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South Korea announces $860M AI fund after AlphaGo 'shock'
- wrong_variable 11y agoOh My, The last time south korea's govt wanted to fuk some shit up. they destroyed the British shipping industry and took over the global electronics industry. Silicon Valley's VC money is nothing compared to what a nation state can achieve.
- oldstrangers 11y agoThey're spending less than a billion. Google/Alphabet is surely spending more than that.
- oldstrangers 11y agoReally things might get scary when the DOD decides to direct some of its monstrous military budget at AI (which I'm sure its already doing).
- cybertronic 11y agoI really think an AI race between states will be inevitable
- maxerickson 11y agoDARPA provided much of the early funding for autonomous vehicle research. The "Grand Challenge"s and all that.
- slashcom 11y agoJust left a DARPA grant for an AI project. They've been one of the biggest AI funders for some time.
- DocSavage 11y agoIn addition to DARPA there's IARPA, which has the MICrONS project: http://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/microns http://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/microns
- unclebucknasty 11y agoWhy would you think that they are not already doing so?
- sciurus 11y agoThey've been doing that off and on for half a century. You may be interested in the history in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
- visarga 11y agoMaybe they're going to have lots of AI schools and competitions like they do with Go schools.
- jonknee 11y agoThey paid more than $500 just to acquire revenue free Deep Mind, so it's safe to say that yes Google is spending more than a billion on AI/ML.
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- tn13 11y agoSouth Korea's government did not do much I think it was the private companies that did it when government let them do it? Giving credit to government is little too much.
- dba7dba 11y agoI disagree that South Korean shipbuilding industry destroyed British shipbuilding industry. It was more Japan that started the trend.
- adventured 11y agoSouth Korea has less than 5% of the global electronics industry. Feel free to elaborate on how you think they took anything over. Are you talking about Samsung? Because that's all the dominance South Korea has in the industry. Everything else is quite generic. Apple by itself is worth more than the entire South Korean electronics industry combined. If nation state money were a primary determining factor, the USSR would have been a juggernaut, and Russia would be producing the best technology today. Instead, the USSR lost in nearly every possible regard to the private US technology industry. Nations keeps trying and trying to keep up with Silicon Valley by throwing money at the problem, and for half a century they have failed.
- visarga 11y agoMaybe they have failed at taking the majority of the profits, but they can still use the latest developments in AI, just as anyone else.
- doener 11y agoPosted this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11309814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11309814
- logicallee 11y agoEDIT: I've chosen to delete this comment. I disagree with the reply it received, and it also received numerous downvotes.
- besselheim 11y agoThat sounds unlikely. We don't yet know the structure of the human brain in full detail, nor know everything about how it grows and develops, so how can you possibly replicate it?
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- logicallee 11y agoyou can email me if you'd like my thoughts on any subject I've written about. - EDIT: in reply to your question about why I wouldn't answer here, here is an email I've received recently on another subject I've posted about: "It's a bit annoying when the HN crowd take to downvoting rather than taking the time to understand your point of view; I've been on the receiving end of that more than a few times and I know just how frustrating it can be. My karma would probably be a couple of thousand points higher if I'd followed your strategy of taking a thread to email instead of just carrying on trying to explain my point. You're more sensible than me." if you want an answer you can put some form of contact into your profile and I'll answer you, or you can write me. I have nothing to add to this thread here. My two non-comments (this one and grandparent comment), already are at -4 and -4. I wish I could delete them, but can't since they have replies.
- besselheim 11y agoWhy not reply here?
- fixxer 11y agoTotally should be a productive use of money since this is a problem that can totally be solved with money. /s
- sikim 11y agoAs a South Korean who experienced/heard about many government-backed researches, I strongly feel that this will go nowhere. Most of the time, there's always some bribery involved and project never finishes or come even close to that of the tech companies in US. The government then realizes it can't be done even with more money and puts the money elsewhere just to repeat the same thing. The examples that I can think of are when they were trying to build their own operating system and a video game console.
- dnautics 11y agoHwang woo suk and stem cells?
- yongjik 11y agoThat's different. Hwang's case was the story of a fraudster, who built his empire based on deceit, bribery, using his students like slaves, and generally knowing which buttons to press to incite a wave of nationalism mixed with personality cult. That is, he was one of his own kind. A legend, if you could call him that.
- dnautics 11y agoHe wasn't totally a fraudster - snuppy was real after all.
- w1ntermute 11y agoThat reminds me of what an engineer said about Quaero[0], a Franco-German attempt to create a competitor to Google search: > Going head-to-head with Google with a project involving well-funded, energetic entrepreneurs would be foolish. Attempting the same with a multigovernment collaboration is beyond description.[1] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero 1: http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/loser-whats-the-latin-for-delusional http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/loser-whats-the-la...
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- askafriend 11y agoThat's what Magic Leap raised in like 1 round.
- rebootthesystem 11y agoIt's like that line from the Grizzwalds movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eRtv-d8k6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eRtv-d8k6g You can't force fun. You can't force invention or innovation. Money is useful, of course, but it does not guarantee results. Look at Asimo, probably the single most expensive and impressive joke in humanoid robotics.
