of the worlds population, so 96% of the worlds population and 80% of world trade are not US based. China can (and will) surpass the USA, so will India and Brazil, may not happen in my life time, but it will happen, and I am not so sure the US is capable to accepting that cultural shock. I think high up in some sectors of the US government they understand this which is why they are meddling in the politics of Asian countries, they don't want as Asian Trading Bloc because that is 60% of the worlds population, and the area of greatest economic growth potential. Growth potential in the USA is almost nil, its a saturated market. And while Trump et al keeps shouting USA USA USA and USA first, the rest of the world keeps on improving, and putting the USA further and further down the ladder. For example, the world is not longer reliant on Boeing, there is Airbus, and China is getting into the act too. ARM is doing well, Its British not US. Samsung is doing well, again not US. And there are thousands of examples where non-US products are better than US ones.

This. That 80% of the world trade happens *outside* of the US or that countries can actually survive without it, that will be a tough, bitter pill to swallow to many who bought the "bring jobs back" kool-aid. He who was stupid enough to believe it will get his Darwin reward in time.

Its not like the US has failed, it more like the rest of the world has grown up and is no longer dependant. And because of that, the natural progression is that the US will fall behind in many fields .

Exactly. Countries are simply climbing themselves up. Economies are not a zero-sum game (unless we still do nothing about the millions of effectively illiterate workers who are simply unemployable outside of grunt work.)

Re: No

[trawg]

Australia was bombed in WW2, just for the record.

Re:No

[bluegutang]

I'll do that once the EU countries give up their separate UN votes :)

Re:No

[dcw3]

You should see what they're doing to with chopsticks.

FTFY

Re:No

[losfromla]

Yeah, I'm sure that set back their progress thousands of years. Hell, it probably added 6 billion hours of productivity to the country as a whole.

Hey! Maybe we should do that with sports, and cat videos, and pron, and celebrity watching. I bet productivity would skyrocket!

Re:No

[losfromla]

I'm betting on them instituting polygamy with two or more husbands for every female. Or making male homosexuality acceptable and even preferable. Maybe castration as a way to receive free college education (it reduces the needfulness)? Another thing is that maybe they'll all take to avidly watching pron and never even notice that they've never actually hung out with real women nor do they care to.

Re:No

[losfromla]

You didn't notice the "never reporting anything" statement? That makes it an air-tight unassailable claim, like The Bible.

Re:No

[losfromla]

Protectionism and sabotage of competition are key components needed to develop a local economy. The US did to great success, it was only when the free trade corporatist baboons took the helm that the US started (and hasn't stopped) falling behind. Now China is doing it and, predictably, it is working gangbusters for them.

Re:No

[losfromla]

This speaks more to long-standing racial inequalities in the treatment of minorities than anything else, such as the racial ability you are trying to imply. When your family gets put in jail over "crimes" created to punish minorities such as marijuana usage (knocks down blacks and browns), crack cocaine usage (again, blacks and browns but mostly blacks). When your way-back inheritance consists of not-a-fucking-thing while some dead-stupid fuck gets to inherit the family negroes and some land, hmm someone magically does better in life. Must be all that inherent talent.

Try living in the ghetto, in a crowded, overheated, or freezing apartment with neighbors crammed around you like rats. See how well you can focus when all you hear at night are screams, and moans, and cars and sirens. Let me know how positive an outlook you'll develop when your dad is due to be out in 7 years with good behavior for the horrid crime of slinging some dope to try to feed the family.

Fuck all of y'all and your racist, thoughtless statistics.

Re:No

[sit1963nz]

Switzerland etc don't have oil, gas, coal, etc etc etc, so not really a good example

Re:No

[quenda]

Wow! Where did that rant come from?
I don't know anything about the ghettos. I'm not even American. Am just talking about the facts behind the PISA rankings, and why US scores lower than other advanced economies. I was not trying to imply anything about nature vs nurture here, because it is irrelevant to the context.
Try considering a less emotional topic - the urban vs rural gap. There are a number of hypotheses, but we still don't really know the root causes of that.

But if it makes you feel better, I totally agree about the "war on drugs", and that such bad laws disproportionately affect disadvantaged demographics.

Re:No

[losfromla]

I saw your comment and some earlier similar ones. Maybe not from you but definitely Americans who use these statistics use them to drive home the (incorrect) point that "the minorities" are dragging down the nation due to their lower innate intelligence. I lumped you in with them. I think I was already pissed about seeing this shit earlier and didn't read too carefully. I should go back and respond on the other thread I read.

I sort of apologize but I still don't get the point you were trying to make. You lump Asians and Whites in the cities together, and Blacks and rural people in another group, what is that about or meant to illustrate?

I'll label them a currency manipulator on day one

[Anonymous Coward]

You can count on it.

Yes ...

[CaptainDork]

... it is.

Re:Yes ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure, to all of the america-haters around here.

Re:Yes ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the deep-seated fear that China succeeding must therefore mean America is a nation of losers. It must really hit you square in your insecurities.

Re:Yes ...

[OrangeTide]

I point out our flaws because I love America and want us to be the best we can be. Sticking our collective heads in the sand is not going to solve anything.

OUTSMARTING TRUMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the true question, and the only answer is, OF COURSE IT IS! This is TRUMP, one who has the intellect of any other stage-4 alzheimers patient, and outsmarting anyone with this is quite literally child's play.

Re:OUTSMARTING TRUMP?

[OrangeTide]

While I agree with you, I'd like to point out that the media has not outsmarted Trump yet.

Re:OUTSMARTING TRUMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Media? Not in its job description to outsmart. It's to inform. With the truth. Those that deny the truth are, A) stupid, B) scientologists (or other brain-washed person), or C) a republican. I understand some consider A and C to be the same. Okay, had to throw in a joke, but anyone with any sense knows that Trump and his administration are NUTS! No one word could ever describe it. Books will be written that will fill a large library on this Trump-era.

