[HN Gopher] NATO is looking to connect with startups
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NATO is looking to connect with startups
Author : rjmunro
Score : 98 points
Date : 2021-06-25 10:51 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sifted.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (sifted.eu)
| dfilppi wrote:
| The inevitable rise of Skynet
| weswpg wrote:
| and then the BSG-style cycle of <!SPOILER ALERT!> humanity's
| renewed rise followed by another inevitable fall at the hands
| of artificial intelligence
| pphysch wrote:
| Not until 2023 at the earliest. Seems like a deathrattle for the
| increasingly irrelevant military cult. Systemic R&D deficits like
| this take decades to fully address.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| How long do you think Taiwan remains an independent country if
| USA Navy leaves the South China Sea?
| FredPret wrote:
| Also, Europe would speak Russian if the US left
| theflyinghorse wrote:
| I highly doubt this. Historically speaking the invasion
| dynamic is going the other way - FROM Europe INTO Russia.
| Russians are scared of the European invasion, not the other
| way around.
| FredPret wrote:
| Yes and how did those invasions go? Russia is a fortress
| due to its size and weather.
|
| But when Russia invaded Europe towards the end of WW2,
| they grabbed all of Poland, half of Germany, and more.
| They could have gone all the way until the English
| channel if they wanted, if the US wasn't there.
| theflyinghorse wrote:
| > Russia is a fortress due to its size and weather.
|
| Most of Russia is considered to be indefensible[0]. Its
| hardly a fortress by any measure.
|
| 0 - https://johnbrownnotesandessays.blogspot.com/2015/11/
| russia-...
| pphysch wrote:
| Russia did not literally invade Europe. This is
| ridiculous revisionism. The Red Army singlehandedly
| defeated Hitler's eastward invading campaign and pushed
| it all the way to Berlin.
| FredPret wrote:
| Soooo... the Russian army beat a European one and marched
| several hundred km's into Europe, but it's not an
| invasion?
|
| Yes, the European nation attacked first, and the Russian
| response was 100% justified.
|
| The point is that Russia struck back against one of the
| strongest armies in history, broke its back, and then
| counter-invaded. They only stopped when they ran into the
| Allies.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Without an expansionist- one could say evangelical-
| ideology like communism in power in Russia, why the heck
| would Russians care to push west? As any great power they
| want influence, yes, but it's odd to imagine that 20th
| century dynamics at their most tumultuous and bloody
| overshadow all of the previous centuries' default
| policies.
| pphysch wrote:
| The US doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent country.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| do you know why
| pphysch wrote:
| Because there are more factors beyond the long-standing
| ideological project to spread the doctrine of NATO
| (hiding behind terms like "democracy" and "human rights")
| around the world.
|
| For instance, the US has an enormous mutual economic
| interest with PRC, and recognizing ROC's claim to
| virtually all of mainland China (the PRC) would be
| enormously complicate that crucial material relationship.
| ROC and PRC are mutually exclusive concepts because they
| claim the same territory, and PRC is the far more
| valuable economic partner.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _increasingly irrelevant military cult_
|
| This was a relevant line about ten years ago. I stopped hearing
| it in D.C. after Russia invaded Crimea and Xi tore up Hong
| Kong.
| pphysch wrote:
| * Russia did not invade Crimea, it joined Russia via popular
| referendum. Virtually no one died and there is no internal
| movement to rejoin Ukraine (who clearly cares about Crimean
| "citizens" because it cut off their water supply). That is
| not an "invasion". These are all easily verifiable facts.
|
| * Hong Kong is part of China since it was decolonized. This
| is indisputable.
|
| I'm curious, have you actually studied the historical context
| of Crimea and Hong Kong? Beyond just taking headlines from
| NATO-aligned tabloids as absolute fact?
| jeffdn wrote:
| A popular referendum that was held _after_ the Russian
| military, with their national insignia removed, occupied
| Crimea en masse, just to be clear. If Mexico invaded
| Southern California, and then held a referendum with
| suspiciously high levels of voter turnout and a nearly 90%
| yes vote, don't you think people would find that
| suspicious? Can't you imagine why Ukraine and its allies
| think this was an illegal conquest?
