China Has Won AI Battle With US, Pentagon's Ex-software Chief Says (reuters.com) 176
China has won the artificial intelligence battle with the United States and is heading towards global dominance because of its technological advances, the Pentagon's former software chief told the Financial Times. From a report: China, the world's second largest economy, is likely to dominate many of the key emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics within a decade or so, according to Western intelligence assessments. Nicolas Chaillan, the Pentagon's first chief software officer who resigned in protest against the slow pace of technological transformation in the U.S. military, said the failure to respond was putting the United States at risk.
"We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it's already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion," he told the newspaper. "Whether it takes a war or not is kind of anecdotal." China was set to dominate the future of the world, controlling everything from media narratives to geopolitics, he said.
"We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it's already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion," he told the newspaper. "Whether it takes a war or not is kind of anecdotal." China was set to dominate the future of the world, controlling everything from media narratives to geopolitics, he said.
Ah Shit (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ah Shit (Score:4, Funny)
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Actually, most speak English as a 2nd language
Indeed. Baidu's has big research centers in Seattle and Sunnyvale, California. Many of the people working there are American citizens, so perhaps it is a bit silly to label the innovations from these labs as "Chinese".
when they say bend over you will understand.
Just in case, "bend over" in Mandarin is "Wan yao!'
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My personal experience in several major and minor Chinese cities says this is not true.
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Agreed. If they can all write English, they mostly can't speak it.
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They will have a translation AI (Score:2)
Now I have to learn Chinese ...
No, they have an AI that will translate for you :-)
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Does it please you to have to learn Chinese? Please elucidate.
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The US military does have a significant disadvantage though. Our tech companies no longer actually think of themselves as US companies and in many cases are largely dominated by imported workers. Many of them refuse to work on US military technology applications and produc
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Our schools and military are more concerned about teaching social justice, equity....
I mean, we have examples of newer teaching texts showing how math is racist and part of the white supremicist patriarchy.
China, for all of its faults...and there are a LOT...don't waste their students' or military members time with such claptrap.
Hell, pretty much no one else in the world is letting this BS get in the way of actually experience real education and training a military
empires rise and fall (Score:2)
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Cool. How long before we have the British Empire, V2.0?
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For decades, the not-so-joke has almost always been, there is London, and there is England. And it has nothing to do with the whiteness of the citizenry.
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..always been, there is London, and there is England.
"As always.... England prevails."
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For decades, the not-so-joke has almost always been, there is London, and there is England. And it has nothing to do with the whiteness of the citizenry.
The difference between England and London was instrumental in preventing Matilda being crowned queen in ~1140.
Re: empires rise and fall (Score:2)
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The Mongols would like a word with your theory. After them, probably the Persians, Khmer, Aztec, Inca, and probably several more.
Re:empires rise and fall (Score:4, Informative)
The Mongols would like a word with your theory.
... also, the British reached the top after the decline of the Spanish Empire, which was a shift north and slightly east rather than to the west. Then the crown shifted further east to France under Louis XIV and Napoleon. Then back to Britain after Waterloo.
So plenty of complicated shifting and reversals rather than a steady progression from east to west.
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has anyone noticed how geographically empires follow the path of the sun (more or less?) .
No, I haven't, because its a failed pattern you think you see. Try again.
Wait, they are only saying this *NOW*? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Personally I don't understand why he thinks China - or anybody - will be able to dominate this realm so decisively, because AI is just algorithms and datasets. It will proliferate freely.
His evaluation all rests in his belief than an amoral authoritarian system will triumph. But that just sounds like a redux of the
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Its not news this is the guy dufus that said he could fix all the problems in six months. Now I am not saying current state of things and the degree of progress should be described as anything but abysmal; but anyone who knows as much about and had as much experience in "enterprise IT" as he claims knows you don't fix all of the pentagons IT security problems in six months, at least not without creating bigger operational risk than you had to start with.
Maybe he had some good ideas but frankly the entire t
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What am I missing? What futuristic technologies do they have
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Just Pentagon funding tricks (Score:2)
The significance of this statement is that it's from somebody who was in more of a position to know than a random internet punter. Doesn't mean he's correct, but it's newsworthy I suppose. Personally I don't understand why he thinks China - or anybody - will be able to dominate this realm so decisively, because AI is just algorithms and datasets. It will proliferate freely. His evaluation all rests in his belief than an amoral authoritarian system will triumph. But that just sounds like a redux of the Cold War - "We will bury you."
It sounds like a call for more Pentagon funding for AI.
Its reminiscent of the 1960s/70s coming Russian dominance in Air Superiority via the MiG-25 Foxbat stories. Stories that loosened Congressional purse strings for the F-15 and F-14 projects.
