Posted on 04/11/2008 5:26:53 PM PDT by Dr. Marten
Ping!
I tell ya this If you eat Chinese food and your hungry again in an hour They had us against the ropes along time ago
I guess I just can't even stomach a paragraph of bulls--t anymore.
interesting error on the caption of the car picture. I guess the author was mesmerized by his fears.
Usually essays expose a problem then proffer a solution. This is nothing but a “sky-is-falling” rant. I’ll look forward to the conclusion in this series.
Excellent, thoughtful, perceptive post.
Thanks.
People still seem to be missing the paradigm shift that’s coming with advanced in computation over the next two decades.
I’ve said it before here, but I’ll repeat myself.
The first person to get AI wins, and it doesn’t matter how many people, engineers or PHds you have (even billions), China can’t compete with self engineering AI systems.
This is if you accept exceptionally optimistic notions like those coming from MIT alum Kurzweil. And even if you don’t, clearly, the lead people have in automation and computing technology will blast beyond the manpower of communist China.
Who’s getting the patents for this technology? MSFT for example, and Japanese and Korean companies.
Not China. And China must uphold the law. Therefore, China is a paper tiger IMHO.
China also should have owned the world in the last two centuries eh?
If manpower were the key, it would have.
But manpower wasn’t the key then and they didn’t. Turned out technology was the key.
But the paradigm shift was subtle then too, just as it is now.
Robotics and technology can easily overpower and squash manpower and human engineering.
You can bet Japan sees this and Japan ultimately will dominate Asia(followed in a close second by KOR).
I’d bet my 401k on it.
Except the world is not in the 19th Century anymore.
Much of China's schism with the west is - from Chinese perspective, that China is not doing anything that the western (and Japanese) imperial power didn't themselves do back in the 18th and 19th century - in fact, with some of that western imperialism applied towards China. So China tend to reject western objection to Chinese policies as hypocritical in a historical context.
But, we don't live in the 19th Century anymore. And what China is doing in its exercise of modern imperialism is clearly not acceptable in the 21st Century.
The trick is how do we get China off it's 19th Century based mindset and join the 21st Century?
What do you mean specifically by the first person to get AI wins? I’ve been in the AI business for over 20 years. It has been inside products for over a generation in both the US and in Asia.
In fact, I’ll just continue to blab on by replying to myself here.
I am interested in robotics and like to spend money, so I figured I’d get a semi-serious robot like Roboloid, but in my quest, I quickly realized all of the high end robots for serious hobbying are made in Korea/Japan.
Canada and the US make the best hobby planes. Go figure.
China is for cheap-shit knockoff plastic robots mass produced to sell at Best Buy.
And the US? The US can only hope to dominate here by being number 1 in AI, but we’re getting our asses kicked in mechanical engineering.
Japan has traditionally placed much more emphasis on engineering (like actual engineering of physical systems), whereas they have lacked interest in software. They’re trying to change this. MSFT has a lot of patents and does a lot of original research, so we’re fairly well protected here from complete domination.
It may take physical systems engineered and produced in Kor and Japan as well as software engineered in the US or Germany to get the first truly magnificent AI off the ground, but obviously missing from this formula is China.
Again, if you think those giant Japanese and Korean brains are going to stand by and watch China take over, think again.
I’m talking about strong AI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI
The computational ability of the brain hasn’t even been achieved yet and probably isn’t due for at least 20 years (based on Kurzweil’s research), so there’s no way any strong AI system exsits anywhere in the world, yet.
If you accept Penrose’s conjecture, then strong AI is a long way off, but very few people think our brains work on a quantum level.
Marvin Minsky doesn’t, and he’s the man in AI (not to disparage Penrose).
Well, that was a class A hand wringer. We might as well just go out and shoot ourselves.
I think you discount the magic of the Christian faith
Did I come across that way? I did not mean it that way.
I suppose that I should consider more before I post.
The simple minded are always impressed by authoritarian regimes. They confuse a large group of people, all performing the same or similar tasks as “efficiency”. However, the truth of the matter is that such regimes are the furthest thing from efficient, and what efficiency there is, is likely either a holdover from a previous regime, or outside of governmental control to some extent.
If you objectively look at China, you get a very different picture. Expressions like “penny wise-pound foolish” and “mortgaging their future” come to mind. Their illusion of central control is betrayed by the reality of a confederacy of provinces, each who ignore the regime with relative impunity.
Perhaps the greatest irony is how much the typical Chinese *wants* the central government to succeed, and even more, to enforce its dictates over the provinces. The vast majority of the tens of thousands of protests that happen every year are in hopes that their national government will enforce its laws against the illegal activities of provincial and local governments.
Yet these protests are bizarrely seen as “anti-state”, and the central government brutally suppresses its most ardent supporters, while allowing provincial and local governments to run amok.
So what is going to happen? The Chinese economy is unsustainable, and most likely will have a major collapse in the near future. What happens from that point is critical. An efficient government would have a massive restructuring, but this will most likely not happen. What will happen is bizarre.
Throughout Chinese history, a reoccurring theme is the cyclic nature of China. Emperors were seen like the seasons of the year, and were trained from birth to carry out whatever their seasonal assignment was to be. The first of the four cycles was the “builder” emperor, who would recreate China from scratch. All new buildings, lots of new and untested ideas.
His successor was the “maintenance” emperor, who would get everything newly built running smoothly as a system. China would be harmonious. He was followed by the “degenerate” emperor, who would pull his government back to Beijing, and let the country fall apart, everything decaying and in disrepair.
Finally, the fourth emperor, the “water” emperor, would destroy everything and probably slaughter millions of people, using chaos to cleanse the country and eliminate the detritus. Then the cycle would begin anew with a “builder” emperor.
Everyone in China followed this system, and would carry out whatever would forward the current emperor. But they would ignore orders contrary to the purpose of the emperor. So there really was no choice in the matter.
Ironically enough, Mao Tse Tung, had he been emperor, would have been a “water”, destroying emperor. And he behaved like one, because even though he was a communist and supposedly above all that, everyone expected it of him.
Well, right now, China is moving from a “maintenance” cycle into a “decadence” cycle, or is possibly further along and nearing a “water” cycle. But that is not a good place for China to be, if their economy is about to collapse.
It will either mean that China will have either an extended depression, the country in chaos and collapse, or they are going to have an incredibly bloody civil war, destroying most of the country. Or another tyrant like Mao who will slaughter people like there is no tomorrow.
In any event, it doesn’t look good.
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