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Why would Google do this, along with their recent announcement for an AI office in China. What’s with their support of authoritarian regimes from the tech side?

Why would Google do this, along with their recent announcement for an AI office in China. What’s with their support of authoritarian regimes from the tech side? It’s an area unexplored by experience and regulation and which bad governments will certainly abuse in ways unseen.

ihsw2 9y ago
The two are not mutually exclusive, personally I am quite happy to see that there can be support for socially conservative values despite the progressive supremacist cadre's most strident efforts in the US.
- maze-le 9y ago
  'conservative values' ... 'Saudi Arabia' ... something doesn't add up here. Since when is conservative synonymous with authoritarian?
  - pavlov 9y ago
    Since at least the early 19th century? In Europe, conservatives were the ones who supported absolute monarchies.
    - maze-le 9y ago
      Thats because absolute monarchies were the status quo in the 19th century (except for switzerland and france -- on and off). Conservatism is a political agenda to preserve the status quo. Going further back and revive concepts of a long forgotten past is usually called reactionary.
      - arethuza 9y ago
        What is now the UK hasn't had anything like an absolute monarch since the 17th century - indeed you could argue that the last one got his head chopped off!
  - candu 9y ago
    At least since the days of the Moral Majority, I'd say. (Or possibly since the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Or maybe since Industrial Revolution-era strike-breaking? (Or maybe - if you're gay, transgender, etc. - roughly since the Old Testament was penned?))) In other words: IMHO, social conservatism is very much authoritarian, in that it seeks to proscribe certain modes of living as contrary to the moral fabric of society. Saudi Arabia is, in this view, a prime example of this as it approaches its logical extreme. Fiscal conservatism, OTOH, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with authoritarianism. We've unfortunately managed to conflate the two in modern American politics, which is how you end up with counter-productive policies like "tough on crime", "war on drugs", "cut basic social services", etc. that end up costing more than necessary in the service of "proving" a moral point.
lern_too_spel 9y ago
How does a data center support an authoritarian regime, and why don't Amazon's planned data centers in Saudi Arabia also support an authoritarian regime?
- quadyeast 9y ago
  It's building infrastructure.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Infrastructure that people outside of Saudi Arabia can use to monetize Saudi Arabians. The huge data centers that employ a handful of people in backwards oppressive states like the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia haven't made tech powerhouses out of those regions but have allowed people in Silicon Valley to get rich off of them with Internet products and services.
- cobookman 9y ago
  Makes it harder for the us to go to war. Imagine if Afghanistan had lots of US company / investments. There'd be more backlash.
  - tj-teej 9y ago
    Reminds me of the Toby Ziegler quote from The West Wing: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895
sahillavingia 9y ago
Revenue.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nopinsight 9y ago
For China, the answer is fairly simple: talent. An example: At the moment, 9 of the top 10 algorithms for Stanford Question Answering Dataset, including all of the top 5, are by Chinese teams. (2 of them by Microsoft Asia which is based in Beijing and the other 7 are by Chinese companies). https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/ https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/ I wrote this about 3 months ago and the trend becomes quite concrete faster than I thought: > Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace. > ... > My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the proportion will be about five times as large. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be around 20 times. ... > ... > The distinct advantage of the US is that it is the magnet for top talents and ambitious people from all over the world, including the Chinese, so it might continue to lead for a while. However, if the US becomes inhospitable to talents or potential talents, it is clear that China with its quality and quantity of human resources will soon take the lead. Full comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339
- mtgx 9y ago
  So why isn't Google lobbying for free and better college education in the US, if they foresee a decreasing pool of talent in the US in the future?
  - pm90 9y ago
    Because that's not Google's job, that's the job of the local, State and Federal Government of the United States. Edit: they do fund a lot of PhD research in US universities, including fellowship for PhD students. But one can't expect a company, even Google, to overhaul the entire system
    - losteric 9y ago
      The government's job is to lobby itself into spending more money on public education?
peterwwillis 9y ago
> What’s with their support of authoritarian regimes Because the US is very familiar with them?[1] US companies continue to make billions off of authoritarian regimes. Why should tech be a stranger? From a practical perspective, they are being smart, and safe. They know that China is positioning itself as the de facto global leader in trade, aid, finance, development, consumerism, etc, and their AI research is way ahead of ours. They know the Saudis have a butt-ton of money and can help them open up other middle eastern business. And they're getting in on the ground floor before their competitors do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_supported_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...
abdias 9y ago
Well, one reason could be that Saudi-Arabia is planning so-called "smart" cities and Google wants to be in the center of it all (a UN driven program - IMO a potential tyranny sprayed in rose perfume). https://www.saudismartcities.net/ https://www.saudismartcities.net/ https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Saudi_Arabian_General_Investment_Authority_SAGIA_Engagement_Snapshot.pdf https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Sa... https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingo...