| pphysch wrote:
| To make your analogy historically correct, it would have
| to be preceded by the United States having loaned San
| Diego to Mexico for decades of military use and the vast
| majority of San Diegans being ethnically "Mexican". Then
| notorious anti-Mexican racist Donald Trump is installed
| as the governor of California by NATO via coup d'etat.
|
| https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2011/S00116/how-the-
| wester...
| jeffdn wrote:
| Well, Ukraine loaned the use of port facilities -- they
| did not loan the entire land area and its citizenry.
|
| I think you'll find a difference of opinion on whether or
| not 2014 was a coup d'etat.
| pphysch wrote:
| Of course there is a difference of opinion. This is
| natural for any political issue.
|
| The facts, however, are very clear cut in this particular
| situation. And you don't have to blindly believe
| conspiracy theories or NATO/Kremlin propaganda to get
| those facts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea#Ethn
| ici...
|
| Try to move beyond the puerile "Russia/China bad, NATO
| good" worldview and view geopolitical issues from both
| sides.
| jeffdn wrote:
| I don't believe I've ever advocated for that viewpoint.
| I've only been speaking about Crimea, and in that case,
| Russia is very clearly the aggressor. Yes, there are
| historical complexities, there is regional context. It is
| not cut and dry, black and white. At the end of the day,
| however, regardless of the ethnic makeup of Crimea, it
| was sovereign Ukrainian territory, seized in violation of
| international law and norms.
|
| I don't live in Eastern Europe, or anywhere near it. I
| have nuanced opinions about international affairs, and
| I'll readily acknowledge that the United States and its
| NATO allies have done more than their share of bad in
| this world, including sponsoring multiple coup d'etats.
|
| I just think that in this case, on balance, Ukraine is
| the aggrieved party.
| pphysch wrote:
| Claiming that Russia is the unilateral aggressor in 2014
| is a crystal clear exposition of the naive "Russia bad"
| worldview that selectively omits crucial details.
|
| If Ukraine had any semblance of "sovereignty" post-USSR,
| it was totally crushed by NATO's 2014 coup. Recognizing
| the unpredictable hybrid aggression of NATO, Russia
| decisively reinforced its long-standing strategic
| position on Crimea and the Black Sea. It was
| fundamentally a defensive, pragmatic reaction forced by
| NATO's aggression.
|
| You can see similar narratives regarding the recent
| military escalation in the region. Ukraine unilaterally
| declared an intent to militarily invade Crimea, and
| Russia mobilized forces on the border as a reaction. Yet
| the Western media totally ignored the virtual declaration
| of war by Ukraine and painted Russia once again as the
| sole aggressor. Fortunately, Russia was able to
| deescalate the situation.
|
| Yes, Ukraine as a sovereign nation is the aggrieved
| party. But the aggressor is NATO!
| VictorPath wrote:
| When Russia invaded Crimea, there were still British red
| coats stationed in New York City. The Russian military has
| been there ever since.
|
| Speaking of the British empire, only an upper middle class
| westerner can nod their head when they see the British, who
| oversaw a massacre of Chinese in Hong Kong in 1967,
| pontificating over China's obligations to the British empire
| vis a vis Hong Kong. They even have former commander in chief
| of British Forces Overseas Hong Kong Chris Patten on Sky News
| lecturing the Chinese. The reason the UK took hold of Hong
| Kong was they went to war with the Chinese in order to push
| heroin and opium on a Chinese population they were trying to
| turn into drug addicts.
| eldavido wrote:
| Interesting to see the US somewhat following China's lead here.
| Industry/government/defense cooperation has a rich (and somewhat
| ugly) history in the US, but seems to have fallen out of favor in
| recent decades, whereas China has leaned in even harder toward
| five-year plans that attempt to get every part of society --
| academia, government, business, media, etc. marching in the same
| direction.
|
| I've really started to wonder about how, and how much, government
| should try to influence a lot of this. In the 60s Kennedy said
| we're going to put a man on the moon (US) and we did it. There's
| clearly some role for direction-setting at the national level.
|
| But it's not without costs: corruption, cronyism, wasted money.