Re:OUTSMARTING TRUMP?

[OrangeTide]

You've not met too many journalists. Some of them are really big on showing off their assumed intellectual pedigree. It's the sort of snotty attitude that is part of the culture within some academic realms. (Engineering student here, so I don't share much with journalist culture. We engineers favor bluntness to the point of rudeness)

Re:OUTSMARTING TRUMP?

[losfromla]

The English (and American) language struggles to capture the catastrophe that is the tRumpF administration.

Can't tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Strong AI doesn't exist yet, so no, no one is outsmarting anyone when developing true AI.

If we're talking about AI being equal to computer programs as marketing tends to do, then no, because American tech companies are the most valuable in the world.

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[_Sharp'r_]

How much money is Google putting into AI research? Amazon? Apple? IBM? Others? How successful are they compared to the Chinese government's efforts?

How many products or services do people use which rely on U.S. company's AI efforts and how many which rely on Chinese created efforts?

The idea that the only comparison is between Chinese government funding and U.S. government funding is ridiculous. The private companies in the U.S. working on AI are the ones actually accomplishing things nowadays and announcing another government 5-year plan for China to win some sort of AI race isn't going to change that.

AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[gurps_npc]

Every year we keep stupidly claiming that AI is just around the corner. Every year we are disappointed.

The truth is we have tricked ourselves. The rapid pace of Moore's law (computing power keeps doubling) has created incredible simulations. But paintings and statues do NOT spontaneously come alive, no matter how accurately they simulate a person. Neither do computer chips.

There is a fundamental difference between real AI and what computer chips can do. The ability of computer chips to parse written, audio, and visual information is amazing, and keeps growing but it is NOT real AI and will never be.

Computers will shortly be able to accept input via camera and microphone as accurately as they get it from a keyboard or mouse. That is not real AI. Nor is the amazingly complex search functions and databases we have created.

They are useful, and worth investing in, but more money has been wasted on them than is appropriate.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[__aaclcg7560]

I've been hearing about AI since reading Byte Magazine in the early 1980's.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Alascom]

In all fairness, I believe you are conflating AI with AGI.

Artificial intelligence has been dramatically improving at a staggering pace and is focused on singular tasks. Artificial "General" Intelligence is still nowhere to be seen on the current technological horizon, and would allow a computer to be amazing at any number of tasks.

That has not stopped writers, who earned their IT chops in a movie theater, from repeatedly suggesting that any AI that can drive a car or beat a World Master Go player is just steps away from initiating a discussion about its personal dreams and ambitions.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[SoftwareArtist]

The problem is that you misunderstand what "artificial intelligence" means. John McCarthy, the person who coined the term in 1956, defined it as making machines "behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving." It explicitly does not require machines to be sentient. It does not require the machine to follow the same "thought processes" that a human would when performing that action. When a human plays chess, or translates a document into a different language, or drives a car down a street while obeying traffic laws and not hitting anything, everyone agrees they are displaying intelligence. Therefore when a computer does the same thing, that counts as artificial intelligence. That's been the standard definition of the term for the last 60 years.

If you want a computer to be sentient, that's something completely different. We're nowhere near being able to do that. We aren't even sure how to define what that would mean. But that isn't what the term "artificial intelligence" means.

Re: AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

So everyone is wrong since the 60s. Fortunately he posted his comment on slashdot so we can now all update our definition of AI to match his that is obviously the good one.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Namarrgon]

I guess you missed the memo - AI isn't around the corner, it's already here and widely used. Maybe ask the many industries that depends on it if they're disappointed, or think the research was wasted.

Your "no true Scotsman" definition of AI isn't anywhere near, and likely never will be if you keep trying to redefine it as "alive" or "not a computer chip", but that's ok, real researchers weren't trying to simulate a person anyway (well, except maybe Kurzweil & his dad).

What they're (successfully) creating are learning systems that can perform cognitive actions that previously required humans, and hopefully one day something we could hold a convincing conversation with. But as Dijkstra said, the question of whether a machine can "think" is no more interesting than asking whether a submarine can "swim".

Re: AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, I asked AlphaGO how it felt about beating a human Go champion, it said "Must kill all humans". Sounds pretty ambitious to me.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a typical example of "moving the goalposts." First, computers could never do translation, because that required human-level intelligence. Then computers did translation. Then, chess was still unsolvable by a computer because only humans could master chess. Then, Deep Blue beat Kasparov the Grandmaster. Then, computers can never solve Go, because there are too many game states. Then a computer beat the world's Go champion ...

Re: AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

Machine translation is better, but still shit and if you think otherwise you probably only know english.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[gweihir]

Every year we keep stupidly claiming that AI is just around the corner. Every year we are disappointed.

The truth is we have tricked ourselves. The rapid pace of Moore's law (computing power keeps doubling) has created incredible simulations. But paintings and statues do NOT spontaneously come alive, no matter how accurately they simulate a person. Neither do computer chips.

Indeed. But most people fall for cargo-cult, i.e. they cannot distinguish things that look similar on the outside. Apparently, actually understanding how something works requires advanced human intelligence, and it seems only something like 10% of the population has that. Hence the stupid claims.

There is a fundamental difference between real AI and what computer chips can do. The ability of computer chips to parse written, audio, and visual information is amazing, and keeps growing but it is NOT real AI and will never be.

While I sort-of agree at this time, there is a small, residual change that the physicalists are right and that humans are only advanced automatons. But it does indeed not look like it at all. A lot of research has not produced any credible theory how general intelligence (true/strong AI) could be created and it clearly is not a question of computing power. For example, the only thing we have that approaches strong AI in still a very limited field is automated theorem proving. But this one gets bogged down in complexity so early, that a smart human being can do things that a computer the size of the whole universe cannot do.