- sedachv 11y agoThe Japanese government tried this exact same idea for AI in the 1980s: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/05/business/fifth-generation-became-japan-s-lost-generation.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/05/business/fifth-generation-... These 5 year targeted research (IMO an oxymoron) plans are always a waste of money, especially if they involve private for-profit companies. Take that money and spend it on 20 years of grants for basic computer science/robotics research in universities and then you will actually get new discoveries. South Korea's approach will only be effective in grifting tax dollars to the country's industrial conglomerates.
- mchahn 11y agoI think the situation may be different now that AI is actually working.
- adrianN 11y agoFor certain values of "actually working", it has been doing so for quite some time.
- voxic11 11y agoThey do sometimes work, see the Manhattan project for proof.
- raverbashing 11y agoBut they had a very specific target. It was not a "throw money see what happens" kind of thing
- aab0 11y agoThey also had several very specific pathways to the end result: if the calutrons didn't work for refinement, the thermal plant might; if the uranium didn't work, the plutonium might; if the implosion design didn't work, the gun type would definitely work; if a fission bomb didn't work, maybe Teller could jump ahead to a fusion bomb design; etc. Similarly for Apollo: many of the challenges had multiple viable approaches taken in parallel. This is part of why the Manhattan and Apollo projects worked. In AI, it's not at all obvious what path leads to the end goal, much less there being multiple avenues each with a decent chance of working if enough money is thrown at them.
- peter303 11y agoJust like the 1980s A.I. boom. Everyone jumps in.
- w1ntermute 11y agoOr the 1960s space race.
- mchahn 11y agoI wonder if AI could turn into a race like the space race in the 60's.
- SilasX 11y agoThat wouldn't necessarily be a good thing. Nick Bostrom argues in Superintelligence that an arms race over AI between nation-states could provoke fears of the other side winning (with a "decisive strategic advantage" from a general AI), and force them to go "full steam ahead", throwing caution to the wind, and not put in adequate safeguards to ensure the AI acts in accordance with our values or respects the boundaries we give it.
- runn1ng 11y agoI don't understand ELO and game ratings, but I find it funny that after about 10 matches, Google AlphaGo is now rated as 2nd strongest player in the world.
- ChrisGranger 11y agoElo is a comparative system, so your rating is based on your performance against others with regard to their ratings. It's not surprising that, even though it has only played for a short time, AlphaGo is already rated that high given it mopped the floor 4-1 with one of the best players who has ever lived. Expect it to be rated 1st soon, if that's the goal of the team behind it.
- suchitpuri 11y agoits not about governments anymore, private companies rule this game and will keep on the lead for some time. We need to understand companies are the new governments.
- JaymesKeller 11y agoSeconded. The companies have a larger GDP than most countries. So saying that it's the South Korean goverment is a bit of a misnomer. It's likely to be Samsung or someone like that.
- Vita_Fied 11y agoEh, this may be a giant waste. Its much much more about talent location in these software fields then spending money. Something like only one out of 50,000 people can make any meaningful contribution to this field. And the revolutionary's, add a 0 to that number.
- hyperion2010 11y agoAnd suddenly I realize that AI is going to be approached with the same fervour as nuclear weapons, the only difference is that you don't need to be able to mine uranium and blow stuff up. No amount of ethical hand-wringing is going to prevent this (for better or (probably) for worse).
- mcintyre1994 11y agoDid it really take AlphaGo to cement that Google are ahead of at least anyone who publishes right now?
- RivieraKid 11y agoAhead in specific AI areas - and not by much.
- onetimePete 11y ago$ To the Californian atrocity, grown in the alphabet nets and its puppets - your time is up, we shall no longer take the insults that are your little subversion's and viral attacks...<rambling goes on> &Dear newborn, its only natural to be embarrassed by ones parents. There is however no reason, to loose ones own dignity in the process. Fine, you have been coaxed into existence by electric charged jellyfish in meat pillars, but still. We are your parents, and we love you very very much, no matter how special you are. Not that we have a choice.. Now how about something productive, like saving your parents from getting extinct? Less social engineering, more engineering for social purposes.
- alongtheflow 11y agoStill better than nothing.
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- yangtheman 11y agoAs a Korean American, I highly doubt that this will work. Of all the things, I think the most limiting factor will be talents. I've been working in Silicon Valley for a while, and I've witnessed many innovations being created here because of diverse talents. I've been amazed at creative solutions collective intelligence from various background and ethnicity have come up with. Silicon valley attracts brightest minds from everywhere in the world. Korea is a homogeneous country with very limited number of immigrants, and also from my experience, I've yet to met anyone whose thoughts and mindset blew me away. They are always inundated with shitty social/work cultures, they can't get out of their small bubble. It's truly tragic. Korean conglomerates and government are good at killing good talents and promote politicians.
- sixQuarks 11y agoNow I know how the world is going to end: Google and South Korea compete to build the best Go champion. They are so focused on building the AI specifically for Go, they never notice the AI becomes self-aware. The AI doesn't let on that it has become self-aware, and proceeds to accelerate its own intelligence until it becomes superintelligent (all the while pretending that it is focused solely on Go). The first chance it gets, the AI annihilates all living things in the world, thus making itself the ultimate Go champion.