| China's been trying to bootstrap a domestic semiconductor
| industry for decades and the most they have to show for it is
| SMIC, which is nowhere near TSMC or even Intel's level of
| capability. Ditto for internal-combustion cars--they (rightfully)
| trumpet EVs as a pretty large success story but leave out the
| part about wasting billions trying to make a domestic Detroit.
| And then there's the fact that government has a hard time writing
| sub-$1bln checks so there's the potential for a huge amount of
| waste if things don't pan out.
| dirtyid wrote:
| >US somewhat following China's lead here
|
| US is _returning_ to industrial policies which PRC civil
| military fusion was originally modelled off. IMO establishing
| complex indigenous industries require the appetite for massive
| risk / waste which is always preferable to the alternative of
| not building the capabilities in first place. PRC semi efforts
| has been pretty lackluster until last few years, i.e.
| integrated circuits only got promoted to first-level discipline
| with streamlined funding last year. There are worst things to
| waste money on in this security climate.
| petre wrote:
| Just don't minimize their achievements because the next thing
| you know they'll be buying off US and European companies. BYD
| went from a company everybody in the auto industry laughed at
| to a partner in Daimler and Toyota joint ventures and a company
| Warren Buffet's org has invested in more money than they have
| in GM.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| If they haven't already they need to reach out to Steve Blank and
| his Stanford _Hacking For Defense_ course.
|
| https://steveblank.com/category/hacking-for-defense/
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| So general red scare fear mongering being used to spend more
| public money on private enterprise, making future tech companies
| indebted to NATO. It even includes a loyalty test to get the
| initial funding.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >making future tech companies indebted to NATO
|
| What's bad about this?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| "Hey, put this backdoor in your product and don't tell
| anyone." Worse, forcing them to turn some product into a
| weapon.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Open source is the answer there.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Open source doesn't produce military advantage.
| viro wrote:
| But it does for the intelligence community.
| fit2rule wrote:
| NATO forces kill the most innocent people around the world
| right now.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| This is a pitiful sum. We're talking over 15 _years_ for the
| strongest alliance in the world. Just $1B? What is this a school
| for ants?
|
| We're talking 1/12th of an aircraft carrier. For all of Nato?
|
| How much was put into the Manhattan project by just three (!!!)
| countries, one of them Canada. What, like 30x this in inflation
| adjusted dollars? That doesn't even count the rest of the
| spending on nuclear weapons over the years.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Now you know why nato has loads of aircraft carriers but can't
| quite seem to keep Russia off of their intranet.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Arguably this is simply the wrong strategy for investment. Look
| at the US "Endless Frontiers Act" for an analog, 95% of funding
| for cronies and pork. Fear and tech-hype driven. This is not
| the "deterministic optimism" that achieves goals.
| er4hn wrote:
| All meats are represented, not just pork!
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-
| bill/126... See Section 2518 for the elimination of Shark Fin
| soup.
|
| I agree with eliminating shark fin soup, it is a cruel and
| destructive harvesting practice. But it absolutely should not
| have been a part of a bill on funding tech innovation. Argh.
| richardw wrote:
| Says modelled on this, which attracts another $15 for each $
| invested.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
|
| Look, last year it didn't exist. They haven't capped all
| investment in the industry. If it does well it could attract a
| lot more.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Yeah I know all about In-Q-Tel and DARPA. I have a friend who
| was funded by In-Q-Tel a decade ago or so.
|
| The thing that I'm trying to express, the thing that policy
| makers can't quite get their heads around, is that war AI is
| different. It's not a little startup-y thing you can cobble
| together until it sorta, kinda works for a specific use-case.
| We already have that. Missiles, aircraft, nuclear weapons
| simulations all have specialized AI. But that isn't the
| future. The future is something like Alpha Zero being applied
| to a whole domain or a whole battlefield. Something that
| coordinates and controls all the ships, planes, missiles,
| drones, and sensors in an arena for as total domination as
| can be achieved. We've had AI that augments human ability for
| decades. And it is effective, no question.
|
| But that isn't what is going to define the next generation of
| warfare.
| kej wrote:
| This isn't the total sum being spent by all of those countries,
| just the money they're spending on it together via NATO.
| There's still DARPA and similar agencies in other member
| countries who would be funding similar research.
| danbruc wrote:
| What if we reduced the amount of money we spent on military
| purposes instead of increasing it?
