Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42334583

by aaron_p • 9 years ago

125 83 9 years ago

mtgx• 9 years ago

When we'll look back 20 years from now, we'll we see Google in the same light as we did IBM after helping the Nazi with their computers?

Will Google allow its DeepMind technology to be used to spy on Chinese citizens and dissidents?

neikos• 9 years ago

That was exactly my thought, and I do already see them in a similar light.

tanilama3• 9 years ago

Well a fun trivia, a research division of Chinese Policy Department(team named Trimps-Soushen), actually won top3 positions in ImageNet competition.

I think they definitely have, at least, the engineering strength to implement what crazy, SkyNet inspired system themselves, without help from Google/DeepMind ... Which is ... pretty sad, on many levels.

kercker8• 9 years ago

I find your argument rather lame.

First, Chinese government is not Nazi and Google is not IBM. You can't just say that a government is Nazi just because you hate that government.

Second, even if Google openly broke with Chinese government, it still has offices in China. I doubt that Google opens an AI center in China to "allow its DeepMind technology to be used to spy on Chinese citizens and dissidents", and I do think that Google has a big ambition than you can think in China. And I think that ambition is to advance AI with the help of local talents.

musage• 9 years ago

There is a difference between an analogy and a comparison. Just think of it as it working with murderers for commercial gain, and try again, as far as the analogy is concerned.

China is plenty totalitarian, too, so even as a comparison it's not that far off (though you won't be able to follow comparisons either if you think things have to be exactly the same thing to be compared). You might even say the Nazis weren't Nazis before they started and lost their war; if they had stuck with, say, attacking Poland and Russia, and had kept their concentration camps secret (i.e. plausibly deniable), they still might be darlings of Western business elites even today, as Hitler was before the stuff we now have 20/20 hindsight on.

Last but not least, a big ambition is living a life you then don't have to lie to yourself about. Compared to that, "advancing AI" isn't even an ambition, nevermind a big one.

cat1993• 9 years ago

I find your argument rather lame.

not really, he managed to invoke nazis without it actually being godwins law. pretty impressive.

additionally, this is not a ridiculous comparison:

a) monopolistic, rights abusing dictatorship b) large us corp ignoring this to do business there and assist with 'dual use' tools which could be used for malice against its own citizens.

You can't just say that a government is Nazi just because you hate that government.

similarly: you can't just dismiss a government's ills or to derail an argument because you like the people from that country or the stated intent of the action being peformed there by a company you like

opportune11• 9 years ago

At its core, the goal of the two regimes (China, Nazi Germany) is the same: control information so that the existing regime is portrayed in a good light that preserves stability. Just because China isn't genocoding Jews doesn't mean they don't have hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, disadvantaged minorities, and a completely authoritarian government. As is, you would never hear of the North Korean concentration camps that China supports, nor the Tibetan and Uighur genocides that are ongoing.

Google's move is purely financial. Google's biggest ambition is to control Chinese search, but its greatest ambition is to control all search, and the internet as whole. Google, as all other appreciably large tech companies, wants to hold a dominant position in the Chinse market, and to do so is willing to sacrifice market share in inferuor products. How much China gets involved is TB.

The really fun part? Watching corporate entities justify genocide, sexism, racism, etc. in their grabs for dominance over the remaining European provinces.

paradite5• 9 years ago

Spying on citizens and dissidents, even if true, is nothing close to Nazis. For the record,

- China was on the opposite side of Nazis in WW2

- China has 56 ethnic groups and has no plan to "cleanse" any of them

adventured2• 9 years ago

The fact is Communist China has a very deep history of "cleansing" what they define as undesirables, which continues today in various forms. Today (and for decades now) they're aggressively attempting to "cleanse" homosexuals using state resources, torturing thousands of people. [1][2]

China's Communist system also "cleansed" a vast number of people throughout its recent history. Over two decades they murdered (or sent to gulags) hundreds of thousands of intellectuals and similar, who were declared to be class enemies. This in fact likely set China's potential back by decades as Mao's horrific policies severely depleted China's resources.

[1] "China urged to stop using electroshock therapy to ‘convert’ LGBT people"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/11/14...

[2] https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/11/14/china-end-conversion-the...

gurkendoktor2• 9 years ago

All capable governments are spying on their dissidents. However, the CCP also detains dissidents on the basis of its spying even in low-profile cases[1], and has been using prisoners (in other words, more dissidents) as a source of organ "donations" for a long time[2]. All the articles I've read about this topic are about specific religious groups (Uyghurs/Falun Gong). The Chinese treatment of Islam is so openly hostile that it would make Breitbart proud[3]. China is (thankfully) not ethnically cleansing Tibetans, but they are at least cleansing its culture[4]. Also, hi from Taiwan, so thousands of CCP missiles are pointing at the city around me.

