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Xi Jinping urges China to use artificial intelligence in race for tech future
- techsocial 8y agoOriginal post title: AI in China: Xi Jinping and 25-member policymaking body Politburo have a “group study” session about AI . Xi said China must develop its own AI technology, saying it was important for economic development, social progress and global geopolitics. “AI is a vital driving force for a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, and accelerating AI development is a strategic issue to decide whether we can grasp opportunities,” Xi was quoted by Xinhua as saying. Xi said China must ensure that it “occupies the high ground of AI core technology” and could firmly keep the technology in its hands by leveraging “China’s massive data and huge market potential”. He said the country should use AI to upgrade its manufacturing, adding that it could be used in China’s pursuit of a leaner and greener way of economic development. Xi also encouraged government agencies to adopt AI. “We need to enhance the combination of AI and social governance and develop AI systems for government services and decision-making,” Xi said, adding that public security was one field in which it could be used “in depth”.
- saiya-jin 8y agoSmart decision from China perspective, they can't be reliant on something potentially so crucial with western technologies. But I can't help but think how it will be used for monitoring of lives of everybody. You do one misstep, government will know about it. Effectively no privacy. Compared to what it may be (and probably will), current state of China is a hippie paradise.
- yuchi 8y agoThese discussions reminds me how Nazis had their own physics…
- klausjensen 8y agoI had never heard about this befoere. Now I have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
- ElBarto 8y agoAbsolutely nothing to do with it...
- jerf 8y agoAre you sure? We're already getting stories over here in the West where people are struggling with the results AI gives them when applied to people because the results are basically Wrongthink, and are trying to figure out how to get the AIs to conform better to their ideology and preconceived notions of what the AIs should be outputting. It's not a terribly far trip from there to Deutsche Physik or Lysenkoism, except wrapped in a much denser fog of complex math and enough complicated details to construct any narrative you want. Using AI to ideologically crack down on a population will eventually reach even the AI researchers and destroy their ability to maintain and develop the AI. (I don't think it's an inevitable trip from struggling with AI outputs and preconceived ideological notions to Lysenkoism. But I think it is an extremely tempting path for the society as a whole. There are a lot of forces that push in that direction, as the nature of the AI and what they do and control moves from a scientific and mathematical matter to a political one.)
- ElBarto 8y agoThis has nothing to do with Deutsche Physik but it fits the narrative of some people to associate China with Nazi Germany or any other dystopian regime.
- jerf 8y agoThe connection between China and "dystopian regimes" seems pretty clear to me. The biggest difference is that the Nazis and the Soviets could only dream of the tools the Chinese already have and will have, though the Soviets definitely proved that even without tech you could get yourself a pretty solidly oppressive police state going. Only time can tell if the result will be a state that explodes even more quickly due to the suppressed stresses coming out all at once at some point, or a stable totalitarian state will emerge.
- gman83 8y agoKind of unrelated, but I remember reading this interview with President Obama and being really impressed with how much he seemed to know about AI: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-mit-joi-ito-interview/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-mit-joi-ito-in...
- singularity2001 8y ago"either they’re drugging us to keep us fat and happy or we’re in the Matrix" I miss this guy and his connectedness with our culture.
- jimmy1 8y agoI don't miss this guy and his connectedness to our shadow ops, drone killings, and abuse of constitutional power that basically left a loaded gun in the white house for president dumbass now at his disposal.
- dTal 8y agoWow. Not just about AI - he's consistently insightful in that conversation, and demonstrates a systems-level mindset that one might even describe as hacker-esque... "Part of what makes us human are the kinks. They’re the mutations, the outliers, the flaws that create art or the new invention, right? We have to assume that if a system is perfect, then it’s static. And part of what makes us who we are, and part of what makes us alive, is that we’re dynamic and we’re surprised." Hell of a quote.
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- skrebbel 8y agoFew things in the world scare me more than the idea of Xi Jinping with control over semiautonomous flying robocops. Other people worry about climate change. Some religious nutcases worry about paperclip maximizers and basilisks. I worry about Robocop.
- threatofrain 8y agoI assume that cheap flying drones are the weapons of the future, not just in military but police too. Small drones everywhere of all kinds. The drones would at least be semi-autonomous as having a human behind every single drone sounds expensive at scale.
- orbifold 8y agoLuckily drones still have significant limitations on achievable flight time. Some of which are dictated by the laws of physics. So for the foreseeable future there won’t be any bird sized drones chasing you down. Military drones on the other hand are much larger and expensive.
