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China's brightest children are being recruited to weaponize AI

wnkrshm 8y ago
If I recall correctly, DARPA regularly hosts challenges where university teams try to solve problems that clearly have military applications. I know this can be seen as whataboutism but I feel the Western world might have gotten desensitized to its own activities in the sector, while looking warily at possible geopolitical competitors.
- Mofleaker 8y ago
  I feel that whataboutism is a term that gets abused a lot in threads about China. Pointing out that the US does the very same doesn't necessarily discredit or diminish the problem with China's actions. If anything it shows we should be worried about these things on a global scale.
  - izacus 8y ago
    > Pointing out that the US does the very same doesn't necessarily discredit or diminish the problem with China's actions. If anything it shows we should be worried about these things on a global scale. I think the main issue is that those actions aren't written about or criticised when done by the western powers. Hence why these article seems so hypocritical - they try to paint actions accepted and normal in western world as somehow evil when done by the eastern part. It doesn't mean they're not bad - but it does seem like the articles are just propaganda and not an objective look.
    - true_religion 8y ago
      Sure, one can technically use technology against your own people, but no one likes to think about betrayal of that kind. So, the default assumption is that killbots controlled by your country are safe to you, but killbots made by a foreign power are dangerous.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  China is the new big red threat, has been for a while now. No whataboutism about it, the US does the same shit but the fear of the other is still just as strong as ever.
- starbeast 8y ago
  Whataboutism only really applies to state actors bickering when both are being hypocritical. After all, it was created as a US propaganda term for saying that it is hypocritical for the USSR to propagandise the hypocrisy of the USA, when both governments are hypocrites. Outside of that, it is called making comparisons and it is a completely valid thing to be doing.
  - elefanten 8y ago
    It refers to the practice of changing the conversation (often towards accusation of hypocrisy) rather than answering a claim. Especially when the comparison is different in kind or scope, or just plain irrelevant. Making comparisons is valid, but it doesn't make you incapable of responding to the original arguments.
    - starbeast 8y ago
      Often it is used to shut down a line of argument when the comparison is entirely valid though.
- goldfeld 8y ago
  Bingo. Young people thinking war is a boy's toy game, east or west. Generations who haven't seen a real massacre barely need desensitization, their family culture can be inhumane and insensitive enough from home. The comments on this thread show perfectly how suspicion, lack of morals and humane thinking do all the work. The US isn't very different from China in those threats brooding within civil society.
Communitivity 8y ago
The US does this with the DARPA Grand Challenge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge). I suspect other countries may be doing this through sponsoring/watching teams from their nation entering international competitions such as the Tech First Challenge (http://business-review.eu/tag/first-tech-challenge-russia-open-2017 http://business-review.eu/tag/first-tech-challenge-russia-op...).
- beginningguava 8y ago
  You don't see a difference between giving prize money to university teams vs recruiting children under the age of 18 and then putting them through a 4 year program where they are expected to enter AI research for military purposes and the candidates are explicitly vetted for loyalty to the government before entrance?
  - virmundi 8y ago
    The Chinese are more efficient? Take an 18 year old, toss him or her into a college that does the challenge, get a job at one of the defense contractors later. The Chinese employee is able to do the same thing about 4 years earlier.
    - elefanten 8y ago
      Your answer seems given in bad faith, but it's worth answering anyway. There are many other things you learn and things you can go on to do as [engineering student] at [university]. Doing a [resume-boosting challenge] is one small part of your universe. On the other hand, when you are entering a special program for weapons development and giving press releases about how long you've been studying about guns... your intentions and the expectations for you are very different.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    >>candidates are explicitly vetted for loyalty to the government before entrance? In any country on earth, you be pretty much 'vetted for loyalty' before they let you close to their sensitive intelligence or tech related work.
qubax 8y ago
So when we push our brigtest kids into CS, it's to advance technology/knowledge. When the chinese do it, it's to weaponize it?
vslira 8y ago
Killer bots will be treated just like nukes: world powers will justify their investment in the technology by saying that the other side is also doing it, and when it becomes clear that there are only two or three powerful countries that can wield the technology, the "international treaties" will come barring everybody else from developing it. I'm not saying that everyone should have nukes, I'm saying the EU, US, China and Russia should be making those treaties right now instead of later
