[wycs]

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]

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]

> 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.

[dang]

We've asked you before not to do nationalistic flamewar on HN, but you've kept doing it, as well as repeatedly becoming uncivil. If you continue to comment like this we're going to ban you. I'm not banning you for this comment because at least it contains factual information, but if the pattern continues, that's what will happen.

If the rest of the internet is going up in flames about this, that's more reason, not less, to take better care of HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[ng12]

I'm not sure what your contention is. Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive?

I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that free societies should not economically support oppressive ones.

[dang]

Please don't do nationalistic flamewar on Hacker News. This comment takes the thread a major step further into hell.

[TeMPOraL]

> I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that free societies should not economically support oppressive ones.

That is a great idea. Except it's not really what's at play here. If it were, then the US would ban all imports from China, and not just ones where it feels it needs to maintain a strategic advantage. It would also stop supporting Saudis.

I believe what GP is trying to communicate is that US struggle against Chinese government for maintaining top superpower status, thinly veiled as concern for human rights, is unnecessarily hurting Chinese people.

[yourbandsucks]

Compared to whom?

We imprison more of our own people than them and we wage war all over the world, but people don't see it in their daily life so it's just background noise.

Maybe the basis should be cooperation and understanding rather than demonization and fear.

[echevil]

> Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive?

I believe it's way too harmful to simply categorize government into "free" vs "bad/corrupt/authoritarian/oppressive". There're a large number of other factors to consider. I agree Chinese government has tons of problems, just like US government has tons of problems of its own, just different.

At the bottom line, Chinese government is making tons of efforts to improve the economy of the country and improve the life of all the citizens. "According to the World Bank, more than 500 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty as China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 2012, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China

> Do you not believe the Chinese government to be corrupt, authoritarian, and/or oppressive?

I agree there're corruption in Chinese government. Anti-corruption is a one of the main focus of Chinese government in the past few years. Moreover, corruption has nothing to do with 'freedom' vs 'non-freedom'. There are way too many heavily corrupted democratic government in the world.

Is it authoritarian? Yes there is only one party in power - the CPC. The party has close to 100 million members throughout the country, which is close to 1/10 of the entire population. You can't possibly consider a party like that to be a single entity. There's also semi-democratic process: People elect representatives and they form National People's Congress - highest organ of state power in China.

Is it oppressive? Well, media censorship is a thing, and if you had to go on the street and protest the government in the same way you'd protest Trump, the government might invite you to "have a talk". But people still talk shit about the government all the time in private and on social media. The comments are likely to get deleted / banned. That sucks, but it is not something that could hugely impact the quality of life of regular citizens. You can still hear lots of dissident voices on the internet, and the government would often respond to that in positive ways.

[ng12]

You're not wrong, the Chinese government works well for you if you're Han Chinese living near an urban area who doesn't have any problematic political leanings. The problem is the world is the world is not made solely of such people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/world/asia/china-detentio...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2018/10/16/organ-h...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-dea...

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/beijing-encroachment-hong-kong-fre...

If you believe China lifting people out of poverty excuses a laundry-list of human rights abuses we'll have to agree to disagree.

[echevil]

Interestingly I just replied to someone else asking about minorities groups in China, you can find it just by searching for my handle. Long story short: It's fine to live in China as a minority group.

I've also expressed my opinion about some other issues like Xinjiang in another thread if you're interested:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439175

I'm not saying there aren't tons of problems with Chinese government. But from the point of view of a Chinese citizen, the human right issues are mostly excuses that western media use to attack Chinese government; a lots of those are false claims; and even for the parts that'd be truth, it impacts very few amount of people and it's generally not a big concern for vast majority of people living in China no matter Han or not (Not saying violating human right is fine but the issue has much lower priority for most people)

[landryraccoon]

> “These kids are all exceptionally bright, but being bright is not enough,” said a BIT professor who was involved in the screening process but asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

> “We are looking for other qualities such as creative thinking, willingness to fight, a persistence when facing challenges,” he said. “A passion for developing new weapons is a must … and they must also be patriots.”

I think it's fair to say the students they are recruiting can't have any misgivings about the fact that their projects will have military applications.

[malmsteen]

>> China is full of extremely bright, hardworking people. It is not a nation of brain-washed automatons

Thats a ridiculous argument: they are 1.5MM, im pretty sure you can find a few milions smart enough who fit the description of the parent comment.

Its not racist or whatnot.. every nation has its smart fanatics

[_1qd4]

[flagged]

[dang]

I'm not sure how you thought it was ok to comment like this here, but it isn't, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[kwizzt]

Can you show me some sources for the claim that 'Chinese people do not using toilets in much of the country'? For all I know, it's the Indians and some Middle East countries that prefer water over toilet paper.

[jbob2000]

Sources? Have you been to China? It's only in some major cities that places have toilets, otherwise you use a hole in the ground!

[kwizzt]

Yes I have been to China, as I was born and raised in China. I've been to small villages, towns and large cities. I would say that very few places are actually not using toilets like the some places in north-western/south-western part of China. However, the majority of the Chinese people live in other parts along the coast and major water bodies.

I remember when I was very little, so at least 20 years ago, there were no toilets in the village I was born in. It has not remained that case since then. I would say your information is pretty stale.

[pentae]

Just curious what your background experience is that causes you to take this stance that they are not all brain-washed automatons? Is this based on Mainland Chinese you've met in the US? Or in Mainland China?

[yourbandsucks]

It's probably based on the fact that they're human beings.

Since when does progressivism mean "try to understand and respect other cultures, except the Chinese, fuck them"? When did that last part get added?

[TeMPOraL]

When the Soviet Union collapsed and China became the last political power playing on the same level as the US.

You'd think that after all the recorded historical examples of populations being duped into believing some other group of people is subhuman - countless cases since the Ancient Rome to the XX century, all of them discussed on history lessons in western schools - you'd think people would be less willing to accept another round of the same propaganda classifying a whole society as inferior. It's sad that we still can't avoid that trap.

I've been to China and met Chinese people. They're normal. People, like everyone else, with problems like everyone else, with dreams and fears and passions, like everyone else.

[yourbandsucks]

The thing that's crazy, though, is the "liberals" are leading the red scare / nationalist charge here.