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It used to be the case that NSA hired the majority of all math graduates in the US, and were assumed to be years ahead in cryptography. Yet in the 90s, it becam
by vintermann 3mo ago
It used to be the case that NSA hired the majority of all math graduates in the US, and were assumed to be years ahead in cryptography. Yet in the 90s, it became clear that they no longer were that - among other things, the cipher of the notorious Clipper chip was broken, and we can rule out that it was made weak on purpose because the whole point of Clipper was that they had a backdoor.
So, despite hiring the cream of the crop of math graduates, who could read the papers of free academia, but whose own result the free world could not access - they fell behind.
I have a theory explaining why. I think it's because science is an interactive process. NSA cryptographers could read papers, but they couldn't talk openly with the authors of those papers, because of secrecy demands - even asking question might indicate what they were working on. You can easily imagine them spending months on something they could have avoided by going to the original authors and getting told "Oh, we tried that for a long time, it doesn't work".
Whether that theory is right or not, cryptography is a concrete example of a domain where public research with fewer resources beat private research with a lot more resources.
- idiotsecant 3mo agoEveryone in this thread is getting distracted by nationalism, but you hit the nail on the head. In this case for whatever reason the Chinese AI industry is collaborative and the American AI industry is not. This will result in the Chinese companies making progress faster. Full stop. This isn't a judgement on the merits of either system, only an observation of likely results.
- tiahura 3mo agoHasn't that been the mantra of open source for 40 years. Armies of companies, trillions of valuation, or even just Wayland, suggest that isn't always the case.
- eikenberry 3mo agoSo free software can only be considered a successful strategy if every single project succeeds?
- idiotsecant 3mo agoAnd yet, Linux runs approximately every ounce of computing substrate on earth
- overfeed 3mo agoThe Linux Foundation was bankrolled by the US government (via grants and code donations) to undermine the EU Operating System industry. Symbian was going to be amazing, until Microsoft - an American company with government links - nuked it /s
- idiotsecant 3mo agothis is the part where you make a point cogent to the point to which you responded.
- tiahura 3mo agoThe point that I was responding to was that open sores leads to faster development. It's 2026 and "Next Year will be the year of Linux on the Desktop" since about 2000. One would have to conclude that there is little correlation b/w openness and progress speed. Sometimes open is faster, sometimes it isn't.
- parineum 3mo ago> This will result in the Chinese companies making progress faster. Full stop. Is this happening? These open models have been a generation or two behind the closed models for quite a while now. They've been keeping pace but clearly behind.
- idiotsecant 3mo agoThey've been making enormous developments on a tiny fraction of the capital. Right now they've got no reason to devote half the electrical grid to brute forcing models when the Americans will waste their power doing that work and China can distill it for free.
- tiahura 3mo agoWhat happens when they can't just distill from closed models?
- NamlchakKhandro 3mo agoReminds me of Dot Net in the early 2000-2012... No one collaborated