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- YetAnotherNick 8y agoAnd one crash will have high repercussion, even in China.
- andy_ppp 8y agoDepends if the other drones decide to stop you from speaking out.
- threatofrain 8y agoCar crashes have important consequences anywhere in the world as well; I think people will simply accept the low incidence of drone-related accident as part of their environmental ambience.
- klrr 8y agoI think China will create an AI bubble, currently studying in Beijing and all EE and CS students I know focus all their time at either stats, ML or data mining. While I think China might have a big shot at the AI race, I don't think it's useful to have to only focus on AI because it's hot right now, they may lack progress in other fundamental fields that may lead to more important breakthrough and technological change.
- gaius 8y agoAI bubble, currently studying in Beijing and all EE and CS students I know focus all their time at either stats, ML or data mining Yes everyone wants to mine the data, but noone wants to generate or gather new original data in the first place.
- klrr 8y agoI think China has plenty of data as well, of its own people at least. It's a surveillance state, and the big corps work closely with the government and so also the universities. My point is more that they have a chance of winning the ML race, but that doesn't matter if there will be more important technological breakthroughs in other areas that will have greater impact on AI than ML.
- MrP 8y agoComment of the year
- pimmen 8y agoChina does want to gather data, it has deployed tons of sensors and cameras to monitor its population's habits on the street. With the personal credit score implemented it can monitor its population even more thoroughly. How much data it gathers on its population thanks to the Great Firewall we can only speculate. Granted, population data is one thing since you can incentivize people to share it. Data gathering that requires investment of money into sensors and time for careful placement of them is a completely different thing entirely
- hanchinese 8y ago
- hanchinese 8y agoIf you look at recent news and HN discussions, you'd be seeing some interesting patterns - 1. Tesla building its factory in Shanghai, China - "forced tech transfer, IP theft" 2. Xi pushes for AI, "it will be used for monitoring of lives of everybody" 3. 4 out of the top 10 biggest internet companies are in China - "censorship, repression, GFW" I am wondering whether keeping 1.4 billion Chinese living with stone age tech is the real agenda of these people.
- woodpanel 8y agoI don't understand your reasoning here. Do you want to say that in China there isn't forced tech transfer, intense surveillance, censorship and repression? Or do you want to say, because people on HN pointing out those things, they are racist?
- sctb 8y agoPlease don't create single-purpose accounts for engaging in political battle. We ban them and eventually the main account if it continues.
- Lio 8y agoWhen Chinese leaders start talking about not being reliant on Western technology, rightly or wrongly, I immediately start thinking about their previous industrial espionage campaigns to remove the reliance on Western aerospace technology. [1] I'd be a lot more relaxed about these sorts of announcements if the Chinese government took steps to curb Red Army cyber-attacks. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/31/us-charges-10-chinese-spies-hacking-aerospace-firms-steal-engineering/amp/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/31/us-charges-10-ch...
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- AriaMinaei 8y agoFor a deeper background on this, I recommend "AI superpowers - China, Silicon Valley, and The New World Order" by Kai-Fu Lee.
- throwaway487548 8y agoIt is already a bubble. The number of no-nonsense applications (classification problems) is actually quite limited and depends on the quality of available datasets. Andrew Ng used to stress this in his courses. To apply machine learning techniques successfully the phenomena in question should be, ideally, discrete, fully-observable, deterministic (very precise terminology from classic AI). Mere tweaking of parameters on nonsensical or too abstract data will lead nowhere. Outside of academia ML already is an astrology with numbers instead of planets and stars.
- notbeevil 8y agoI don't think the VC of hacknews will care. They only care if they can make money from it.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoThere is lots of money to be made riding the CCP’s hyped priorities, just not by the VCs outside of China. YC has a China branch.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI wonder why we don't see a backlash against companies investing in China like we see against companies taking Saudi money?
- ardy42 8y ago> I wonder why we don't see a backlash against companies investing in China like we see against companies taking Saudi money? It's a little, like the reaction against Google's project Dragonfly. However, it'd be much harder to sustain: it seems like nearly every Western company is investing in China or chasing customers there, so it's hard to single a few out for protest. You'd have to protest against all of them. The Saudis aren't nearly so ubiquitous, so they're easier to reject.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoChina HAS the money to invest itself much like the Saudi’s do. Chinese VC money chasing Chinese investment opportunities is obviously not going to create a backlash. I suspect even YC China is setup to support Chinese VCs rather than to inject American VC into China, but I have no documentation to back up that hunch.