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AI is just algorithms and datasets.
That's why China is ahead, they have moved beyond just training adversarial networks on big datasets.
Google was warned about this by their head of AI, who they fired seemingly in retaliation. Algos and datasets does produce some useful and impressive results, but it's never going to produce a general purpose AI. For example we have seen novels written by that kind of AI and they make little sense, even if the sequences of words by themselves meet grammar rules and sound like fragments of other works stitche
Pentagon wants more money. (Score:2)
Film at 11, which I will miss because I go to bed earlier than that.
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And I was going to say "great, sounds like we can go ahead cut the military budget to pay for health care."
Nicolas Chaillan was not Pentagon's software chief (Score:5, Informative)
The party is pretty busy suppressing domestic foes (Score:5, Insightful)
And China having their AI-driven Cyborg warriors invade western countries to me seems much less of a threat to our freedom than western governments copying the authoritative methods from China to fulfill their lust for power.
Miltary says we're losing a battle (Score:2)
I'm sure the two are unconnected.
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The PLA has AI but no data. (Score:2, Insightful)
The PLA might have AI, but they have no real data to feed that AI.
Just look at what's happening on the India/Chinese border: they're attacking each other with sticks and rocks. That's going to be a great input for their ML system when it comes to fighting a real conflict, for sure.
Surprise! (Score:3)
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IT seems to be a little more valued than engineering
Please share whatever you're smoking.
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I've never heard of an IT guy getting more respect than an engineer, but OK.
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State control and oh yeah no ethics permitted. (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
"Chaillan blamed sluggish innovation, the reluctance of U.S. companies such as Google (GOOGL.O) to work with the state on AI and extensive ethical debates over the technology.
Google was not immediately available for comment outside business hours.
Chinese companies, Chaillan said, were obliged to work with their government and were making "massive investment" in AI without regard to ethics."
So in his opinion we just need state control of technology, and oh yeah, fuck ethics too.
Re: State control and oh yeah no ethics permitted. (Score:2)
Ethics are relative. In China everything that advances Chinese superiority is an ethical first
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Ah but our military could do so much with genetics and synthetic biology. Who needs a draft when we can go all Star Wars and create clone soldiers.
Disclaimer: "No American soldiers were harmed in the making of this war."
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I don't know about you but I got a certain petulance about his stance when reading TFA. Yes, our DoD is surely a lumbering beast; many others here have made the point that all big organizations develop inertia. And I imagine that it would be good to have some energy spent on clearing a path for more nimble activity. But to say that we've "lost" and China has "won" is reductio ad absurdam.
This kind of argument ignores a lot of known problems China has (e.g. Evergrande/ property market bubble, energy short
Title is clickbait and misrepresents fact as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
Get Woke, Go Broke? (Score:2, Troll)
US scientists were complaining about this for some time, so I guess this is expected outcome of progessive revolution in USA.
See article "As US Schools Prioritize Diversity Over Merit, China Is Becoming the World’s STEM Leader":
https://quillette.com/2021/08/... [quillette.com]
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh. Thirty years ago jocks were shoving geeks in lockers. China, and other places in the developing world, are becoming STEM leaders because they value STEM education and people who have it.
China has a three thousand year tradition of meritocracy. The US has a few thousand years of hereditary rule followed by a few hundred of worshipping football players and actors. If you think it's got anything to do with "diversity" then you're just selecting a politically convenient scapegoat.
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Well that and China can outlaw the locker. Saving many a childhood. Oh, and about that whole sports worship. One word: Olympics.
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You focus too much on the bling. China has had some form of monarchy sitting on a fancy chair, but right underneath them is a powerful bureaucracy that was generally chosen by merit. China instituted the first, or among the first, civil service exams, open to pretty much everybody.
In contrast, public offices in Europe were typically given out based on straight up hereditary nobility, or slightly less blatant nepotism.
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I am not quite ready to believe the link between diversity efforts and worst performance at the top end. I am not saying there is not an effect, but I don't think that is what it is.
China has spent the bulk of the last 40 years trying to catch up in term of education and industrialization.
The US over the last 40 years has massively underfunded its education systems. We all saw the increase in tuition from universities and the related increase in student loan. But that massive increase in tuition did not com
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I don't think it's the progressives that have made education generally unavailable in the US. If anything, the left wants to increase funding and accessibility of education, while the right considers it some form of unamerican communism. The US has had an anti-intellectual streak for a long time now, mostly coming from the conservative side with their distrust of expertise and thinking in general.
What a bunch of horse shit (Score:2)
As for the rest of it: utter and complete nonsense. I'll believe it when I see it, until then I'm treating it like the nonsense it is.