I agree that you can't compare the NSDAP to the CCP. But doing business with China is still a very different thing from dealing with most other countries (regardless of whose side they were on in 1945).

[1] http://www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-press-china-zhang-miao... [2] https://international.thenewslens.com/article/82726 [3] https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2015/05/05/china-orde... [4] https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/china-tears-down-the-tibetan...

cat1993• 9 years ago

- China was on the opposite side of Nazis in WW2

so was Stalin - are you saying comparisons between Stalin and Hitler would not be warranted?

baby• 9 years ago

You don't like China. So cute

cat1993• 9 years ago

Sadly no, in 20 years the whiny relativistic people in charge of whichever authoritarian regime they have legitimized via their own apathy will be complaining that people didn't think that this was a 'cool' effort, much as they are doing here.

Cthulhu_2• 9 years ago

Was it known the nazis were evil when IBM helped them? Did IBM even know what their stuff was used for?

Different times, different situations. The US was full of anti-semites too, and didn't hesitate to put anyone with Japanese heritage into concentration camps after Pearl Harbor - and nobody cared. That stuff has been covered up / hardly mentioned, ever since. And the US and its citizens doesn't seem to have a problem putting "enemy combatants" into concentration / torture camps after 9/11 (Guantanamo Bay). And that's just the stuff we know of. There's also the much more mysterious CIA dark sites, who knows what went on in there.

I'm not saying China is any better from a moral standpoint, but the US and the businesses in there - often working together - aren't any better. See also the Snowden leaks, that proved the big tech companies were in cahoots with the NSA, amongst other things to profile for "enemy combatants" in the US.

johansch• 9 years ago

Was it known the nazis were evil when IBM helped them? Did IBM even know what their stuff was used for?

Yes. That was clearly shown in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Edwin Black made a pretty convincing case that the IBM chairman Thomas J. Watson, Sr was quite aware of what the IBM equipment was used for - and actually quite enthusiastic about it all.

So think of that connection next time you use "Watson".

dis-sys2• 9 years ago

When google initially entered the Chinese market more than a decade ago, it offered a censored version of google search conformed to the censorship requirements set by the Chinese government. It argued that the most ethical option was to offer some restricted services to Chinese rather than leave hundreds of millions of Chinese Internet users with limited access to information [1]. Basically it argued that Chinese need google (and other American internet companies) to avoid being left behind in the Internet age.

Interestingly, 7 years after its quit from the Chinese market, the Internet sector in China is booming with 4 out of world's top 10 Internet companies being Chinese companies [2]. Now they are setting up this AI centre, surely that is to help Chinese avoid being left behind in the AI age again.

We will see. ;)

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/why-g...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Internet_compa...

opportune11• 9 years ago

I'm pretty sure that was, from the very beginning, just corporate lingo for "the profits outweigh the moral concerns". In retrospect, it was inevitable that China would develop its own Google/Facebook/Amazon through their strange neo-mercantillist economic strategy.

vatueil• 9 years ago

Google.cn was better than the alternatives, since it at least disclosed when search results had to be censored (sorta like the notices when links are removed due to copyright takedowns). Of course the CPC didn't like that, and it was probably one of the things which ultimately led to Google leaving/being driven out of China.

It would have been much more profitable to simply comply rather than lose the Chinese market, as numerous other Western companies have done.

PeterStuer• 9 years ago

Please understand that we are still in the midst of a 'war for talent' as far as AI is concerned. Since getting them to the US is less likely, Google is just moving to where the talent is.

tanilama3• 9 years ago

True. It is a pretty strong endorsement from Google to setup a specific research division in a country where they effectively get banned. The only logical reason is to hire talents at local price for projects outside of China. Not sure how the return would be though.

opportune11• 9 years ago

Perhaps this is because I don't have the hard facts and figures right in front of me, but I have a hard time believing that foreign tech investments in China really pay off. The Chinese strategy seems to be to woo big foreign companies, build a critical mass of local users who want the product, ban or otherwise limit the foreign company's influence in China, then develop a home-grown Chinese version of the foreign company's product with state support and the newly acquired domestic talent.

