4 ms·

This article seems like a lot of speculating and throwing wild theories at the wall. It a big eye-catching headline with very little substance. I understand ho

This article seems like a lot of speculating and throwing wild theories at the wall. It a big eye-catching headline with very little substance. I understand how Google's unwillingness to participate in DoD programs can impact the US military, but I don't understand the Google/China connection. Does anyone know what the "artificial intelligence venture" is referring to? Is it Dragonfly? I don't see how an exploratory program to bring Search, being developed outside of China, applies at all to this situation.

paleotrope 8y ago
My guess is the DoD/USGov is going to be opposed to any transfer of any ai/ml technology to China. I tend to think that most ai/ml news is hyped and highly speculative, but if the leadership in the US is not sophisticated enough to understand the hype cycle, any ai technology that could be put in a military drone is going to be heavily regulated.
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  Understanding of the hype cycle or not, the trouble is that our government is looking less legitimate by the day because it does not recognize and respond to threats such as climate change and a shift away from democracy that's been funded by our own corporations. Yes, when you invest in China you are investing in communism. You might think you are getting a fast one because workers have no human rights, but try taking your money out and you will see what they think of property rights.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
    >Understanding of the hype cycle or not, the trouble is that our government is looking less legitimate by the day because it does not recognize and respond to threats such as climate change The government doesn’t recognize and respond to climate change because the voters don’t recognize and respond to climate change. I would guess on a market cap weighted basis, most corporations are in favor of climate change legislation, there is not overwhelming popular support for it.
    - c256 8y ago
      This is not really what the data shows. In the U.S., for example, the large majority of voters recognize global climate change as serious and impending problem. Where voters “don’t respond to climate change” is when they are asked if they’re willing to make general, probably painful changes in the name of potentially mitigating the effects of climate change. That shouldn’t be a surprise, though, since they exhibit the same pattern every time they’re asked about their desire to experience specific immediate pain toward the goal of reducing long-term deleterious effects.
- chillacy 8y ago
  AI is such a new field and China invests so heavily that they may end up leapfrogging US researchers anyways if the US doesn't up its funding: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265230/china-is-about-to-overtake-america-in-ai-research https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265230/china-is-about-t...
  - A2017U1 8y ago
    The greatest trick the military ever pulled was convincing the populace that the "others" were about to overtake them. It's been going on for decades. Highly suggest looking at the stark difference in the two biggest military budgets on Earth.
Leary 8y ago
Google also has an AI research center based in Beijing that hires Chinese employees. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/google-opening-an-office-focused-on-artificial-intelligence-in-china/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/google-opening-an-office-f...
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  If it’s anything like their old Wudaokou office, there is a huge firewall between the work done in that office and the others.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Yeah, when I was there the China office largely worked on products for the Chinese market, and they lacked access to many things that Googlers in the rest of the world took for granted (like full access to the monorepo). It was more that some executive would throw a project over the wall to Beijing, a team there would work on it, most of the time the results of that work would stay in China (and be directly applicable to google.cn), but occasionally the exec would bring the tech back for U.S. engineers to work on. I had regular contact with engineers in Zurich, Ireland, South Korea, Brazil, Israel, and Australia while I was there, but the only direct contact I had with the Beijing office was through a Mountain View expat (ethnically Croatian) who was leading a team there.
  - azurezyq 8y ago
    I worked in Wudaokou office before (after Google-xit). Basically access to user information (logs) would be limited from there. However you'll have no problem working on systems which not touching users directly (infrastructure / doc link analysis) etc. Access to most of the monorepo's fine. Project stability was a problem but that exists in all small remote offices which is far away from mountain view.
siruncledrew 8y ago
The DoD thinks that China's military will use the technologies developed by Google@China, so the DoD is bringing attention to China's own military-industrial relationship with private sector companies (ironic, in many regards). Since Google is from the US, the DoD is expressing a bit of "How could you do us like this, fam?" after Google's recent withdrawal from DoD projects. What's interesting is that mega-corps, like Google, could in theory position themselves like "stateless" capitalist corporations. This is not complete a reality in the present, but it's evident the growing influence huge corporations like Google have on the US government. It's a different type of working relationship than, say, Gazprom with Russia for example.
craftyguy 8y ago
> This article seems like a lot of speculating and throwing wild theories at the wall The article is on 'military.com', would you expect anything less than speculative clickbait warmongering?

paleotrope 8y ago

My guess is the DoD/USGov is going to be opposed to any transfer of any ai/ml technology to China. I tend to think that most ai/ml news is hyped and highly speculative, but if the leadership in the US is not sophisticated enough to understand the hype cycle, any ai technology that could be put in a military drone is going to be heavily regulated.