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Course it is. Look at how many dupes we get.
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Just because it doesn't do what the name calls it doesn't mean it doesn't do anything useful. Let us know when your conventional technology can do a better job at classifying images than a deep neural net.
because panic motivates (Score:2)
The chaos and panic of 9/11 was what brought us in to our continuous war with the Middle East. It brought us Homeland Security and many other losses of freedom that delighted certain elements of our government and military and military suppliers.
Instigating panic is what governments and military do and have done throughout history to get what they want. People become much more complacent and obedient when a great vague threat hangs over their heads. Is the Chinese Terror the next phase as we move our milita
Re: because panic motivates (Score:3)
If the US doesnâ(TM)t even care about their own children getting killed at school, there is no chance anything else will get them off their asses except to go down to the mall for more guns, more bibles, and a large order of deep-fried rat dicks.
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I guess it is OK then, Tucker. A long-standing tradition of ballistic infanticide.
It makes one proud to be an American, where at least I know Im free.
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The number killed in school shootings pales before the number of people killed for profit by the American military, literally more servicemembers have killed themselves while deployed to foreign theaters than have been killed in school shootings.
That isn't to say that school shootings aren't serious, but that America is much better characterized by the people it's murdered externally than internally.
Being proud to be an American means being proud to bankroll murder for money.
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The chaos and panic of 9/11 was what brought us in to our continuous war with the Middle East.
Proxy wars count too [wikipedia.org].
No to be too dismissive (Score:3)
But anyone else old enough to remember The Bomber Gap?
Well, no kidding (Score:3)
Sub-par education for two generations, the myth that the US can thrive as a services-only economy, coupled with worship of the wealthy few. The low IQ people that are supposed to manage things waste nearly two decades obstructing progress, while yearning to go backwards. No wonder that China is passing everybody in the fast lane. And what will the US government do? Try and slow them up instead of getting competitive. This is no surprise at all. The comments here that are in denial fit the pattern perfectly. Canâ(TM)t say Iâ(TM)m surprised and give us maybe six years at best before it all gets blown up to hell. Big surprise we canâ(TM)t survive forever on nothing but bullshit.
Talking about the military, not the corps. (Score:2)
Basically, his logic is as follows:
1) US Corporations refuse to engage in corrupt privacy invading techniques used by China.
2) Government cyber security departments are run by people that do not know what they are doing and often are sub-standard.
3) Therefore China is beating us in everything.
He fails to understand multiple counter-arguments:
1) The privacy invading stuff is wasted effort of the government to attack their own people, not a profitable endeavor.
2) While they spend their money controlling thei
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Whenever MIC talks about China winning (Score:2)
It's time to change the channel.
Comment removed (Score:3)
More successful? Yeah right (Score:2)
Ask all those people clamoring to enter China how successful China is.
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Americans are flocking to China.
B.S.
About 150k Chinese citizens emigrate from China to live in America every year. There are not even 149,000 Americans living in China TOTAL. Americans are not clamoring to leave for China. Anyone in the tech industry can look over the cube walls and count a few Chinese immigrants who gave up their citizenship to come to America.
The biggest obstacle to moving to China is learning the Chinese language. It is vastly difficult to learn as an adult. Most immigrants to China are already ethnically Chinese
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Learn to internet, noob. All I did was google "how many americans live in china" and I instantly knew more about this than you, with your amateur Tucker Carlson imitation. Nobody here is impressed when you ask easily answered questions. That shit works on Faux News viewers because their heads are filled with nothing but fear and bul
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Big Whoop. (Score:2)
No big deal (Score:2)
I would have been more worried if it was Skynet that declared China had won the AI war, and so it retaliated with nukes on our behalf.
Bitter (Score:2)
I'd like to hear this from another person who doesn't have a bone to pick.
A serious risk. (Score:3)
I think we all know things between China and the US will end up kinetic eventually. As in, firing shit at each other.
The battlespace will primarily be oceans. No huge Chinese army will march across Asia to Europe for example.
The secret to winning wars on oceans now is missiles and subs. Missiles as they are hard to intercept, and subs as they are very hard to find. All the surface ships will be scrap at the bottom of the sea in short order.
AI holds the promise of greatly increased sub detection capability. I saw one paper that predicted AI driven capability would effective render the oceans transparent to subs by 2050. There goes the deterrence value of having invisible boats loaded with weapons that can hit you without warning.
That's just about the only thing keeping the CCP in check.
This doesn't bode well.
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I think its unclear what the battle space for surface ships will look like besides a lot of missiles flying around, at least half of them defensive to knock out incoming enemy missiles, along with extensive systems to thwart targeting intelligence.