If Google accomplishes anything worthwhile at this research center, won't China just shut it down and re-employ those researchers at a domestic company? Why do high-tech companies even continue to try to break into China?

tanilama3• 9 years ago

Because talents in China are good and cheaper, look at MSRA.

kristianov• 9 years ago

Regulations and moral standards on AI research is PERMISSIVE. We have seen the same "advantage" in Chinese stem cell and embryonic research as well.

opportune11• 9 years ago

Fair, but in my opinion a researcher who first publishes X result is usually the best equipped to first publish (or not publish, simply discover/use) Y result which depends on X. If we freely gave all US military research to Zimbabwe they wouldn't develop a top-tier military program because they don't have the expertise to understand and implement the knowledge that we have. This isn't the case with China

kercker8• 9 years ago

An AI center is not a product like a search engine or Windows, or an e-commerce site.

It helps China cultivate talents, why would China limit its influence.

MSRA accomplishes many things worthwhile such as ResNet in China, and it prospers now. Some researchers enter MSRA, and some leave. They enter or leave not because the government force them to do so, they enter or leave because they can tell where opportunity resides.

opportune11• 9 years ago

I'm not asking why China would limit it, I'm asking what Google gains from it.

If Google's top talent in China will mostly be poached within the next 10 years, is it really worthwhile to open a research center there? MSRA is a very good example, but at the end of the day, it's still a training ground for Chinese researchers. Paradoxically, the more important it is that Chinese researchers work on at Google China, the more likely that Google is to lose those researchers to government or private competitors.

bkeroack• 9 years ago

Google the phrase "forced technology transfer".

The basic strategy is to woo Western companies with extremely cheap labor and vague promises about access to the Chinese market, in order to get the companies to export most/all of their capital equipment and business expertise overseas. Then this is used as leverage to force them to adopt PRC-friendly policies (see Apple and government censorship in China, for example) and IP transfer to Chinese firms. Keep in mind that in China there is no objective judicial system as in the West to mediate disputes between the government and firms; once your assets are there you are at the mercy of the PRC.

It's really important to understand that this is a long-term geopolitical strategy by the PRC to supplant the US as the dominant global superpower, and a big part of it is siphoning off the industrial and manufacturing capacity of the west (see One Belt One Road Initiative).

setecgastronomy2• 9 years ago

but I have a hard time believing that foreign tech investments in China really pay off.

If it didn't pay off, apple wouldn't be the most valuable company in the world.

The Chinese strategy seems to be to woo big foreign companies, build a critical mass of local users who want the product, ban or otherwise limit the foreign company's influence in China

What else do you expect them to do? Cede their entire market to foreigners? Every country did the same thing. The europeans did it. We did it in the US. The japanese and the south koreans. It's really common sense.

If Google accomplishes anything worthwhile at this research center, won't China just shut it down and re-employ those researchers at a domestic company?

If they did, why would google invest in china? It's been 40 years. If investing in china wasn't lucrative, it would have ended a long time ago.

Why do high-tech companies even continue to try to break into China?

The real question is why is it that we get the exact same type of comments in every thread about china?

Go through every china related thread on HN and every single one has the exact same comments. Why?

equalunique• 9 years ago

Did anyone else here grow up being told that the Chinese government stole search technology from Google when they tried to do business there, and this is how Baidu got started?

kercker8• 9 years ago

Once www.people.cn (the website of People's Daily) built a search engine and failed. If Chinese government stole search technology from Google, why would it give it to Baidu not to a search engine set up by its mouthpiece?

Baidu had already been popular in China before Google officially entered China, so there is no 'this is how Baidu got started' thing.

cmrdporcupine• 9 years ago

No idea if they stole anything and I wouldn't/couldn't/won't make any claims about that etc. but what I've seen of Baidu's open sourced offerings, they are based on Google's publically promoted/published designs down to the types of components (their own implementations of protobuf RPC, GFS, etc.), class names, API C++ style, etc.

Lots of others have done this (some parts of Facebook, too) and I don't think this was based on Google source code or anything, but it doesn't exactly smell terribly innovative on its own?

adventured2• 9 years ago

No, that's an abnormal and rare accusation in fact.

Robin Li was working in the US on search before Google existed. That includes at IDD and Infoseek.

