What's the AI scene like in China?

Submitted by TachibanaRE t3_yh3e5q in singularity

Occasionally we'll get a few articles here about some interesting tech progress, but since there's a language barrier and most of us reside in the west, it's basically radio silence most of the time.

Are there large communities there dedicated to diffusion tech? Is AI media blowing up there as well? Are similar ethical concerns being brought up regarding the synthesis of said media? Really curious to know.

Sorry in advance if this is a dumb question and I've missed really obvious posts and discussions about this here 😅

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nillouise t1_iucfgq2 wrote

I am a chinese, there is not any public forum in China talking about AGI like this sub. Althought they are insteresting in AI like stable diffusion(many China people have try it), but they will not relate it to AGI. Some of them (have a good education) think this AI just puzzle some picture, with very confidently.

And China leader is more concentrate on chip than AI, I think they are mislead by US's policy, imo, assume chip is more importan than AI is a very stupid opinion, but china leader just want to bet on chip.

Not only the China leader is so shortsighted, but also the tech company in China. If you have been play the Genshin Impact, it's company is Mihoyo, say they want to create virtual world in ten year, so they have invested something like BCI, VR, but the generative AI, which can produce waifu, they have not invest this opportunity, in fact, I think they do not carefully think about the future. Other company even worse than Mihoyo.

All in all, this country is hard to contribute the AI progress, I just want this fool and evil country don't invade Taiwan and harm the world AI progress.

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ML4Bratwurst t1_iuciuk2 wrote

You guys can legally access Reddit?

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nillouise t1_iucvjru wrote

Technically, it's illegal, but gov is rare to arreset people for it. Anyway, China is not ban world network or cut people network like Russia or north Korean, it is a lucky thing.

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stainsonthecarpet t1_iuemjz7 wrote

sup bro. the US media has us thinking a certain way about you guys as i’m sure your media has you thinking about us. cool so see someone from over there on reddit. i hope huge advances in AGI will liberate us

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Vorontsar t1_iueislq wrote

No one cuts or ban anyone from anything in Russia wtf

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Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iucqx95 wrote

It's not illegal for them to use vpns

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-ZeroRelevance- t1_iugdj0v wrote

I was going to correct you, but it looks like you’re actually right. It seems like the actual illegal thing is distribution of VPNs instead, while usage is mostly fine.

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sir_duckingtale t1_iucx2vw wrote

They do own Reddit, don‘t they?

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Kaarssteun t1_iudfpti wrote

Reddit is an american corporation

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sir_duckingtale t1_iudiogj wrote

Hasn‘t Chinese investors brought them up recently,

Am I misremembering?

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Saerain t1_iudl5u5 wrote

Tencent ponied up most of the investment in 2019, but as far as I can tell they overall have 5%.

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TheRidgeAndTheLadder t1_iue1946 wrote

Nah, tencent is a minority investor. Wouldn't seem it if you just get news from memes

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epSos-DE t1_iud6nsj wrote

AI coder jobs are the best paying jobs at the moment.

How many Chinese use that opportunity to exit China for higher income in other places ?

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nillouise t1_iud82ad wrote

You say programmer or AI researcher? The details number I don't know, many programmer exit China not just for high pay, but for avoid the crazy totalitarian gov, and exit China to other country is not an easy thing, many of them are failed.

But in the other hand, programmer in China is a good job, they can earn enough money (compare to other job), many of them are enjoy their life and don't want to exit China just for more money(even thought they know they will lead by a fool gov).

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ButaButaPig t1_iude5po wrote

I work in China as s programmer. The salary levels in the big cities are the same as Silicon Valley for the big international companies. I doubt many people would want to leave since the only place with comparable salaries are the big tech companies in the US. Also despite what you'd think from reading reddit, it's not like you feel that you have any less freedom here than elsewhere so no incentive to leave especially since money goes a lot further here.

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ShitofFeceus t1_iuesor5 wrote

>t's not like you feel that you have any less freedom here than elsewhere

1001 days in the life of a Chinese citizen.

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camdoodlebop t1_iuha02g wrote

i don't get it

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ShitofFeceus t1_iuiifl1 wrote

The turkey thinks that life is constantly improving, and will do so forever, until it discovers the true nature of its existence on Thanksgiving.

Chinese people think their country is basically the same as a Western country, and a lack of democracy, constitutionalism and freedom of expression don’t have any “real” consequences, until one day…

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Kinexity t1_iuf18my wrote

>it's not like you feel that you have any less freedom here than elsewhere

The important part is "feel". Chinese governemnt makes sure that as long as you are "law-abiding" citzen you can fuck around and they don't bother you. The freedoms disappear like a puff of smoke if they don't like you and the problematic part are the reasons they may not like you.

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Booboo77775 t1_iucveqq wrote

you are totally wrong and misguided. China is leading in AI research. The party just wants you to think that they are not..

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nillouise t1_iucxhn6 wrote

Maybe I can more clear my opinion, some of China organizationes are doing AI research, but none of them claim they want to create AGI ( In twitter, you can see a lot of US researcher say they working on AGI. But in China, I don't found such people), I think AI is a wide range research, China is leading in some areas may be possible, but they just not interesting in AGI.

The party is not so omnipotent, or else they don't need to beg to US sell chip to them.

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Countingblackcrows t1_iud2w9u wrote

Based on what evidence

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Booboo77775 t1_iud3c36 wrote

evidence i've seen on youtube!!