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  The problem is enforcement, not will. With nukes we can have inspectors and we can lock down uranium. Killbots are too diffuse and too multi-use. I'm all for arms control / non-proliferation, but I really don't see how it works for these things. Also, we already have weaponized AI. We have for decades. We're now talking about a matter of degree. I'm far, far more worried about the mass weaponization of civilian systems (self-driving car, etc) via cyber attack than I am about killbots, but they're both symptoms of a different problem: As technological growth continues the space of potential combinations of methods accelerates. This ever expanding search space results in unpredictable threats and increasingly asymmetric attack economies. I've been meaning to write an article on it, but I'm having trouble pulling together the math because it's so abstract. But that's the general idea.
  - dpflan 8y ago
    I'm intrigued. What do you need to in order to write your article?
    - 3pt14159 8y ago
      I'm waiting on some academics that study multi-lateral trade agreements to send me the details of their mathematical models, since I think they'll share many of the same aspects. 1. Hard to quantify incentive structures. 2. Chaotic / cascading decisions and adaptations. 3. Growing search space that's influenced by information restriction. 4. Uncertainty of future arrangements and options. 5. Uncertainty of deterrence efficacy. 6. Even some aspects of agency problems. I've gone through some of the papers out there but, frankly, nothing I'd consider a serious mathematical investigation. I don't need the input data so I thought this would be easy. I only need the math or computer code.
ryanmercer 8y ago
And this is why I'm glad Sam and Elon and everyone else started OpenAI. We need more people working towards benevolent AI/AGI to offer competition/opposition to state-funded AI/AGI that will almost certainly be used first and foremost for military applications.
- vezycash 8y ago
  I don't think OPENAI will make much difference. Companies & states will simply leech off OPENAI and copyright, trademark, patent or hide their own improvements.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    From my understanding of OpenAI they plan to be open with their research but not necessarily share code. Sure, anything they patent gives a foreign government a starting point and the U.S. government can use secrecy orders to prevent patents from being public or even flat out locking them down via things like the Invention Secrecy Act but I think OpenAI, and similar initiatives, will still considerably benefit mankind when they actually start to develop 'AI' with practical applications and certainly if they develop AGI. For example with OpenAI this work they're doing with learning dexterity with the robotic hands could drastically assist amputees in the very near future by learning quickly from input from the user to make considerably more functional artificial limbs.
api 8y ago
I'd like to point out that a lot of "defense" research ends up used primarily or even exclusively for things other than military applications. The military is used as a feeder for R&D because calling it defense is how you sell useful spending (and Keynesian stimulus) to conservatives. The US defense budget is full of only nominally defense R&D. This is probably as true in China as it is in the USA. The US did this quite a bit, especially during the height of the Cold War. In fact you go could so far as to say that America's elite schools operate (or did at least then) as intellectual feeders for the defense industry. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/ (Ninja edited to add the top paragraph...)
natch 8y ago
China has cultivated in its people a very troubling mental complex centered on national pride and driven by the Century of Humiliation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation To say they are fervent about righting the wrongs and perceived wrongs of the past is an understatement. It's pretty much a driving force of life with many people. It's a powerful dynamic. And it's one that's held close to the chest by Chinese students studying here in the US but in China it's freely talked about, written about, and taken for granted as the right thing. On our (the west) side we also have racism and nationalism. But I think our more diverse (talking about points of view, not race here) and more activist anti-racism voices are a tempering force that China lacks. Relating this to weaponization of AI, I think people like Stuart Russell are naive to think that watching Slaughterbots would give these students pause. On the contrary, it would excite them, because it's showing exactly the kind of thing they would be delighted to develop. Not that I know these students, but I'm aware how China drills bitterness into its people about their past humiliations, and uses this to develop racist nationalism. Pretty scary.
- tprnz 8y ago
  So, like blacks in the US?
- jl6 8y ago
  There must be actual Chinese people here on HN. Can any weigh in on the reality of this? It’s a heavy charge to make against an entire population.
  - natch 8y ago
    Just to be clear，and I'm not saying your missed this distinction, but in case anyone did, I'm not talking about Chinese the race (which technically can be argued as consisting of many races, btw). I'm talking about what the education and state controlled media does to China's citizens who grow up in China.
  - baobrain 8y ago