Circa 1999-2000, if you understood how PageRank worked (along with some other similar approaches), combined with some funding, talented engineers, and Li's background in search, it would not have been necessary to steal technology from Google to found something like Baidu.

whooshee5• 9 years ago

Didn't expect a simple job offering would bring all these political arguments and speculation from people hardly read any Chinese or understand Chinese history & economics. smh. It's just business, China has a strong STEM talent pool, and Google can easily select them from top in top at a competitive price.

setecgastronomy2• 9 years ago

Every HN thread about china has the exact same anti-chinese comments. Every single one.

vonnik• 9 years ago

An under-reported fact is that Google has done more than any other country to help spread the use of AI in China. AlphaGo was a Sputnik moment that galvanized the government, which threw its weight behind AI a few months later. TensorFlow is widely used and Google is paying evangelists to tour the country, giving speeches and writing books about its use. This hiring center is just one piece of a larger strategy for them to ensure that TensorFlow wins the API wars in machine learning.

Top19• 9 years ago

Please HN don’t censor this comment. I legitimately believe that the US and China are on the road to war, and this war will draw on in all the powers of the world.

This comment might be mocked, but if you read into history you can see how unbelievable war seemed within weeks of a conflict. The day WWI broke out the French and German ambassador were trying out each other’s cars and drinking wine in Alsace.

This research center is a bad idea. It’s like if the University of Chicago and Enrico Fermi decided to establish their atomic research lab in Munich in the 1930’s.

Don’t see this as an anti-Chinese comment, if anything the fault lies with Americans who abused, overused, and failed to adjust an international trade/monetary system. The fact that our government is now run by no one who served in or remembered World War II / The Great Depression seems a likely cause of how we went down this path.

If you’re curious for more on this, look into how close the US came to war with China in 1995 in Taiwan. Also look up the RAND Corporation’s study on war with China from 2015.

Cthulhu_2• 9 years ago

How many wars were started over tensions concerning research centers / science? WW1 was started by an assassination, WW2 by an aggressive annexation of countries and race-based extermination.

If China and the US go to war, it'll probably be over aggression in North Korea; not over a corporately funded scientific research center.

dontreact• 9 years ago

The parent comment is not claiming that war will start because of a research lab. (S)he is saying it is against the interest of the US to start an AI lab there because AI will be critical to the war effort if there is war.

hungerstrike• 9 years ago

That's a gross oversimplification of the reasons for 2 world wars.

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

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

alexmlamb22• 9 years ago

I kind of think war could happen, not for the reasons you listed, but because the odds of the US winning such a war might be good but will only go down with time, which is the kind of dynamic that leads to aggression.

prewett• 9 years ago

Why would the US go to war with China? What would we gain from it? The US would like real access to the Chinese market, but war isn't a good way to do that, because the Chinese population would refuse to buy anything from US companies. Additionally, the first thing that would happen in a war is that China would stop manufacturing things for US companies, which would massively disrupt the companies, probably cause a stock market crash (for whatever that's worth) because of lowered future profit, and create a shortage of consumer goods. We actually benefit from the way things are now, we get cheap consumer goods, and we get sort-of access to the Chinese market.

c128• 9 years ago

this will be an extremely good fit, china and google. Their ideologies for the most part are the same.

reacweb2• 9 years ago

Since the beginning, Google has claimed it was an AI company. They have killed their mantra "do no evil" and now they are putting labs in a country with lower values of ethic. Recently they were selling their robotic activity because it was too frightening. All their actions are consistent with a single aim: build an AI like in singularity or terminator.

kercker8• 9 years ago

Maybe you should not use anything Made in China, 'a country with lower values of ethic', because anything Made in China you consumed contribute to the economy of the China.

If you continue to use made in China, your criticizing Google setting up an AI lab in China is just hypocrisy.

reacweb2• 9 years ago

I did not expect my comment to be interpreted as a critic of China. I have nothing against Chinese people and I am glad that Google setting in China will help the country to develop.

devy• 9 years ago

A lot of people still are questioning the motion. But it's fair and simple: Google needs to tap local Chinese AI talents. Their size is grow so large that it can't be ignore. And you don't have to read it between the lines, it's front and center on the Google's official blog post[1], stated by Google Chief Scientist for AI/ML Feifei Li:

     China is home to many of the world's top experts in artificial intelligence (AI) 
     and machine learning. All three winning teams of the ImageNet Challenge 
     in the past three years have been largely composed of Chinese researchers. 
     Chinese authors contributed 43 percent of all content in the top 100 AI journals in 2015 
     and when the Association for the Advancement of AI discovered that 
     their annual meeting overlapped with Chinese New Year this year, they rescheduled.

[1]: https://www.blog.google/topics/google-asia/google-ai-china-c...

Google to open artificial intelligence centre in China

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