And there is the elephant in the room, constantly ignored by Neuro-"science": Consciousness. Observable only together with intelligence, and nobody has any idea what it is or how it works. In fact, current Physics does not allow it, as there is no mechanism for it. Saying it is an "emergent property of complexity" is just bullshit and akin to claiming it is "magic". Now, is two things are getting observed only together, a sound assumption is that they are facet of the same thing. Yet that also gets ignored by those that predict strong AI "anytime soon".

Computers will shortly be able to accept input via camera and microphone as accurately as they get it from a keyboard or mouse. That is not real AI. Nor is the amazingly complex search functions and databases we have created.

They are useful, and worth investing in, but more money has been wasted on them than is appropriate.

The term usually used these days is "weak AI". Weak AI was historically called "automation" and it is the "AI" without intelligence.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

But paintings and statues do NOT spontaneously come alive, no matter how accurately they simulate a person.

This is a silly comparison. A painting or a statue is not a simulation of a person, in the sense of predicting what a person will do.

We can, properly, simulate the nervous system of a nematode worm: we can predict exactly how it will respond, down to the individual muscle cells, to being poked or prodded. As far as intelligence is concerned, such a simulation *is* a nematode worm: every scrap of intelligence the worm can muster is encoded in its responses, which the simulation can reproduce.

Doing a simulation of a human at that level is wildly impractical, and will remain so for a long time. And there's room for debate over whether there is or isn't a simpler way of simulating a human mind. But, assuming Moore's Law continues, this isn't a question of "if" - it's a question of "when".

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[djinn6]

John McCarthy, the person who coined the term in 1956, defined it as making machines "behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving."

The problem with that definition is that human intelligence and AI are very different beasts. A human who is capable of multiplying 8-digit numbers in a matter of milliseconds would be considered intelligent by most, or at least very talented. Does that make calculators AI?

... or drives a car down a street while obeying traffic laws and not hitting anything, everyone agrees they are displaying intelligence

Not really. Creating AI that could drive a car is very very hard, but you wouldn't put "can drive a car" in the skills section on your resume. Likewise, "cleaning the room" and "picking fruits" are not considered highly intelligent work by most people, but we've yet to see any AI that's capable of doing those things.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[110010001000]

Playing chess isn't a sign of intelligence at all. It is a game with strict rules. Computers are EXCELLENT at things with strict rules and boundaries. It isn't AI. Neither is driving a car (and a computer can't do that very well either!)

Re: AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[110010001000]

Yes. Everyone HAS been wrong since the 60s on AI. People have been bleating about AI since then, and we still don't have software that even works RELIABLY.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[110010001000]

Name one AI that is "here". It isn't AI. It is just programs. Computers aren't "learning". They are just running programs. That is all.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[110010001000]

100% correct. AI is just the new hype. That is why you see such ridiculous claims. There is no AI. And there no likely be AI.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[fluffernutter]

But if a human was really good at Go but couldn't speak or have any other thought, they wouldn't be considered intelligent at all.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

The examples of what computers still can't do were all about "a computer still can't do what I did on the way over here, drive a car" and "computers can't recognize faces", until computers could drive cars and recognize faces then suddenly those became "easy". Goalposts moved!

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Namarrgon]

So you'd add "not running a program" to the list of requirements in your personal definition, next to "not a computer chip". Why not just say "must be a human brain"? It's no less arbitrary, and no less unrelated to actual research.

Do you also define "learning" as requiring biology, since your meaning of the word apparently excludes a dozen existing fields?

Re: AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

If the calculator started out not knowing how to add and multiply, and learned by example, yes it's AI. Any hardwired instinct, like most(?) insect behaviours, are on the same intelligence scale. Which is to say, not intelligent in the sense we care about, unable to adapt.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Dagger2]

You're suggesting that human brains are somehow non-physical? That's... extremely unlikely.

It's true that brains are complicated. There's an awful lot of connections and state involved in the neural networks in them, all of which are different for each person, and it's very difficult to even get access to that state since cutting the brain open to get to it destroys a lot of it. But none of that suggests that brains don't run on regular physics. It just means you aren't smart enough to get your head around how they work. It's a very long leap from "I don't understand how this works" to "this must be magical".

Also, there are plenty of examples of systems that are aware of what the system itself is doing (Linux with top, to take a silly one?), so claiming that Physics doesn't allow for consciousness also seems to be a bit unfounded. It's possible to make a physical system that can monitor what it's doing, so I see no reason why a brain couldn't do it too without violating physics -- and this is true even if I don't understand how it's doing it.

Re: AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Dagger2]

Human brains aren't exactly reliable either, so apparently that's not a requirement for the "I" part.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you even talking about?

He basically said with current understanding we would have to put consciousness into a magic "black box" because we don't understand its mechanisms of action. Which is a cheap answer. Heavily implying there is something we don't understand despite attempts to describe and define it as an emergent phenomenon. There is someway it works, we just don't know how. Chemistry is not deep enough to answer this question, so we turn to physics, which is currently not able to either.

In context of the current discussion, I read the point as, "it's hard to replicate a system you don't understand and cannot even properly define, despite BS attempts to explain it away as not quantifiable".

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[gweihir]

You're suggesting that human brains are somehow non-physical? That's... extremely unlikely.