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Countingblackcrows t1_iud4asa wrote

That sounds very trustworthy /s

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Booboo77775 t1_iufouti wrote

Yeah it is, cause I usually watch smart people videos like Numberphile and similar. And it sounded very factual and scientific. I didn't check sources but I believed it.

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beezlebub33 t1_iud1xrl wrote

Certainly in terms of ML all you have to do is look at NeurIPS or other top-level conference to see that they are publishing more. But I got the impression that u/nillouise was discussing AGI which most ML is not. In terms of the singularity (this sub), I don't see it and it is because of the technical focus on applications.

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nillouise t1_iud5nt5 wrote

Yes, stable diffusion is very hot in China, all major AI project (like gpt3, alphago) have a China copy version, and many people want to do AI research. But they less care about the AGI. And I don't see any break change of AI is from China.

Anyway, I am not AI researcher and do not particate in AI conference. But if China can do some crazy AI, I will know it eventually.

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Lopsided_ t1_iucvzyw wrote

You're telling a Chinese man he's wrong about AI in China?

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Rughen t1_iucx8hd wrote

Plenty of Chinese claim the opposite. Are you gonna tell those Chinese people they are wrong about AI in China?

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mutherhrg t1_iudcwr4 wrote

Yeah of course. He's just some random dude. If an American came to me and told me that Biden stole the elections and that 5G caused covid, would you want me to believe that shit because he's American? It's pretty fucking clear that China is all in on A.I at this point, one random dude non-withstanding, as evidence by the massive amount of money and resources they're throwing into it.

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Nmanga90 t1_iuc8ghh wrote

Well it just took a fat hit seeing as we have stopped the export of data center quality processors to them.

I’m not really seeing how they would be able to make a ton of progress without a shit load of a100s like the rest of us

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somethingstrang t1_iudifox wrote

Go to any big AI conference like NeurIPS and you’ll see half the posters are from native Chinese researchers

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OrangeRobots t1_iucp72m wrote

Ernie-vilg 2.0, the world's best text to image ai, just came out from china.

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Americaisaterrorist t1_iuda2ag wrote

https://www.reddit.com/r/ERNIEViLG/ just dropped

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Saerain t1_iudm9vz wrote

World's best, huh.

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CleanThroughMyJorts t1_iuffasi wrote

World's biggest yes, but as recent LLMs and diffusion models show it's not all about size, it's show you use it

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CSGradApps t1_iugg4qd wrote

“It’s not all about size, it’s how you use it”… that’s what she said? 😅

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Cr4zko t1_iucbzvu wrote

I don't think they care much to be honest. Besides China's economy is in the gutter.

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userbrn1 t1_iue15jt wrote

It went from being a nation of illiterate peasants to being the 2nd largest economy in the entire world in less than a century. US political leaders have been publicly and privately shifting an increasing amount of effort into combatting china, even taking extraordinary steps such as banning US companies (like NVIDEA) from selling profitable tech goods to china, harming the US company, because they feel china's meteoric rise is an existential threat to US dominance. How is china's economy "in the gutter" when it is only the second country in post-industrial human history (the first being the failed USSR) to build an economy fast enough to legitimately challenge the US economy in terms of size, productivity, and technological achievement?

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Cr4zko t1_iue4nkl wrote

It's all phony baloney, after 2020 it was never the same. We're talking about guys that make up GDP data by building ghost towns. It's gonna collapse.

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userbrn1 t1_iue5yz8 wrote

People have been saying that for decades. And the US government strongly disagrees with your assessment; you don't increase sanctions and export restrictions on a country you think will collapse on its own. Western leaders are correctly assessing the situation and realizing that China will surpass the US in economic, technological, and military dominance if they don't take increasingly aggressive action to stop it. Listen to Trump and Biden speak on China; it's not longer "we need to improve the US to stay dominant" its now "we need to slow China's rise as much as possible". They all know that it's a losing battle

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Cr4zko t1_iuefm0b wrote

I can't speak with even 85% of certainty (predicting the future with incomplete assessment is hard) but after COVID and after the US stopped selling microprocessors they took a hit. If manufacturing gets pulled out of china altogether (likely in the event of a global depression which we might face) the facade will finally wither and we'll see china for what it truly is. Same old tired story happened with the USSR back in '91. At least that's my personal prediction.

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userbrn1 t1_iueiyy0 wrote

You're right that the microchip stuff took a hit but I think the overall trend upwards will be hard to stop.

Truthfully I think the whole AI thing complicates matters in ways that it couldn't have in the USSR. I agree with many on this sub that AI will enable economic growth that has been unprecedented; 2-5% annual growth will give way to much larger jumps as mass deployment of industrial AI and robotics takes effect. IF (and this is a big if) China is able to roll out this tech faster than western countries, any current advantages the west has will quickly be overshadowed.

Perhaps self driving cars is a good litmus test for this. Western countries were the first ones to seriously make strides in the tech, but now a lot of Chinese cities are working with tech companies to enable taxi services. If China can take the lead in deployment of self driving cars both for personal and industrial use, it would be a good indicator that their unique command-market hybrid was a success in bringing emerging tech to fruition.

Next 5-10 years will be interestin haha

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Cr4zko t1_iuek4oi wrote

Well in case they manage to discover ASI it won't matter anyhow. None of our problems will... at least that's what this sub makes of it.

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