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Offtopic: More and more I'm noticing the ever-increasing amount of chinese names in machine learning papers. Can anyone explain that? Are these researchers main

Offtopic: More and more I'm noticing the ever-increasing amount of chinese names in machine learning papers. Can anyone explain that? Are these researchers mainly choosing this field out of their own interest, or is China somehow pushing/sponsoring a lot researchers to pursue this field? I realise that China is pursusing AI dominance, is that just what we're seeing? Note this is purely curiosity, I have no problems with the Chinese people (CCP is a different story).

bawolff 5y ago
I don't think there is any big mystery. AI is a hot area, and a reasonable percentage of smart people have Chinese ancestry (regardless of where they reside now).
captainmuon 5y ago
Well first of all, China is a huge country with four times the population of the US or three times of the EU. The greatest "trick" that they have is that they count as one country. It would look different if they were a continent made up of a dozen (still pretty big) countries. I used to work at a Chinese research institute (in a non ML-field) and the team leader took some time and frequently encouraged his students to learn ML, to try to apply it to their work or just for the sake of it. He was very open about the fact that it would benefit the nation, but that also ML researchers were in good demand and it would be great for the student's individual careers. So yeah it is mainly just a very popular topic over there, too. But in addition, I feel that China (the gov/party/research community, whoever) thinks more strategically than for example the EU.
Jyaif 5y ago
You should see it more as China finally starting to pull its weight in scientific research. Their population is 4x that of the US, yet their scientific impact is AFAICT less than that of the US.
cracrecry 5y ago
>Can anyone explain that? It is very simple to understand: There are more than 1.200 million Chinese people just in China, and a couple hundred million more outside. AI is also growing and creating new opportunities, most of them work in Universities on the West. The same happens in other fields like piano playing, there are so many exceptional players because there are so many Chinese.
jio_as 5y ago
xbmcuser 5y ago
China population is twice the that of Europe + US. With the % of people going into science fields in China being a lot higher they are probably producing 4-5 person for a 1 person in EUR and US . This is not just in ML or AI but many other fields

bawolff 5y ago

I don't think there is any big mystery. AI is a hot area, and a reasonable percentage of smart people have Chinese ancestry (regardless of where they reside now).

captainmuon 5y ago

Well first of all, China is a huge country with four times the population of the US or three times of the EU. The greatest "trick" that they have is that they count as one country. It would look different if they were a continent made up of a dozen (still pretty big) countries. I used to work at a Chinese research institute (in a non ML-field) and the team leader took some time and frequently encouraged his students to learn ML, to try to apply it to their work or just for the sake of it. He was very open about the fact that it would benefit the nation, but that also ML researchers were in good demand and it would be great for the student's individual careers. So yeah it is mainly just a very popular topic over there, too. But in addition, I feel that China (the gov/party/research community, whoever) thinks more strategically than for example the EU.

Jyaif 5y ago

You should see it more as China finally starting to pull its weight in scientific research. Their population is 4x that of the US, yet their scientific impact is AFAICT less than that of the US.

cracrecry 5y ago

>Can anyone explain that? It is very simple to understand: There are more than 1.200 million Chinese people just in China, and a couple hundred million more outside. AI is also growing and creating new opportunities, most of them work in Universities on the West. The same happens in other fields like piano playing, there are so many exceptional players because there are so many Chinese.

jio_as 5y ago

xbmcuser 5y ago

China population is twice the that of Europe + US. With the % of people going into science fields in China being a lot higher they are probably producing 4-5 person for a 1 person in EUR and US . This is not just in ML or AI but many other fields