    I've been through 3-8th grade education in Chengdu at a top 100 school. The rest of my education was in the US, so I may be biased in one way or the other. From my perspective, I didn't really see it that way. Like any country, the history curriculum focuses on China's history, focusing primarily on ancient history (pre-Qing dynasty) for 3 semesters with one semester of modern Chinese history (Qing to present). While there certainly was a nationalistic tendency in many topics I would regard the information as historically accurate (as compared to courses about east Asian history here in the US). And in reality, my many friends in China with whom I've maintained contact over the years do not have this sort of mentality and are against censorship and much of the nationalistic messaging. Another interesting note that people here have no knowledge of is professors in China are often times anti-CCP. Many professors take this to the extreme and in papers will often just give a bad grade if it mentions any good policy by the CCP. On a semi-related note, the comments many make here on HN about China make me extremely uncomfortable. Not because they touch on sensitive topics but because they smear an entire population of people as liars, thieves, and mindless followers. Replace the word "China" and "Chinese" with "Italy" and "Italian" in many comments and they could have been written back in the Ellis Island days.
justicezyx 8y ago
Bejing institute of technology is roughly comaprable to UCSC. Calling them brightest seems overly glossy.
- lolptdr 8y ago
  University of California at Santa Cruz?
HarryHirsch 8y ago
In 1925, JBS Haldane, the biochemist, wrote Callinicus, A Defence of Chemical Warfare: http://jbshaldane.org/books/1925-Callinicus/haldane-callinicus-1up-ocr.pdf http://jbshaldane.org/books/1925-Callinicus/haldane-callinic... He was involved in the Brtitish chemical weapons program. There are some interesting arguments in that little volume, which apply equally well to AI killerbots.
yters 8y ago
You think other nations actually buy into peaceful globalism? Everyone is just looking for an opportunity to be the next global superpower and rule the world, and only play nice-nice insofar as it furthers this goal. Global trade certainly does not guarantee global peace. We had global trade before WW1 and WW2, and it did nothing to stop the most horrific wars ever seen in history.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  "Everyone" not remotely everyone.
  - yters 8y ago
    No one wants to get killed or suffer during war, but everyone wants to be the boss.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      Not only do most people not want to be boss, most nations aren't trying to take over the world. One interesting thing: since most nations are tiny, and they are so utterly dependent on playing ninjitsu against others because they have no hard power ... the though doesn't occur to them. It becomes part of the national identity. Canada->US Scotland->England Nordics (i.e. Norwegian)->Germany/France We're a little bit more meek (for better or worse) by default, not just in geopolitics, but culturally as well.
      - yters 8y ago
        Right, but there is always someone trying to take over, and without resistance on the part of peacelovers, they succeed.
        sonnyblarney 8y ago
        Sadly it's not the peace-lovers that keep the peace. Peace is kept through a balance of power.
wycs 8y ago
China is full of extremely bright, hardworking people. It is not a nation of brain-washed automatons. I think AI alignment is some of the most important work in the world, and I think spreading and translating AI alignment research in China, such as Stuart Russell's work, may well be more important than direct AI-safety research. Because of their huge population and much higher average quantitative ability among Han Chinese, China has roughly 20 times the number of people capable of AI research, at least if you trust their PISA scores. Should we get human-level AI, there is a good chance it will be made in China. As I don't think the Chinese are a nation of heartless automatons, I think spreading alignment ideas in China is not at all a hopeless task.
- ng12 8y ago
  It doesn't matter what the Chinese people are like, it matters what the Chinese government is like. If AI comes out of China the Chinese government will have complete control over it, and that is a very bad thing.
  - dis-sys 8y ago
    > it matters what the Chinese government is like that is just a cheap excuse repeatedly used in almost all high tech areas - 1. because the Chinese government is bad, China is not allowed to join projects like the international space station. 2. because the Chinese government is bad, allowing China to have access to any semiconductor techs from the west is not acceptable. 3. because the Chinese government is bad, exporting nuclear power station tech to China is now banned. 4. because the Chinese government is bad, Huawei's phones are banned, ZTE was not allowed to buy any US made parts. 5. because the Chinese government is bad, Alipay's acquisition of MoneyGram was banned. 6. because the Chinese government is bad, Chinese universities working on China's weapon programs are banned from buying DELL desktop computers. when US banned exporting any high tech product to China, what to do when there is a trade imbalance? get Trump into the whitehouse, cry hard for the unfairness in trade! give me a break, please come back with some better excuses.
    - ng12 8y ago
dang 8y ago
All: Regardless of your feelings about China, if you do nationalistic flamewar on HN, or angry denunciation, or population slurring, we're going to ban you. These threads have been getting noticeably worse lately and the worst sections of this one are vile.