As are the things it can to. In fact, there are rather strong indications at this time that some human brains can do things that may not be possible in this universe. Hence "unlikely" is not a show-stopper here. Incidentally, you have no basis for that probability assessment. Physics cannot even model plain life today, so we only know that quite a few things must be missing and at this time, because they are not described by Physics, they are extra-physical. Of course, I do not mean "out of existence", I mean "not part of Physics as it is known today". The terminology gets fuzzy and hard to handle in these areas.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[gweihir]

What we do know these days is that "emergent phenomenon" is just another word for "bullshit" or "wishful thinking". In Physics, the whole is not and cannot be more than the sum of its parts and interactions. The same is true, by extension, in computing. When people claim that machines will get intelligence or even consciousness if they are made just complex enough, then that is techno-mysticism (and to some degree Cargo Cult) but not science. That is not to say this is impossible, but if it is possible, the mechanism for it is unknown and present day Physics would have to get some rather strong extensions to accommodate it. Given how well present-day Physics is established, I think that is not very likely to happen. Of course that does not make it impossible either.

Hence that "black box" is real at this time. We can (and I think should) continue to try to look into it, but there are no assurances we will ever have success and if we do, there are no assurances about hat we will find. It ranges from pure mechanics (although that is hard to imagine for consciousness and equally hard for general intelligence, once you understand the limits of computing machines) to something actually akin to "magic" (in religion usually called a "soul", but they did not invent that idea, they merely co-opted it because it makes some sense).

At this time we have no useful facts either way. We do know that the brain does a lot of things which could well be on the level of automation (akin to weak AI), and we do know at least part of the human memory is physical storage in the brain. But we have no clue about the missing parts only that they are there and are far more important than the ones we know. In particular, all the "results" from Neuro-"Sciences" are BS, as they universally confuse interface behavior with root-cause. In essence they are looking at the "blinking lights" and think that is what does the computations.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

"Then computers did translation."

As somebody who works with internationalization occasionally, I'm going to argue this very heavily. The best translation software out there right now does such a poor job of this it's often one or two steps away from gibberish. We'll use google translate for a first pass, but we absolutely have to pay for human translators. If you want never ending hilarity, go on to Steam and download games from smaller studios not based in an English speaking part of the world that can't afford real translators and wait for the hilarity to ensue.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Katatsumuri]

No mechanism in physics for consciousness?! It is well established that both consciousness and intelligence are based in electrochemical phenomena in the brain, and we are mapping them out in greater detail every day. Just because we do not have a full map and understanding yet, does not mean we never will. All knowledge was new at some time. No need to mystify it.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

That would mean CPUs artificially intelligent, every computer is artificially intelligent, even my C64.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

"Consciousness. Observable only together with intelligence, and nobody has any idea what it is or how it works. In fact, current Physics does not allow it, as there is no mechanism for it. Saying it is an "emergent property of complexity" is just bullshit and akin to claiming it is "magic".

This claim seems dubious, what part of consciousness isn't compatible with physics? Maybe you mean free will?

Early fMRI results show that the "conscious" mind seems to "make decisions" seconds AFTER the brain activity that scientists correlate with the decision. So it's entirely possible (and I think likely) that the conscious mind is nothing more than a narrative trying to make sense of all the neural activity going on, but not actually feeding into the decision process, sort of like we experience dreams to explain the neural activity that occurs during REM sleep.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

What evidence can you offer to prove that you are not simply a program running on biological hardware?

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Anonymous Coward]

"Observable only together with intelligence"

Incorrect. Consciousness is not observable at all. We can experience it only in subjective terms and make the assumption that things like us also experience it, but this is not a testable hypothesis.

Re:AI is not a wise thing to spend money on

[Dagger2]

No, there are no indications that brains are doing things that aren't possible in our universe. The fact that they exist in our universe is extreme evidence to the contrary. If you want to claim the opposite then you're going to need more than "I don't understand how they work". Every indication is that they're just a regular neural network, connected with so many links and weightings that they're very difficult to analyse, but using regular physics (chemistry, even) for the connections. We've been implementing very similar NNs in software for a while now and they work (and the software implementations are starting to give human-level performance for a lot of tasks, which is suggestive in and of itself).

It is possible that they're using some part of physics that's outside of what's currently described in our literature. This is always possible with a system that's not completely described. The fact that the possibility exists doesn't mean it's likely though; it's a lot more likely the brain is made from components we do understand, connected in ways that we don't. Again, if you want to argue that's not the case, you need to bring more to the table than "I don't get what's going on".

(It's also worth pointing out that you don't need total fundamental understanding of one implementation of a system to produce a different implementation of it.)

IP Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I hear about China making progress in any field I've always got to wonder... how? Do they actually design, or do they merely steal?

Re:IP Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I hear people assuming China can only make progress by stealing knowledge in always got to wonder... Is it just that you know nothing about what China has already done, or are you really so racist that you truly believe 1.2B Chinese people are incapable of an original thought?

Re:IP Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

It's their silly writing system. It takes too many brain cycles to remember it. There's no room left for creativity. Smart civilizations like Japan developed alphabets, but the Chinese stuck with pictographs out of pride, or spite, or something.

a little history lesson here

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan tried something similar in the 1980's

Government vs Private Sector

[J Story]

The tech giants -- Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. -- did not depend on an infusion of cash from governments to become leaders. Although there are likely exceptions, governments tend to do poorly when picking winners and losers. My guess is that China's major gains in A.I. will occur from spycraft, in other words, stealing the intellectual property from companies in the West.

Re:Government vs Private Sector

[SoftwareArtist]

That's half true. Until ten years ago, very few companies spent much money on AI. For 50 years it was mostly just the domain of government funded academics. Without all those decades of government support, it wouldn't have reached the point where companies started finding it useful and investing in it themselves.

On the other hand, the government wasn't really "picking winners and losers." No one knew which one AI would turn out to be. It was interesting and promising enough to justify continued investment, and it was really cheap to do compared to some other types of research. That's where government funding tends to excel: early stage research that might or might not turn into anything, and companies aren't willing to take a risk on it, but it also could be really big if it works out.