I read something yesterday that China's weakness in the South China Sea is targeting radars. They're relying on AWACS-like planes launched off sand islands which means they're relying on a fixed launch platform which can be contested more easily than one capable o
until china's economy implodes. (Score:2)
the soviet union was scary too.... until it wasn't.
Re: until china's economy implodes. (Score:2)
No. Communist economy sucks. Fascist economy trives.
The west successfully 'transitioned' China from communism to fascism.
Only....most Communist countries colapsed without bloodshed, even domestically.
Fascist countries however, required a World War to be disposed off.
Congratulations!
No problem! (Score:2)
I, for one welcome our new masters (Score:2)
A country that has never attacked another, has built fantastic roads in 3rd world countries, values trade above the military, has thousands of years of civilization and culture . . .
America seems to want to pick a cold war with its new rival, but economics always wins out in the end.
Cue for the shills and trolls to list out human rights violations, (pot calling kettle black) the horrors of autocratic government (gotta love the polarised politics alternative) and a host of
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Is everything a "Battle" with Americans? (Score:2)
It's like Americans have only 3 topics around which all their public discourse and sayings and morals revolve:
1. War
2. Money
3. Cars
So I guess "losing" the "AI" "battle" (yes, they all need quotes), is what you get, when you put all your resources in the military industry and none in education.
Compare to Space Race (Score:3)
I'm minded to think of the space race. Way back when, massive investment on a scale only governments are realistically capable of, the US put man on the moon in the 60s. Commercial space is bringing down the cost requirements, but has yet to get even as far as a US government programme from the 60s. In this case, the US is leaving too much to private industry, whereas China's AI race is driven by government money in a way that the US (and other Western countries) really need to replicate. The AI race today is perhaps even more important than the space race during the Cold War, and needs to be treated accordingly by Western governments.
Improperly quoted (Score:2)
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6853078242220363776/
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> Good bye Taiwan, without a U.S. interested in protecting your anonymity y
I believe you meant "protecting your autonomy". And you're correct: Hong Kong was left alone after its initial ingestion for a few years because it is a major trade center in the global economy, but they're losing their very limited political and economic autonomy step by step.
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The US doesn't do a bunch of mining in Afghanistan. What would happen if we tried? Oh, right, terrorists would kill all the workers.
A bunch of Chinese atheists are going to build a mine in Afghanistan? lol what happens when their workers get killed? What do the jingos on weibo say? Send the military to protect the mine? Are they going to do that? Or let the local tribal chief keep it, since he's a Muslim and he can tell the terrorists the land belongs to him? The terrorists don't want to run the mine themse
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The Taliban know that China doesn't fuck around. Instead of half-ass sending some troops to "guard this base" with easily attackable convoys, China will be actively mining and hunting Taliban down their holes to "re-educate" them, and the ones they can't catch, they will just send a drone to root out their camps, men, women, etc.
China doesn't have to worry about bad press like the US had to. They can do some "housecleaning" and mine whatever resources they choose unmolested, with sentry drones and Sarin g
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Uh, hanging onto Afghanistan WASN"T WORKING.
And protecting Taiwan has nothing to do with anonymity. Wot? It is hard to ignore Taiwan, big island, 23 million people. Granted we should do more to protect it, but we should have started that long ago. And a pox on Nixon and Kissinger for acceding to China's gross demands for some short term political capital.
Anyhow, last we heard the U.S. was training Taiwan's special ops. If the U.S. had started transferring lethal weapons long ago, the U.S. could still be tra
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Well once they get that whole collapsing debt crisis fixed then they can start laughing to the bank. If it's still standing.
Re: The US' Direction ... (Score:2)
Twenty? More like six.
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We're fighting domestic problems like LGBTQ+ civil rights, women's rights, Trans sports, abortion ...
While the US is masturbating instead of teaching stuff that matters
How people treat people, and whether people have rights to bodily autonomy, matters very much. In fact it determines whether we're going to be the next China... not in terms of tech, but as relates to fascism.
I frankly don't give a fuck if the USA survives if the best it can manage is to turn into a fascist dictatorship.
Re: The Chinese don't lack confidence in themselve (Score:2)
People that think like you, which is not really thinking at all, is how the US got so far behind in everything.
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The people who put up those statues were attempting to rewrite our cultural heritage in their own image. And you support this because it works for you, and give zero fucks about anyone for whom it doesn't.
It's not good.
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No the people who put up those statues came from great cultures that did great things, generated lots of wealth such that they had time to do things like build statues.
The people that didn't well they simply were not great and are not worth remembering and their cultures are not worth preserving. Its simply evolution. Those cultures were and are dead ends. They belong on the ash heap of history where their betters as you say made an effort to leave them.
Re: So what's *your* plan?? (Score:2)