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| If we did so, what if China picked up the slack? I'm not sure
| that would be a net win for humanity.
| danbruc wrote:
| China will become the most powerful nation eventually if
| they do not accidentally prevent themselves from doing so.
| An attempt to stay ahead of China is likely a losing battle
| so get over this rivalry and focus on cooperation.
| sremani wrote:
| China ascend to Power is hardly fiat accompli, and on top
| of it their food insecurity and disputes with 17
| neighbors is only going to compel them to focus inward.
|
| Yes, all those Africa and BRI adventures are already
| turning bitter for host nations.
|
| US and USSR won the WW2 - you get power by winning wars
| and winning decisively. If China wrests Taiwan, we can
| then seriously talk about their contention until then its
| just talk.
| pphysch wrote:
| China went from a colonial backwater to the #1 real
| economy in the world, without endless foreign wars.
| Recent history irrefutably disproves your "might is
| right" framework.
| petre wrote:
| It had a bit of help with US being its #1 market and
| aiding technology transfer by moving all production
| offshore.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| China was only a colonial backwater during the time
| centered around the "century of humiliation." It was an
| unchallenged sprawling empire for millennia. This is just
| reversion to the mean.
| pphysch wrote:
| It is fundamentally an issue of separatism, and
| associated violent extremism/terrorism. The idea that it
| is some kind of "race war" is a pure fantasy of race
| realist Westerners.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| China's idea of cooperation is the Chinese-Pakistani
| relationship in which the PM of Pakistan won't even speak
| up about human rights of Uighurs. As per Document No. 9,
| the existence of free liberal societies is an existential
| threat to the CCP and they will act to export their
| totalitarianism to extinguish them. The only way you give
| up rivalry with a revisionist expansionist ethnostate is
| by surrendering. No thanks.
| danbruc wrote:
| _As per Document No. 9, the existence of free liberal
| societies is an existential threat to the CCP and they
| will act to export their totalitarianism to extinguish
| them._
|
| I was not aware of this document and just read the
| Wikipedia article and skimmed a translation. Yes, it
| describes the promotion of a number of western values as
| threats but I can not find where it says anything about
| extinguishing them, only how to limit their influence in
| the country itself, for example by blocking certain
| content in China.
| pphysch wrote:
| Imran Khan won't "speak up" about Xinjiang's separatism
| issues just like he won't "speak up" about the "Great
| Replacement" or other ideological nonsense that has
| literally nothing to do with the sovereign nation of
| Pakistan.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Except he speaks up about Islamophobia in the west all
| the time. His inability to speak to the genocide right
| across his border is not ideological nonsense, and
| calling it merely an issue of separatism is white
| washing.
| pphysch wrote:
| International Islamophobia is quite relevant to a large
| Islamic nation.
|
| Foreign separatism crises are not.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is just not true. China has a range of problems
| ahead of it that freer (and less populous) nations do
| not.
| danbruc wrote:
| What would China stop from becoming freer if this becomes
| the limiting factor? Assuming country X has figured out
| the best way to run a country for whatever you mean with
| best, at least in principle nothing stops China from
| doing the same thing. And it is still simply larger.
| Unsurmountable scaling issues? Does not sound likely to
| me. Large cultural change required? Maybe hard to do over
| years or a few decades but again I see not why you would
| not eventually go through a beneficial cultural change
| over generations.
|
| But this is also why I added the qualification of China
| not standing in its own way, they have certainly the
| power to cause their own downfall, cause a [civil] war
| for example. But even then, unless the country gets
| fractured into many small countries, what would prevent
| them raising from the ruins stronger?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> What would China stop from becoming freer if this
| becomes the limiting factor?_
|
| Governments of any sort, much less authoritarian ones,
| never willingly give up power.
| T-A wrote:
| https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/china-s-
| dilemma-...
| contingencies wrote:
| In addition to the aging population problem mentioned in
| the article, a huge economic bubble based on domestic
| real estate investment funded by poorly secured loans has
| burst, the effects of which are only beginning to be
| felt. Simultaneously, Western supply chains are actively
| seeking diversification, and Chinese labour is now
| considered too expensive for a large swathe of
| manufacturing. Traditional industries such as textiles,
| shoes and so forth are all moving out to
| Vietnam/Bangladesh/Myanmar/etc. The accelerating affects
| of automation further compound this scenario. Further,
| the local education system and HR market are undeveloped
| for higher level skills, and core aspects of the domestic
| business environment create substantial inefficiency
| (financial regulation and practice, commercial law
| enforcement, etc.).