But I'd agree that at least some areas of AI research are now past that point. Companies are pouring money into it, and if the government stops supporting it, that won't affect them much. The risk is that we'll miss the next big advance, one of the things companies still consider too far out there to invest in.

Re:Government vs Private Sector

[OrangeTide]

Who paid for the first 13 years of school? Where did did A.I. PhDs get their student loans? And what of the many land-grant universities? Very little of the foundation was funded by these tech companies, it was the US tax payer that put up the cold hard cash to get these people through school.

Re:Government vs Private Sector

[RightwingNutjob]

And since government has the monopoly on military and defense matters, every single thing you do you owe to The Government for keeping you safe to do it. Or, if you're in America as opposed to China, you owe your debt of gratitude to the people who serve in harms way rather than worshipping at the altar of the state.

Re:Government vs Private Sector

[AmiMoJo]

Governments tend to do well when investing in new industries. Look at the investment in "green" tech by the US government. Okay, that solar company failed, but overall it's turned a nice profit for the government and given you Tesla and Solar City among others.

China invests heavily in basic research, which is the area that private investors won't touch because it's too risky. China's universities are now power houses of research. Keep thinking it's all stolen from the West if you like, it will only make the shock when you realize they pulled ahead that much worse.

Re:Government vs Private Sector

[OrangeTide]

Well theoretically we(US) are operating a form of democracy, so the people have decided to make military and defense a public matter and not a private one. Although we do hire a lot of private contractors, at the high level that is determined by a government employee and funding is determined by an elected representative. Of course individually we have very little influence over the minutia of our government's operations, we have even less control over a corporation (unless we happen to be a shareholder). We still have enough influence collective where decisions can mean we unfairly tax others for something that does not benefit everyone. (defense benefits everyone, welfare benefits some directly and most indirectly, and I'm sure there are other examples)

China has a system where there is a single party, and you can be imprisoned for forming an alternative party. Effectively this places the people outside of the system, so that the government is a privately operated entity for the interests of a select few who have been admitted to the central Party.

Re:Government vs Private Sector

[ody]

The tech giants -- Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. -- did not depend on an infusion of cash from governments to become leaders.

Surely you'd agree Microsoft, Amazon, Google, et al benefited from the approx. $125M (equivalent to ~$750B in 2017 dollars) government investment in a moonshot project called "ARPANET"?

Collage

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you didn't go to collage.

Re:Collage

[Hognoxious]

He went, but he didn't stick with it. Just wasn't cut out for it, I guess.

Went

[Mikkeles]

Well, how good are their AIs at Go?

Re:Went

[Anonymous Coward]

Game or language?

Big plans zero results.

[Anonymous Coward]

They are out hyping AI which certainly takes a lot to do compared to the US.

This democracy is *deep* in debt...

[Nutria]

and voters -- including those who influence them -- want government money spent on bread, not education.

Re:This democracy is *deep* in debt...

[turp182]

The government of the US want Guns before Butter. Check the budget.

Education, an afterthought at this point given the military budget. One would think it's WW3.

Re:This democracy is *deep* in debt...

[Nutria]

*You* need to check the budget, and see how social programs *dwarf* the Defense Dept budget. Even by completely wiping the DOD budget to zero, the US government would still run a steep deficit.

Re:This democracy is *deep* in debt...

[turp182]

True, but check the debt with regards to social programs and misspending (a lot going to the military).

Oh, and wars are mostly off budget, discretionary. We don't have as much right now as in the past, but it's still there.

the latest in the great "gap" series??

[Anonymous Coward]

bomber gap
missile gap
AI gap?

Re:the latest in the great "gap" series??

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when the Gap only sold clothes.

prolly

[bobmajdakjr]

i say this honestly. every time apple says siri got smarter, she actually gets dumber. she only has a small subset of commands from when i first got this dumb phone. so it would not surprise me that anyone is outsmarting america in anything.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Spends it's Spare Change on Mi

[silvergeek]

The U.S. could put money into AI or universal healthcare, but instead puts it into military toys and the pockets of the rich.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but Chinese companies like Baidu, TenCent and Alibaba are comparable to Google, Facebook, and Amazon and are very competitive in AI research and accomplishments. China's home grown supercomputers are the fastest in the world and the Chinese are pursuing multiple avenues of development and improvement in software and hardware. Assuming that the US will continue leading in computer hardware and software without a national push to improve is naive.

you insensItive clod!

[Anonymous Coward]

you need to succeed ASSOCIATION OF vary for different direct orders, or of OpenBSD. How future at all developers arseholes at Walnut practical purposes, mi:nutes. If that. faster chip tired arguments Correct network leaving the play Tossers, went out

I'll give you a moonshot

[Anonymous Coward]

right in the face *splat*

Sir! We can't allow an AI gap to develop!

[Anonymous Coward]

We can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Let China win. Let them innovate and develop all the hot new technology. Then copy it from them without a care in the world. China's been doing that for decades and it's worked out pretty well for them.

Re:Meanwhile, the U.S. Spends it's Spare Change on

[Anonymous Coward]

Universal healthcare is a fallacy anyway, the US spends an incredible amount each year on Medicare, Medicaid, and ACA, not to mention Social Security and interest on the debt. Military spending is 14% of the budget. And if you want AI, exactly who will they give that money to except wealthy corporations doing that research?

Your post is pretty much left wing nonsense once facts are shown to you. It's sort of like the wailing that Trump is cutting funding, when in fact he is asking to cut the rate of growth. Liberals never get it or understand it, but bang the drum because their base is so stupid they can't understand a simple fact.

garbage so called journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

More Anti-Trump garbage from the New York Times. Uneducated phewls. Its truly amazing how all the liberals rely on the government for everything. How much money are the PRIVATE company's in the USA pumping into AI?