PaulHoule 8y ago
Understanding of the hype cycle or not, the trouble is that our government is looking less legitimate by the day because it does not recognize and respond to threats such as climate change and a shift away from democracy that's been funded by our own corporations. Yes, when you invest in China you are investing in communism. You might think you are getting a fast one because workers have no human rights, but try taking your money out and you will see what they think of property rights.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  >Understanding of the hype cycle or not, the trouble is that our government is looking less legitimate by the day because it does not recognize and respond to threats such as climate change The government doesn’t recognize and respond to climate change because the voters don’t recognize and respond to climate change. I would guess on a market cap weighted basis, most corporations are in favor of climate change legislation, there is not overwhelming popular support for it.
  - c256 8y ago
    This is not really what the data shows. In the U.S., for example, the large majority of voters recognize global climate change as serious and impending problem. Where voters “don’t respond to climate change” is when they are asked if they’re willing to make general, probably painful changes in the name of potentially mitigating the effects of climate change. That shouldn’t be a surprise, though, since they exhibit the same pattern every time they’re asked about their desire to experience specific immediate pain toward the goal of reducing long-term deleterious effects.
chillacy 8y ago
AI is such a new field and China invests so heavily that they may end up leapfrogging US researchers anyways if the US doesn't up its funding: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265230/china-is-about-to-overtake-america-in-ai-research https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265230/china-is-about-t...
- A2017U1 8y ago
  The greatest trick the military ever pulled was convincing the populace that the "others" were about to overtake them. It's been going on for decades. Highly suggest looking at the stark difference in the two biggest military budgets on Earth.

Leary 8y ago

Google also has an AI research center based in Beijing that hires Chinese employees. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/google-opening-an-office-focused-on-artificial-intelligence-in-china/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/google-opening-an-office-f...

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
If it’s anything like their old Wudaokou office, there is a huge firewall between the work done in that office and the others.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Yeah, when I was there the China office largely worked on products for the Chinese market, and they lacked access to many things that Googlers in the rest of the world took for granted (like full access to the monorepo). It was more that some executive would throw a project over the wall to Beijing, a team there would work on it, most of the time the results of that work would stay in China (and be directly applicable to google.cn), but occasionally the exec would bring the tech back for U.S. engineers to work on. I had regular contact with engineers in Zurich, Ireland, South Korea, Brazil, Israel, and Australia while I was there, but the only direct contact I had with the Beijing office was through a Mountain View expat (ethnically Croatian) who was leading a team there.
- azurezyq 8y ago
  I worked in Wudaokou office before (after Google-xit). Basically access to user information (logs) would be limited from there. However you'll have no problem working on systems which not touching users directly (infrastructure / doc link analysis) etc. Access to most of the monorepo's fine. Project stability was a problem but that exists in all small remote offices which is far away from mountain view.

siruncledrew 8y ago

The DoD thinks that China's military will use the technologies developed by Google@China, so the DoD is bringing attention to China's own military-industrial relationship with private sector companies (ironic, in many regards). Since Google is from the US, the DoD is expressing a bit of "How could you do us like this, fam?" after Google's recent withdrawal from DoD projects. What's interesting is that mega-corps, like Google, could in theory position themselves like "stateless" capitalist corporations. This is not complete a reality in the present, but it's evident the growing influence huge corporations like Google have on the US government. It's a different type of working relationship than, say, Gazprom with Russia for example.

craftyguy 8y ago

> This article seems like a lot of speculating and throwing wild theories at the wall The article is on 'military.com', would you expect anything less than speculative clickbait warmongering?