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Now that's a defeatist attitude if ever I saw one.
|
| And a silly one too. There is no cooperation. Only
| servitude.
| caycep wrote:
| I think the better way to view it amongst policymakers on
| both sides are: do you make your policy decisions to
| create an antagonistic relationship like US vs. USSR? Or
| a cooperative one like US-UK or US-Japan? For whatever
| reasons (and tbh a lot of it is perhaps a massive CCP
| inferiority complex and short sightedness, vs. US short
| sightedness), current policymakers have chosen to undergo
| an antagonistic side.
|
| But one can argue the US-China relationship initiated
| between Nixon/Deng was one of the most mutually
| beneficial relationships, economically speaking, over the
| past 3-4 decades, far outpacing US-UK...until the Xi-
| faction and the Trumpers killed it off...
| rscho wrote:
| Which of course, is completely different from what you
| get with the US in the lead...
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| At least with the US in the lead you can freely criticize
| the US on the Internet, or even in person, without being
| censored, disappeared, jailed, and/or "re-educated".
|
| Try criticizing the CCP on a Chinese message board, or in
| person, and see what happens. Is that really the world
| you want to live in?
| rscho wrote:
| The infractions necessary for being "disappeared" or re-
| educated are different in the US, yes. Yet I could very
| easily say things on this very site that would lead me
| straight to prison in my own country, and I owe it
| directly to US cultural influence because my country does
| not have those issues for which I'd go to prison. Is that
| really better? TBH I'm not sure. What's sure is that red
| is dead, but imperialism is alive and kicking.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| The US leaves a documented trail of blood.
|
| And yet, the US never went to any length of stopping the
| head of state being compared to Winnie the Poo.
|
| In fact, the mere fact that the US fuckery is so well
| documented is quite telling. Remember "tank man" not
| returning any results on Bing just a few weeks back?
| danbruc wrote:
| Defeatist. As if there is a game to be won. Do you really
| believe that humanity will stay divided into states with
| vastly different lifestyles forever? And even if you
| believe this, do you have any reason to believe that the
| most powerful country would be any other than the largest
| [1] one?
|
| [1] Largest here does not imply area, I am more thinking
| of a combination of factors including area and natural
| resources which are not affected by technological
| progress.
| lbriner wrote:
| If I was already well-paid, I probably wouldn't leave a job
| just because of the investment money but if I already wanted to
| start my own business and could do with the extra dollars for
| R&D, it would definitely be worth looking at.
|
| Assuming of course, you don't have any qualms about your tech
| being used to kill people at a later date :-/
| L_226 wrote:
| This is _just_ for an accelerator program, do you seriously
| think that a startup that develops something meaningful from
| this seed captial will not get the full force of NATO 's budget
| shoved into it?
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| But this is partially my point. We didn't nickel and dime all
| the crazy geniuses that put together the manhattan project in
| 200 different startups over 15 years. War AI isn't something
| you can bootstrap. You need serious resources and talent, and
| most of the people that are great are getting offered half a
| million a year unless they work for a startup with equity.
|
| This is not enough money and this timeline is ridiculously
| long.
| richardw wrote:
| DARPA Grand Challenge kickstarted a lot of careers and
| companies and it was a pitiful amount of money as well.
|
| In WWII there was no time for serendipity and black swans.
| Only guarantees, before the other side got it, within a few
| years.
| erichahn wrote:
| I think this is a good sign honestly. Historically many
| innovations came from military research.
| cpp_frog wrote:
| Also, WWII accelerated many discoveries in several areas of
| mathematics (in America, at least): statistics, optimization,
| control, numerical analysis. To such an extent, that many of
| those discoveries are still the main object of study in their
| respective areas and are being extended to more general
| versions.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| yeah, great, let's start a few more wars to foster progress
| and inventions ...
|
| /s
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Well, how can we get the benefit of wars without the
| obvious downsides?
|
| Fast feedback loops, obvious win / lose results (a battle
| takes a few hours, you are dead or not).
|
| Randomly fire members of upper management (equivalent of
| organisational change by enemy sniper action)?
| coretx wrote:
| The AI part is a bit akward to take in since i've read about the
| US buying Dwave systems gear in Canada because of the EU being
| ahead of the US regarding AI research. ( In Snowden or WL files )
| ... But NATO almost is the US + EU. What is the reasoning and how
| far is everyone really?
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| At this point the files you're referencing are 10 years old or
| so. I would imagine it's a completely different playing field.
| I would also note that the documents you're referencing (not
| sure of a specific document) as a whole only touch specific
| projects and teams and aren't 100% visibility into the Govt.
| Organizations they purport to be from.
| coretx wrote:
| All solid arguments, thank you a lot!
| 1cvmask wrote:
| This relationship between the government, national security
| establishment and community, and the tech industry has already
| existed for decades from the founding of Silicon Valley with
| Fairchild Semiconductor to many others afterwards ranging from
| Oracle (a CIA funded project), RSA to Palantir.
|
| There is even a public VC:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
|
| -
|
| https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2014/09/cia-oracle-government-...
|
| https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2018/09/how-government-h...
|
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/12/nsa_spying_wh...
|
| -
|
| Karkar Electronics and NATO telecommunications:
|
| https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=edw...
| klaudius wrote:
| There are cases where governments implemented protectionism and
| support for industry, but it failed. You have the case of
| computer industry in Brazil.
|
| It's not as simple as saying that government support is the key
| since there are many cases where it didn't work.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| That's interesting, do you have a source that describes
| Brazil's tech intervention?
| dotcommand wrote:
| But there are no cases of a successful tech industry without
| government support. So we can safely say government support
| is key. Perhaps government support is necessary but not
| sufficient.
| contingencies wrote:
| Bulgaria would be another example.
| seppin wrote:
| Which all amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to how much
| Chinese state money stands up and continues to subsidize all
| domestic industry, from telecom to solar to cars.
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| This is not nearly organized enough to match the investments
| China has made into AI.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Is China really leading in AI? in what way that other countries
| is behind China
| kanche wrote:
| Looking at CVPR this year, China has the most number of authors
| [0]. Significant portion of the US and EU authors are probably
| Chinese students as well. I think they are doing quite well
| atleast in the front of training researchers.
|
| source: [1]
|
| [0]
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E4bZC0mX0AY2X_L?format=png&name=...
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/JaredHeinly/status/1407050613263851521
| tracyhenry wrote:
| One thing that no one can compete with is the amount of data
| available.
| neom wrote:
| I don't know if it's a positive or a negative, but China has
| been focused in a very organized way on this subject for quite
| some time now - in a manner that other nations are just
| starting to do. China has also been able to, coordinately, use
| it's massive population as a R&D bed for training and the like.
| stickfigure wrote:
| How is their self-driving car effort going? It seems like a
| very rough but reasonable proxy for AI development in the
| context of war machines.
|
| Facial recognition seems more useful for controlling a
| civilian population at home.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| from what i have read so far, Chinese's facial recognition is
| really good and probably is leading in this area.
| kube-system wrote:
| The descriptions of the biometric technology I've heard
| that is deployed in Xinjiang truly sounds like a science
| fiction. Voice/facial/gait/etc all deployed at huge scale
| in production, with gigantic datasets collected under
| questionable conditions. I don't have any links but there
| are some good NPR podcasts about the subject.
| mkl95 wrote:
| It will be hilarious when they find out some of those "AI
| startups" are actually mechanical turk armies operating from an
| Indian basement.
| nacs wrote:
| .. or just pro-level Starcraft players who can hit 400-600 APM
| (actions per minute).
| plaidfuji wrote:
| > mechanical turk armies
|
| And now they'll be navies, air forces and spec ops teams as
| well!
| rohitarondekar wrote:
| Can somebody in the know elaborate on how far ahead China's lead
| is in AI?