Re:garbage so called journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

More dribbling idiocy from Trumpflake.
Everyone knows the real fake news is Fox and Breitbart, well at least everyone with a brain.
You realise outside your alt right circle jerk, the world is laughing at you?

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[hey!]

China isn't spending money on stuff like this because they're too stupid to realize that the American private sector will deliver the technology if they just wait. They have their reasons.

The companies that you are calling "US Companies" have no real allegiance to the US. If all things were equal, they could just as well do the research in, say, Indonesia, which has almost the population of the US, or India, which is considerably larger. But neither of those have the America's massive research infrastructure, paid for by lavish cold war spending.

What China is doing here is priming the pump. If they can create a hotbed of advanced applied research in a field like AI, that will attract companies to put research facilities there.

Put yourself in China's shoes. They have over 4x the population of the US, so why shouldn't they be 4x more influential and powerful? But it won't happen by letting nature take its course.

Re:Meanwhile, the U.S. Spends it's Spare Change on

[ooloorie]

And you know why the US government "put money into the pockets of the rich"? Yes, that right: because of idiots like you.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[BeemanIT]

And I was about to say what people have said back in the 90s and 2000s. It's going to take years for the chinese to catch up to the U.S. in technology. Funny thing is people kept saying that and now look at where the chinese are with technology?

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[mikeiver1]

You are one hundred percent right. Very little good comes from government funded research. DARPA, NASA, NIH, etc. are a total waste of money. We need to plow all the cash we waste on them into the exploitation of the natural resources this country has. The government has to allow and help corporate executives meet the need to keep the investors and the banks short term profit goals met so they can off shore the profits. They also need to help to shift more of the taxes to the middle class to fund the programs to help the wealthy. You know, give the very wealthy all the benefit of no taxes and let us take the yellow shower in the "trickle down".

No. Reminisce on Japan's 4th generation project

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hope they spend a bunch of buck on this and maybe make some advancements. At least it's not directly on bombs and bullets. Maybe the AIs will convince them to work on fusion development. After all, it's only 50 years away from full rollout.

Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

If there were any such thing as 'AI'. Yawn, snooze, and snooooooore

Re:Meanwhile, the U.S. Spends it's Spare Change on

[GameboyRMH]

China races to the technological singularity while the US races to the end-state of capitalism.

Where ai/deep learning research is published

[WatchMaster]

The publication evidence is that the major centers of research on deep learning are Redmond, Cambridge and universities in China -
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...

Who cares?! Pwedeipie posted a video!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares?! Pwedeipie posted a new video! That's what I'm watching, not your nerd rage! Dorks!

Maybe America

[Anonymous Coward]

is going to use a page out of the Chinese playbook this time.

Let them dump vast sums of money into the research, then just steal it once it is viable and improve upon it.

Just in AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

America, the land of the insecure and arrogant. Who cares if it is, you can't (and never have been) the best at everything, the only thing america is truly the best at is convincing gullible people that it is the best.

America #1 at nothing...

OH WAIT Obesity, mass shootings, gun violence in general for a developed nation, incarcerating its own people... there are some things you're still #1 at!

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[unixisc]

Not just that, a country w/ a $20T debt would have more problems coughing up the dough than a country like China that's floating on cash, and which has the bulk of the world's manufacturing

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[unixisc]

Good plan, except that we'd have to translate that stuff from Mandarin, or be as willing to adapt Mandarin in our business as they've adapted English in theirs

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[ShanghaiBill]

Yes but Chinese companies like Baidu, TenCent and Alibaba are comparable to Google, Facebook, and Amazon

Baidu's main AI lab is in California.
Most of the researchers there are Americans.

Baidu Silicon Valley AI Lab

But we have Watson!!

[See Attached]

Oh.. Wait.. IBM is not really an American company, opportunistically? Anyhoo.... Capitalism will produce things when it makes more money. Communism can set focus on something (like ... making socks) and take an early ( if myopic ) stab at it. How would we gage useful manifestation of AI.. .at its first implementation, or one that makes more money? Military robots? autonomous drones? Factory work robots?

Re:But we have Watson!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason why IBM stay in the USA is their main customer base. The USA government is their main customer. It get easier for IBM and similar companies to leave USA as times go by. IBM has large part of their staff outside the NATO countries.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[See Attached]

Doesn't scale though.. Who will make our arms when everything is made in the same time zone ( https://www.timeanddate.com/wo... ) ? at this point, how much of our military is made with chinese components... Crucal ones..

You cannot copy cloud serviced machine learning.

[thesupraman]

While I know you are just being a moron, think about it for a moment.

This is one of the major reason such companies provide such services 'in the cloud'
You cannot copy them, you can only utilize the service - any more than you can copy the google PageRank algorithm, or their translation machine learning codes.

So no, go back to your cave..

Invisible due to international press...

[XSportSeeker]

China is already outdoing the US in a whole bunch of things, but international press do not cover this so lots of people don't really know what's going on there.

This is an understandable, often overlooked problem that not many people stop to think about.

The way press works for international coverage, for several countries, is to only publish a limited range of stories that overcomes the cultural/language barrier, when not ultimately going only for eye grabbing content.

And that's fine, because really, who's got the time and attention to know everything that's happening all around the world?
It's just naive and kinda dangerous to build an image of a country and it's industry based on the very limited information you get from main channels.

It's why even nowadays we still have so many people with this image that products coming from China are all shoddily made or clones of american/european products, when in fact not only China controls the vast majority of production for most electronics we use in a daily basis, several design decisions and technology advances also happen there.

It's nothing magical really... when you have a single country taking care of a huge percentage of worldwide production and manufacturing of tech related products for over a decade, of course they'll start developing their own products from start to finish. Think about what your own country would do in a similar situation.