If I recall correctly, DARPA regularly hosts challenges where university teams try to solve problems that clearly have military applications. I know this can be seen as whataboutism but I feel the Western world might have gotten desensitized to its own activities in the sector, while looking warily at possible geopolitical competitors.

Mofleaker 8y ago
I feel that whataboutism is a term that gets abused a lot in threads about China. Pointing out that the US does the very same doesn't necessarily discredit or diminish the problem with China's actions. If anything it shows we should be worried about these things on a global scale.
- izacus 8y ago
  > Pointing out that the US does the very same doesn't necessarily discredit or diminish the problem with China's actions. If anything it shows we should be worried about these things on a global scale. I think the main issue is that those actions aren't written about or criticised when done by the western powers. Hence why these article seems so hypocritical - they try to paint actions accepted and normal in western world as somehow evil when done by the eastern part. It doesn't mean they're not bad - but it does seem like the articles are just propaganda and not an objective look.
  - true_religion 8y ago
    Sure, one can technically use technology against your own people, but no one likes to think about betrayal of that kind. So, the default assumption is that killbots controlled by your country are safe to you, but killbots made by a foreign power are dangerous.
deadbunny 8y ago
China is the new big red threat, has been for a while now. No whataboutism about it, the US does the same shit but the fear of the other is still just as strong as ever.
starbeast 8y ago
Whataboutism only really applies to state actors bickering when both are being hypocritical. After all, it was created as a US propaganda term for saying that it is hypocritical for the USSR to propagandise the hypocrisy of the USA, when both governments are hypocrites. Outside of that, it is called making comparisons and it is a completely valid thing to be doing.
- elefanten 8y ago
  It refers to the practice of changing the conversation (often towards accusation of hypocrisy) rather than answering a claim. Especially when the comparison is different in kind or scope, or just plain irrelevant. Making comparisons is valid, but it doesn't make you incapable of responding to the original arguments.
  - starbeast 8y ago
    Often it is used to shut down a line of argument when the comparison is entirely valid though.
goldfeld 8y ago
Bingo. Young people thinking war is a boy's toy game, east or west. Generations who haven't seen a real massacre barely need desensitization, their family culture can be inhumane and insensitive enough from home. The comments on this thread show perfectly how suspicion, lack of morals and humane thinking do all the work. The US isn't very different from China in those threats brooding within civil society.

Communitivity 8y ago

The US does this with the DARPA Grand Challenge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge). I suspect other countries may be doing this through sponsoring/watching teams from their nation entering international competitions such as the Tech First Challenge (http://business-review.eu/tag/first-tech-challenge-russia-open-2017 http://business-review.eu/tag/first-tech-challenge-russia-op...).

beginningguava 8y ago
You don't see a difference between giving prize money to university teams vs recruiting children under the age of 18 and then putting them through a 4 year program where they are expected to enter AI research for military purposes and the candidates are explicitly vetted for loyalty to the government before entrance?
- virmundi 8y ago
  The Chinese are more efficient? Take an 18 year old, toss him or her into a college that does the challenge, get a job at one of the defense contractors later. The Chinese employee is able to do the same thing about 4 years earlier.
  - elefanten 8y ago
    Your answer seems given in bad faith, but it's worth answering anyway. There are many other things you learn and things you can go on to do as [engineering student] at [university]. Doing a [resume-boosting challenge] is one small part of your universe. On the other hand, when you are entering a special program for weapons development and giving press releases about how long you've been studying about guns... your intentions and the expectations for you are very different.
- kamaal 8y ago
  >>candidates are explicitly vetted for loyalty to the government before entrance? In any country on earth, you be pretty much 'vetted for loyalty' before they let you close to their sensitive intelligence or tech related work.

qubax 8y ago

So when we push our brigtest kids into CS, it's to advance technology/knowledge. When the chinese do it, it's to weaponize it?

vslira 8y ago

Killer bots will be treated just like nukes: world powers will justify their investment in the technology by saying that the other side is also doing it, and when it becomes clear that there are only two or three powerful countries that can wield the technology, the "international treaties" will come barring everybody else from developing it. I'm not saying that everyone should have nukes, I'm saying the EU, US, China and Russia should be making those treaties right now instead of later

3pt14159 8y ago
The problem is enforcement, not will. With nukes we can have inspectors and we can lock down uranium. Killbots are too diffuse and too multi-use. I'm all for arms control / non-proliferation, but I really don't see how it works for these things. Also, we already have weaponized AI. We have for decades. We're now talking about a matter of degree. I'm far, far more worried about the mass weaponization of civilian systems (self-driving car, etc) via cyber attack than I am about killbots, but they're both symptoms of a different problem: As technological growth continues the space of potential combinations of methods accelerates. This ever expanding search space results in unpredictable threats and increasingly asymmetric attack economies. I've been meaning to write an article on it, but I'm having trouble pulling together the math because it's so abstract. But that's the general idea.
- dpflan 8y ago
  I'm intrigued. What do you need to in order to write your article?
  - 3pt14159 8y ago
    I'm waiting on some academics that study multi-lateral trade agreements to send me the details of their mathematical models, since I think they'll share many of the same aspects. 1. Hard to quantify incentive structures. 2. Chaotic / cascading decisions and adaptations. 3. Growing search space that's influenced by information restriction. 4. Uncertainty of future arrangements and options. 5. Uncertainty of deterrence efficacy. 6. Even some aspects of agency problems. I've gone through some of the papers out there but, frankly, nothing I'd consider a serious mathematical investigation. I don't need the input data so I thought this would be easy. I only need the math or computer code.

ryanmercer 8y ago

And this is why I'm glad Sam and Elon and everyone else started OpenAI. We need more people working towards benevolent AI/AGI to offer competition/opposition to state-funded AI/AGI that will almost certainly be used first and foremost for military applications.

vezycash 8y ago
I don't think OPENAI will make much difference. Companies & states will simply leech off OPENAI and copyright, trademark, patent or hide their own improvements.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  From my understanding of OpenAI they plan to be open with their research but not necessarily share code. Sure, anything they patent gives a foreign government a starting point and the U.S. government can use secrecy orders to prevent patents from being public or even flat out locking them down via things like the Invention Secrecy Act but I think OpenAI, and similar initiatives, will still considerably benefit mankind when they actually start to develop 'AI' with practical applications and certainly if they develop AGI. For example with OpenAI this work they're doing with learning dexterity with the robotic hands could drastically assist amputees in the very near future by learning quickly from input from the user to make considerably more functional artificial limbs.

api 8y ago

I'd like to point out that a lot of "defense" research ends up used primarily or even exclusively for things other than military applications. The military is used as a feeder for R&D because calling it defense is how you sell useful spending (and Keynesian stimulus) to conservatives. The US defense budget is full of only nominally defense R&D. This is probably as true in China as it is in the USA. The US did this quite a bit, especially during the height of the Cold War. In fact you go could so far as to say that America's elite schools operate (or did at least then) as intellectual feeders for the defense industry. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/ (Ninja edited to add the top paragraph...)

natch 8y ago

China has cultivated in its people a very troubling mental complex centered on national pride and driven by the Century of Humiliation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation To say they are fervent about righting the wrongs and perceived wrongs of the past is an understatement. It's pretty much a driving force of life with many people. It's a powerful dynamic. And it's one that's held close to the chest by Chinese students studying here in the US but in China it's freely talked about, written about, and taken for granted as the right thing. On our (the west) side we also have racism and nationalism. But I think our more diverse (talking about points of view, not race here) and more activist anti-racism voices are a tempering force that China lacks. Relating this to weaponization of AI, I think people like Stuart Russell are naive to think that watching Slaughterbots would give these students pause. On the contrary, it would excite them, because it's showing exactly the kind of thing they would be delighted to develop. Not that I know these students, but I'm aware how China drills bitterness into its people about their past humiliations, and uses this to develop racist nationalism. Pretty scary.

tprnz 8y ago
So, like blacks in the US?
jl6 8y ago
There must be actual Chinese people here on HN. Can any weigh in on the reality of this? It’s a heavy charge to make against an entire population.
- natch 8y ago
  Just to be clear，and I'm not saying your missed this distinction, but in case anyone did, I'm not talking about Chinese the race (which technically can be argued as consisting of many races, btw). I'm talking about what the education and state controlled media does to China's citizens who grow up in China.
- baobrain 8y ago
  I've been through 3-8th grade education in Chengdu at a top 100 school. The rest of my education was in the US, so I may be biased in one way or the other. From my perspective, I didn't really see it that way. Like any country, the history curriculum focuses on China's history, focusing primarily on ancient history (pre-Qing dynasty) for 3 semesters with one semester of modern Chinese history (Qing to present). While there certainly was a nationalistic tendency in many topics I would regard the information as historically accurate (as compared to courses about east Asian history here in the US). And in reality, my many friends in China with whom I've maintained contact over the years do not have this sort of mentality and are against censorship and much of the nationalistic messaging. Another interesting note that people here have no knowledge of is professors in China are often times anti-CCP. Many professors take this to the extreme and in papers will often just give a bad grade if it mentions any good policy by the CCP. On a semi-related note, the comments many make here on HN about China make me extremely uncomfortable. Not because they touch on sensitive topics but because they smear an entire population of people as liars, thieves, and mindless followers. Replace the word "China" and "Chinese" with "Italy" and "Italian" in many comments and they could have been written back in the Ellis Island days.