| neom wrote:
| They're out publishing[1] and out spending everyone else[2], I
| asked Jack Clack from OpenAI that question a few years ago and
| he said he didn't really know exactly how far ahead they are,
| just that more people and more money is being applied in a more
| organized fashion.
|
| [1]https://hbr.org/2021/02/is-china-emerging-as-the-global-
| lead...
|
| [2]https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/12/05/65019/china-
| us-a...
| aeoleonn wrote:
| When people bring up scientific advances in China, I am
| always skeptical.
|
| What percent of Chinese publishing is not fraudulent?
|
| Look at the scale of Fraud across China, including in
| Academia:
|
| "The online publication Quartz reported in 2017 that more
| than 50 percent of all articles retracted by scientific
| journals worldwide for fake peer reviews were submitted by
| Chinese authors. ... 55% - The percentage of articles
| submitted by Chinese authors that were retracted by
| scientific journals worldwide for fake peer reviews"
|
| "It usually involves authors posing as their own peer
| reviewers and submitting made-up contact information for the
| supposed reviewer - a scam that publishers exposed by
| tracking the email addresses of author and reviewer to the
| same IP address. This type of fraud is on the rise and more
| often than not involves Chinese authors.
|
| "In 2015, for instance, Britain-based publisher BioMed
| Central retracted 43 articles, including 41 from China.
|
| "Later in the same year, Germany's Springer retracted 64
| papers, nearly all from Chinese scholars,
|
| "while the Dutch publishing company Elsevier retracted nine
| medical science articles written by Chinese researchers.
|
| "In what is said to be the largest single-incident retraction
| of journal publications in history, Springer Nature in 2017
| retracted 107 articles in Tumor Biology published between
| 2012 and 2016, all of them authored by Chinese scholars from
| universities in Shanghai." [1]
|
| [1] https://wenr.wes.org/2018/04/the-economy-of-fraud-in-
| academi...
| rmah wrote:
| Note, that doesn't say that 55% of submissions from Chinese
| authors were retracted. It says that 55% of retractions
| were from Chinese authors. If 60% of all submissions were
| from Chinese authors, then actual rate of retraction would
| be less than average. If say 40% of submissions were from
| Chinese authors, then the rate of retraction would be just
| slightly higher.
| pphysch wrote:
| Just open your eyes and look at reality. TikTok, HarmonyOS,
| a rapidly advancing space program, and Shenzhen's 100% 5G
| coverage, and so on, did not come out of Silicon Valley.
| The writing is on the wall.
| aeoleonn wrote:
| I open my eyes to data and objective, independent
| sources, where possible.
|
| And I think the aforementioned findings of fraud in
| academia have analogs across industries in China--
| construction (typically the industry with highest most
| corrupt activities regardless of nation), food
| manufacturing, accounting & finance, etc.
| contingencies wrote:
| Here's an objective, independent source. I am a foreigner
| in China. Increasingly, robotics designed at my company
| are designed against Chinese chips because they are
| cheaper, more available, and therefore present less
| design risk. Meanwhile, a friend of mine in semiconductor
| trading just booked about a dozen life fortunes in a
| single month capitalising on the pain and suffering of
| conventional electronics producers with foreign BOMs.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Tiktok is cool, but not a technology advancement. It
| wasn't even the first with the idea.
|
| HarmonyOS is just relabeled Android...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-
| on-h...
| pphysch wrote:
| HarmonyOS is absolutely not just rebranded Android. That
| is total nonsense, and that Ars article is ridiculously
| bereft of any understanding of HarmonyOS.
|
| HarmonyOS supports multiple kernels including
| Android/Linux
| petre wrote:
| They went from making ball point pens in the 1980s to
| flying a rover Mars in 2021. So what if HarmonyOS is just
| rebranded Android? They modified it for their own
| designs, put in a few backdoors and it will achieve its
| purpose, capitalizing on the work of Westeners. They are
| standing on the shoulders of giants.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| That's honestly news to me.
| antman wrote:
| Are there any official documents on China's AI policy? We have
| the media coverage but is it based on any non assumptions?
| jlglover wrote:
| CSET has lots of great analysis of China's AI policy, including
| references to official documents.
|
| https://cset.georgetown.edu/publications/
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