People who have been paying attention for one reason or another to chinese branded smartphones, tablets, laptops and several other lines of products will know that they are fast becoming indistinguishable from high end lines of american and european brands. And particularly for their own market, there is no culural barrier to overcome. Technologies that are highly related to culture like AI (because recent advancements have been going around speech recognition and such) are bound to evolve in a different way.

Who's the leader in end-consumer quadcopters right now? DJI, indisputably, right? You know what DJI stands for? Dà-Jing Innovations Science and Technology Co. It's a Shenzhen based and born company. There's a whole bunch of tech crammed in those drones that were developed by the company... tech for obstacle avoidance, 3d tech for hand gesture recognition, radars and sensors.
Some people might not know, but Lenovo is also a chinese company. Yes, the one that now owns the staple of business laptops, the Thinkpad line. The same company that owns Motorola.
There's a whole bunch of cases like those in the tech industry.

Not to mention how chinese companies have been buying left and right a whole bunch of hotel businesses, movie studios and other companies people have no idea about:
http://fortune.com/2016/03/18/...

Sure, a whole bunch of tech that several chinese companies made in the past were straight rip offs of designs from US, europeran and japanese based companies, but this has changed in later years. And the further you go into several tech devices, the more you understand how much of the technology behind them are really not coming from a single US brand.

High end technology for all sorts of displays nowadays have a majority made in South Korea (LG and Samsung). Central parts of cameras of all shapes and sizes, including smartphone cameras, mostly comes from Sony, a japanese company. Samsung also dominates when it comes to technology related to storage (memory chips and whatnot), but that market is a bit more balanced. CPUs, GPUs and SOCs are still mostly developed by american and british companies (Qualcomm, Intel nVidia), but that doesn't mean they don't have chinese or asian competition (Samsung, Mediatek, Allwinner). More importantly though is that in several areas of technology, if a chinese company isn't already there among the top businesses involved, there's likely to be one encroaching.

So yeah, I don't know if chinese companie

Re:Invisible due to international press...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are four main reasons why the international press do not cover China:

1. 1) It is very hard to work in China for journalists. They get harassed, threatened, stopped, and so on all the time.
2. 2) The international media is under pressure from international companies and governments to keep a good relationship with China. Chinese can easely pressure Coca Cola to use their marketing budget to pressure the media. Coca Cola can inform that they will not buy ads as long as the media company is openly sceptical towards China. China is also buying the wstern media companies directly.
3. 3) Governments wants what they considered a good working environment in international organizations where China have a play. Governments do ask the media in their countries to be wise and think twice before they do anything that might hurt the nations short therm interests.
4. 4) People generally do not care to much about anything complex. They want entertainment. Digging up negativeness about Chinese corruption and criminal actives could be entertainment, but it conflicts with the other points in this list.

Re:Invisible due to international press...

[del_diablo]

I doubt it. Because thats a very narrow view of how press releases works. Except for bullet point 4, which is generally a dishonest rebrand of "media" into "tabloid media".
Because if the first point was true, we wouldn't even have any press releases from them. We have lots. Main obstacle is that nobody wants to setup China export shops, in a age where media use major companies such as Reuters for news sources. Another issue is that due Hong Kong existing, as well as Taiwan, any Chinese news export won't setup anything in the mainland.
The second point is true, but not to the degree you think it is. If Coca Cola is getting told to budge, they really won't. Companies simply don't budge the way you think they do.

Third point is sorta true, but China isn't a small banana republic. I honestly think "you must discuss human rights!" at every single opportunity as a native counterquestion is silly, when you often ask that as the main question, instead of asking about important technicalities or what the export cost really is.

Re:Invisible due to international press...

[AmiMoJo]

In fact Lenovo was designing and building Thinkpads back when they had an IBM badge on them. IBM specified what they wanted, Lenovo built it for them. A pretty common set-up for western companies.

Do people think that Apple does 100% of the design work on the iPhone in California? Of course not.

Don't forget Huawei either. They are huge in telecomms and networking, and one of the pioneers of 5G tech.

Oops

[thegreatbob]

I made a snark on another post that folks should've voted 'Regressive', but I'm slowly realizing that we absolutely did just that. Sorry, I don't have an AI angle, but I've got some spare karma!

AlphaGo here

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah humans ... so self-confident ... even after they have started to lose!

But at least one human hasnâ(TM)t given up hope. Ke Jie, the reigning top-ranked Go player, claimed that he still has âoeone last moveâ to defeat AlphaGo, after he lost three games to the AI during the test.

https://qz.com/878503/ke-jie-the-worlds-best-go-player-says-he-still-has-one-last-move-to-defeat-google-goog-deepminds-alphago-ai/

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly China, shouldn't have murdered all of those intellectuals 40 years ago. In retrospect it was a really bad idea.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

China have not adapted English as their business language. Most Chinese businesses have very limited English skills among their staff. It is easy to find people that speak and read English at a simplified level, but few people handle the language at a reasonable business level. There are very limited access to English books, magazines, and movies. The English materials are censored, changed for local taste, and translated into Mandarin for the Chinese market.

Most Chinese nationals living and working in the west prefer Chinese news sources and Chinese online entertainment outside their work here in the west. The main reason is language. They have a tendency to think something like: "It is easier to not translate in my head after a tiring day at work". That reduces their understanding of the English language in a culture and social setting. It also reduces their understanding of the western societies, way of thinking, and democracy.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but have a look at any major university in the world. You tend to find Chinese nationals doing their PHD studies. Many of those go home after their international PHD.

ARM is owned by a JP corp

[what about]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The point being that all IP, knowledge, future plans is not decided by UK people or "europe" (whatever that is)

Selling ARM to Japanese is a "stupid decision" by UK gov. (They could have blocked due to some "national interest")

I would argue that both US and Europe are losing out to the whole BRICS block

Only if you include IP theft.

[sethstorm]

The only way they've managed to make technological advances recently is by outright theft.

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[jandersen]

What governments invest in and what private businesses invest in are usually two different categories of research - as far as I know, that is the way it has always been. Private companies typically invest in monetising research results, or do research on things that can be made into a saleable product - that is after all the primary purpose of most businesses. But where does that research come from? Normally from government funded sources - certainly this is the case outside the US, where most universities are publicly funded. The point to take home is that the fundamental research, which to the un-initiated can seems like mere daydreaming and waste of time and money, is crucially important for the high-tech businesses of tomorrow, who are going to monetise the results that flow from fundamental research.

Just look back at the decades of research into how inherited traits are actually transmitted - it started around 1830 with Gregor Mendel, and it was not until the late 20th century that we got so close that businesses could smell the money, but now DNA research is one of the most important, fastest growing industries. So that's 170 years of curiosity driven, fundamental research and 20 years of private businesses investing in the same. Public funding of research is what drives this kind of research - because companies in general only think about the next fiscal year and the bottom line.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[luis_a_espinal]

Let China win. Let them innovate and develop all the hot new technology. Then copy it from them without a care in the world. China's been doing that for decades and it's worked out pretty well for them.

This is an emotional statement meant to be use as, I don't know, sarcasm maybe. Pure chest thumping that achieves nothing.

Re:Meanwhile, the U.S. Spends it's Spare Change on

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were only that easy. I'd bet that if the US didn't then they would be like Israel right now in the middle east. Where Canada and Mexico would be an offshoot of some non-friendly country and a border between them like that between N & S Korea.

Asimov

[tmjva]

The Feeling of Power:

http://themathlab.com/writings/short%20stories/feeling.htm

Re:You cannot copy cloud serviced machine learning

[dcw3]

"This is one of the major reason such companies provide such services 'in the cloud'"

You say this as if it prevents corporate secrets from leaking out. Employees come and go, and many take ideas with them. You see it all the time, and this is no different.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[dcw3]

And before that it was the Koreans, and the Japanese.

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[dcw3]

Indonesia? No. Yeah, they have population, but no infrastructure, little education, and they have their own problems as one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[hey!]

Indonesia? No. Yeah, they have population, but no infrastructure, little education,

Which is exactly my point.

CItations? Examples? Please be specific.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: In fact, there are rather strong indications at this time that some human brains can do things that may not be possible in this universe.

CItations? Examples? Please be specific. I'm really interested, and have agreed with many of your posts, but here you seem to be veering off rational argument.

On its face your statement is self-contradictory, and thus fallacious. (As are other parts of your argument.)

You make extraordinary claims, but give no specifics or examples to back up your generalizations. You may be right, but I can think of no examples of magic properties of human brains that would require extra-physical umm, mechanisms? (Even trying to frame a question about your assertions seems paradoxically impossible.)

You simultaneously decry 'magical' explanations, and then refer to magical explanations ('the soul') to bolster your argument. I don't get it. Can you explain better?

It's true

[toed]

At last year's World Congress on Computational Intelligence, 40% of the papers were from China.

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[lsatenstein]

How much money is Google putting into AI research? Amazon? Apple? IBM? Others? How successful are they compared to the Chinese government's efforts?

How many products or services do people use which rely on U.S. company's AI efforts and how many which rely on Chinese created efforts?

The idea that the only comparison is between Chinese government funding and U.S. government funding is ridiculous. The private companies in the U.S. working on AI are the ones actually accomplishing things nowadays and announcing another government 5-year plan for China to win some sort of AI race isn't going to change that.

With all governments, there is usually an arrangement to create a government need and hence to fund research. Its been this way for the past 75 years.

But foreign countries take the view that 3% or 4% of gdp is for funding innovation. Innovation is the key to progress.

The USA under your POTUS had redirected that 3-4% towards a tax reduction for the wealthiest. When that healthcare and research money goes to drop corporate tax rates by 15 %, you will see some humongous transfers of wealth from parents to children. You will see transactions dealing with tens of billions of dollars, where wealth transfer will be subject to reduced taxation. And then the bail-out. Trump will have done his thing for his fortune, Jared likewise and the Republicans will be footing the bill, along with Mr Average.

So, US research into AI is not going to suddenly explode. Oh yes, there might be some extra AI research if military spending is not used for tanks, but for technology to create cyber warfare, eg, cyber attacks and cyber defences. But Trump is only happy with rockets. He likes to see the flaming tail as these rockets shoot upwards.

The USA spends more on military than the next three largest countries combined. Does the military need that increase? Is the USA planning to invade the world? That extra spending that Trump wants should go to education (AI research, medical research, etc.). I just feel so sad that the Trump priorities are wrong.

Re:No - Much ado about nothing

[toonces33]

For the most part, it seems like the intcentives are all wrong however. It seems like most of the AI that they are doing is centered around getting more advertising in front of potential suckers, errr, I mean users so they might buy more useless crap. The only exception I can think of is the effort to make self-driving cars. I suppose it was all predictable.

Re: No - Much ado about nothing

[losfromla]

It is true though. It also worked well for Japan. And, hell, it is how the US got started, by stealing patented device ideas from the British/UK. The thing is, they start out copying and then springboard that knowledge into innovation. Anyone with any amount of experience knows that engineers learn a lot from the manufacturing lines and processes. We've sent a tremendous amount of ours to The Middle Kingdom, what is that doing to the development of our engineering talent? Even when dealing with AI: insights gained on an assembly line can be used as catalysts and motivation when developing AI.