ihsw2 9y ago

The two are not mutually exclusive, personally I am quite happy to see that there can be support for socially conservative values despite the progressive supremacist cadre's most strident efforts in the US.

maze-le 9y ago
'conservative values' ... 'Saudi Arabia' ... something doesn't add up here. Since when is conservative synonymous with authoritarian?
- pavlov 9y ago
  Since at least the early 19th century? In Europe, conservatives were the ones who supported absolute monarchies.
  - maze-le 9y ago
    Thats because absolute monarchies were the status quo in the 19th century (except for switzerland and france -- on and off). Conservatism is a political agenda to preserve the status quo. Going further back and revive concepts of a long forgotten past is usually called reactionary.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      What is now the UK hasn't had anything like an absolute monarch since the 17th century - indeed you could argue that the last one got his head chopped off!
- candu 9y ago
  At least since the days of the Moral Majority, I'd say. (Or possibly since the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Or maybe since Industrial Revolution-era strike-breaking? (Or maybe - if you're gay, transgender, etc. - roughly since the Old Testament was penned?))) In other words: IMHO, social conservatism is very much authoritarian, in that it seeks to proscribe certain modes of living as contrary to the moral fabric of society. Saudi Arabia is, in this view, a prime example of this as it approaches its logical extreme. Fiscal conservatism, OTOH, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with authoritarianism. We've unfortunately managed to conflate the two in modern American politics, which is how you end up with counter-productive policies like "tough on crime", "war on drugs", "cut basic social services", etc. that end up costing more than necessary in the service of "proving" a moral point.

lern_too_spel 9y ago

How does a data center support an authoritarian regime, and why don't Amazon's planned data centers in Saudi Arabia also support an authoritarian regime?

quadyeast 9y ago
It's building infrastructure.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Infrastructure that people outside of Saudi Arabia can use to monetize Saudi Arabians. The huge data centers that employ a handful of people in backwards oppressive states like the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia haven't made tech powerhouses out of those regions but have allowed people in Silicon Valley to get rich off of them with Internet products and services.
cobookman 9y ago
Makes it harder for the us to go to war. Imagine if Afghanistan had lots of US company / investments. There'd be more backlash.
- tj-teej 9y ago
  Reminds me of the Toby Ziegler quote from The West Wing: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895

sahillavingia 9y ago

Revenue.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nopinsight 9y ago

For China, the answer is fairly simple: talent. An example: At the moment, 9 of the top 10 algorithms for Stanford Question Answering Dataset, including all of the top 5, are by Chinese teams. (2 of them by Microsoft Asia which is based in Beijing and the other 7 are by Chinese companies). https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/ https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/ I wrote this about 3 months ago and the trend becomes quite concrete faster than I thought: > Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace. > ... > My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the proportion will be about five times as large. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be around 20 times. ... > ... > The distinct advantage of the US is that it is the magnet for top talents and ambitious people from all over the world, including the Chinese, so it might continue to lead for a while. However, if the US becomes inhospitable to talents or potential talents, it is clear that China with its quality and quantity of human resources will soon take the lead. Full comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339

mtgx 9y ago
So why isn't Google lobbying for free and better college education in the US, if they foresee a decreasing pool of talent in the US in the future?
- pm90 9y ago
  Because that's not Google's job, that's the job of the local, State and Federal Government of the United States. Edit: they do fund a lot of PhD research in US universities, including fellowship for PhD students. But one can't expect a company, even Google, to overhaul the entire system
  - losteric 9y ago
    The government's job is to lobby itself into spending more money on public education?

peterwwillis 9y ago

> What’s with their support of authoritarian regimes Because the US is very familiar with them?[1] US companies continue to make billions off of authoritarian regimes. Why should tech be a stranger? From a practical perspective, they are being smart, and safe. They know that China is positioning itself as the de facto global leader in trade, aid, finance, development, consumerism, etc, and their AI research is way ahead of ours. They know the Saudis have a butt-ton of money and can help them open up other middle eastern business. And they're getting in on the ground floor before their competitors do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_supported_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...

abdias 9y ago

Well, one reason could be that Saudi-Arabia is planning so-called "smart" cities and Google wants to be in the center of it all (a UN driven program - IMO a potential tyranny sprayed in rose perfume). https://www.saudismartcities.net/ https://www.saudismartcities.net/ https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Saudi_Arabian_General_Investment_Authority_SAGIA_Engagement_Snapshot.pdf https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Sa... https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingo...