The Chinese Singularity

[Absurdity]

China has a population of 1.3 billion. The US has a population of 0.3 billion. China has averaged an economic growth rate of about 10% over the past 3 decades. The US has averaged 3%. The Chinese government is strongly committed to heavy investment into high tech. From the above premises, one can virtually prove, as in a mathematical theorem, that China in a decade or so will be in a superior position to offer top salaries (in the rich Southeastern cities) to creative, brilliant Westerners to come to China to build artificial brains — much more than will be offered by the US and Europe. With the planet‘s most creative AI researchers in China, it is then almost certain that the planet‘s first artificial intellect to be built will have Chinese characteristics.

http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/01/04/chinese-singularity/

[Note: This article is three years old]

Thoughts?

 

[Proletar]

It's a damn outrage. Are those yellow rice-monkeys going to get ahead of us in science? I tell you, it's the damn NWO with their Goldbergs and socialists in government. Wake up America! Your liberty is being stolen from you!


Seriously though, I don't know if it really means a difference. There is a false correlation assumed in the article. The 10% increase in market and the 1.8 billion population does not automatically mean the chinese are growing faster in the market. To get that information, you actually have to include the actual sizes of their markets. Let's get that information first.

Edit: Three years old? So the 3% annual growth of the american market mentioned occured in what period of time, exactly...?

 

[Architect]

A couple of points. One, the Chinese GDP growth is inflated. Basically they're cooking the books because it's a communist government and any Maoist in power knows that he's one recession away from losing his job (historically this is what happens to Chinese regimes eventually). So all it takes is one phone call and they've got higher growth. Proof is in the fact that they turn over the GDP numbers overnight, in a country where most of it doesn't have paved roads. In the U.S. it takes much longer to figure out GDP, and then it's revised.

Two, accelerating returns (what will trigger the Singularity) is measured economically as productivity growth. Productivity gains go to, among other things, the country with the strongest currency and the highest innovation rate. Both then went to the U.S. in the 20th century and for many reasons I don't want to get into now, into the 21st century.

Three, culturally the U.S. is the country of innovation. Long discussion but consider the difference between the essentially wild west mentality of the U.S. and the community and leadership orientation of the East.

Four, and I don't have proof of this, is that private tech investment has higher returns than public. Some public investment is necessary and important but just because a govt. is throwing money around does that necessarily mean a good thing.

In short I believe the U.S. will be the epicenter.

 

[Cognisant]

It doesn't suit their mentality, I have no doubt China will develop all kinds of brilliant expert systems but making something that actually thinks for itself is going into simulated neural nets, and you've got to put a lot into one of those before you get anything out, I seriously doubt anyone of an eastern cultural mindset would bother, why make general AI which isn't nearly as efficient as a specifically designed expert system? That's crazy western devil nonsense.

The Japanese on the other hand, they're crazy about robots.
In their culture it's a given assumption that general AI is possible.

Still generally speaking westerners are more innovative, again it's cultural, we're not so afraid of failure as our eastern peers, we readily reach beyond our grasp as in our culture it's acceptable to fail if what you were trying to achieve was too difficult, whereas in the east failure is more shameful, particularly if one fell to one's own hubris.

Compare Asimo to Petman, the former is conventional but extremely well executed, the latter is unconventional and, well, whatever works.

 

[BigApplePi]

Chinese RE Bubble?

I don't know what to make of this: miles and miles of empty apartment buildings, entire cities worth were shown on "60 minutes." Does that mean nothing? A big Chinese real estate owner said it was a bubble, but didn't seem to care.

"But what of the “ghost cities,” you ask? Most of the eerily empty developments, such as those recently were not created to meet private demand. As Jonathan Anderson of Emerging Advisors Group recently explained to China Realtime Report, they’re more properly understood as wasteful local-government projects that helped the country chug along in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and they hardly reflect more general housing market dynamics. (Last August, economist and China bull Stephen Roach offered another take on “ghost cities,” noting that China’s urbanization will gradually makes use of these properties, much the way Shanghai’s Pudong has done.)"

http://qz.com/61375/forget-the-ghost-cities-scare-chinas-housing-market-recovery-is-well-underway/

 

[Absurdity]

While I agree that a lot of the China hype is just that, hype, I think that if people in the West believe it is possible that China could reasonably develop strong AI it could increase funding for research in the West. Sort of like a 21st century equivalent of the space race.

 

[Black Rose]

While I agree that a lot of the China hype is just that, hype, I think that if people in the West believe it is possible that China could reasonably develop strong AI it could increase funding for research in the West. Sort of like a 21st century equivalent of the space race.

I think that is already happening

 

[Nezaros]

Spoiler

Seriously though, these statistics don't necessarily mean anything. Sure, Asia has probably the greatest capacity for growth of the world, as many people love to point out, but that doesn't mean they will grow, or to what extent. That said, it's certainly possible China will become a greater world power in the eventual future, but more than likely there will have to be a political shift before that can happen.

 

[walfin]

I wonder what Chinese characteristics they're thinking of. Filial piety? How does a robot be filial? To the creator? Maybe they'll put in a phlegm generator, but last I heard the spittoons had been removed from government offices in China.

It just sounds rather contrived, and it's hard to believe that there are really any special Chinese characteristics that would get engineered into a generic robot brain even if the creators were Chinese. (It's actually very hard to believe that there are any distinctively "Chinese" characteristics at all) Maybe it'll write Chinese instead of English but it's so much harder; the Chinese know their own language would be a bear to teach any neural net .

It's a damn outrage. Are those yellow rice-monkeys going to get ahead of us in science?

Damn, it's hard to believe them hairy white albino apes actually got ahead in science somehow. How the devil did they do that?

 

[joal0503]

It doesn't suit their mentality, I have no doubt China will develop all kinds of brilliant expert systems but making something that actually thinks for itself is going into simulated neural nets, and you've got to put a lot into one of those before you get anything out, I seriously doubt anyone of an eastern cultural mindset would bother, why make general AI which isn't nearly as efficient as a specifically designed expert system? That's crazy western devil nonsense.

The Japanese on the other hand, they're crazy about robots.
In their culture it's a given assumption that general AI is possible.

Still generally speaking westerners are more innovative, again it's cultural, we're not so afraid of failure as our eastern peers, we readily reach beyond our grasp as in our culture it's acceptable to fail if what you were trying to achieve was too difficult, whereas in the east failure is more shameful, particularly if one fell to one's own hubris.

Compare Asimo to Petman, the former is conventional but extremely well executed, the latter is unconventional and, well, whatever works.

this just felt mandatory after reading your response...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cShYbLkhBc