justicezyx 8y ago

Bejing institute of technology is roughly comaprable to UCSC. Calling them brightest seems overly glossy.

lolptdr 8y ago
University of California at Santa Cruz?

HarryHirsch 8y ago

In 1925, JBS Haldane, the biochemist, wrote Callinicus, A Defence of Chemical Warfare: http://jbshaldane.org/books/1925-Callinicus/haldane-callinicus-1up-ocr.pdf http://jbshaldane.org/books/1925-Callinicus/haldane-callinic... He was involved in the Brtitish chemical weapons program. There are some interesting arguments in that little volume, which apply equally well to AI killerbots.

yters 8y ago

You think other nations actually buy into peaceful globalism? Everyone is just looking for an opportunity to be the next global superpower and rule the world, and only play nice-nice insofar as it furthers this goal. Global trade certainly does not guarantee global peace. We had global trade before WW1 and WW2, and it did nothing to stop the most horrific wars ever seen in history.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
"Everyone" not remotely everyone.
- yters 8y ago
  No one wants to get killed or suffer during war, but everyone wants to be the boss.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Not only do most people not want to be boss, most nations aren't trying to take over the world. One interesting thing: since most nations are tiny, and they are so utterly dependent on playing ninjitsu against others because they have no hard power ... the though doesn't occur to them. It becomes part of the national identity. Canada->US Scotland->England Nordics (i.e. Norwegian)->Germany/France We're a little bit more meek (for better or worse) by default, not just in geopolitics, but culturally as well.
    - yters 8y ago
      Right, but there is always someone trying to take over, and without resistance on the part of peacelovers, they succeed.
      - sonnyblarney 8y ago
        Sadly it's not the peace-lovers that keep the peace. Peace is kept through a balance of power.

wycs 8y ago

China is full of extremely bright, hardworking people. It is not a nation of brain-washed automatons. I think AI alignment is some of the most important work in the world, and I think spreading and translating AI alignment research in China, such as Stuart Russell's work, may well be more important than direct AI-safety research. Because of their huge population and much higher average quantitative ability among Han Chinese, China has roughly 20 times the number of people capable of AI research, at least if you trust their PISA scores. Should we get human-level AI, there is a good chance it will be made in China. As I don't think the Chinese are a nation of heartless automatons, I think spreading alignment ideas in China is not at all a hopeless task.

ng12 8y ago
It doesn't matter what the Chinese people are like, it matters what the Chinese government is like. If AI comes out of China the Chinese government will have complete control over it, and that is a very bad thing.
- dis-sys 8y ago
  > it matters what the Chinese government is like that is just a cheap excuse repeatedly used in almost all high tech areas - 1. because the Chinese government is bad, China is not allowed to join projects like the international space station. 2. because the Chinese government is bad, allowing China to have access to any semiconductor techs from the west is not acceptable. 3. because the Chinese government is bad, exporting nuclear power station tech to China is now banned. 4. because the Chinese government is bad, Huawei's phones are banned, ZTE was not allowed to buy any US made parts. 5. because the Chinese government is bad, Alipay's acquisition of MoneyGram was banned. 6. because the Chinese government is bad, Chinese universities working on China's weapon programs are banned from buying DELL desktop computers. when US banned exporting any high tech product to China, what to do when there is a trade imbalance? get Trump into the whitehouse, cry hard for the unfairness in trade! give me a break, please come back with some better excuses.
  - ng12 8y ago

dang 8y ago

All: Regardless of your feelings about China, if you do nationalistic flamewar on HN, or angry denunciation, or population slurring, we're going to ban you. These threads have been getting noticeably worse lately and the worst sections of this one are vile.