News on China's scientific and technological development.

siegecrossbow said:

At the risk of sounding like a complete nutter I want to ask the following question -- what are the chances that China has started using AI and/or super computing for geopolitical decision making? The recent coup with the Saudi-Iranian deicing and China's follow up moves are essentially flawless and I'm suspecting that there is more to it than just good decision making by statesmen.

Click to expand...

That's an intriguing conjecture. AI is broadly applicable in any field where there is sufficient data, so if such a system exists then I would be very interested in what data is being fed into it and how that data is structured.

Having said that, there are very pedestrian indicators that Iran and Saudi Arabia just needed a little nudge to make peace:
1. They were already engaged in dialogue since at least 2020.
2. Both were haemorrhaging resources in their struggle.
3. Both were stuck in an equilibrium where they weren't making any progress and had to keep paying just to avoid further losses.
4. The price of peace is relatively low - neither side would have to give up much to improve relations.
In this situation a powerful outsider with good relations with both could broker an agreement. However, these conditions are unique to the Saudi-Iran situation, so I wouldn't count on an encore elsewhere.

ZeEa5KPul said:

That's an intriguing conjecture. AI is broadly applicable in any field where there is sufficient data, so if such a system exists then I would be very interested in what data is being fed into it and how that data is structured.

Click to expand...

I’m not suggesting that China simply asked “computer, what should I do to achieve peace in the Middle East.” What I am asking is if there is a decision free for some basic conditions like probability of success for negotiating a peace deal in 2023 versus prior years given economic, military, and social conditions as input parameters.

siegecrossbow said:

I’m not suggesting that China simply asked “computer, what should I do to achieve peace in the Middle East.” What I am asking is if there is a decision free for some basic conditions like probability of success for negotiating a peace deal in 2023 versus prior years given economic, military, and social conditions as input parameters.

Click to expand...

Yes, that's what I meant. Something like a game-playing AI.

One consideration beyond raw data is the availability of a sufficiently rich simulation environment were an AI can experiment and use reinforcement learning to learn how to "play" diplomacy. A board game with fixed rules is very easy to program; it could be possible to come up with a similar (although necessarily highly simplified) environment to mimic diplomatic interactions.

A low-radiation mobile CT for bedside use:

FairAndUnbiased said:

One of the funniest and stupidest translations I've seen was 来日方长 being machine translated as "came to Japan for a long time". I literally loled at that. To a computer though, how would it distinguish 成语 来日方长 from 来日 + [时间段]?

Click to expand...

Yo' homie, we got all day!

siegecrossbow said:

At the risk of sounding like a complete nutter I want to ask the following question -- what are the chances that China has started using AI and/or super computing for geopolitical decision making? The recent coup with the Saudi-Iranian deicing and China's follow up moves are essentially flawless and I'm suspecting that there is more to it than just good decision making by statesmen.

Click to expand...

Sometimes we can just get lucky, and keep pressing our roll, and tempt fate along the way.

This chat bot AI, seems so utterly perfunctory, no fun at all.

ZeEa5KPul said:

Yes, that's what I meant. Something like a game-playing AI.

One consideration beyond raw data is the availability of a sufficiently rich simulation environment were an AI can experiment and use reinforcement learning to learn how to "play" diplomacy. A board game with fixed rules is very easy to program; it could be possible to come up with a similar (although necessarily highly simplified) environment to mimic diplomatic interactions.

Click to expand...

I don't want to be serious, but this time, I would like to say something.

The Americans, as we know as a people, have zero patience, and no long term thinking. That is something that inexplicably they lack total awareness of, and cannot understand how that can be a liability, simply because they have no clue.

This game theory popular in the United States, seems to me only generates short term thinking, like we have to score points all the time to stay in the game. Obviously, I cannot agree with that.

This chat bot AI, seems at this point just a reference tool. A very powerful one.

Can AI build a lasting peace in the world?

Maybe the T1000 can do it by having sky-net kill us all.

See, that is why the Americans can only think in the short term, and think up things like sky-net.

If sky-net kills us all, then that is automatically a short term solution, because there is no long term anymore.

I suspect that the chat bot AI will claim that is illogical, because there is human peace long term because human would have been eliminated by Mr. T1000.

Count me in as one of those dinosaurs who is not looking forward to singularity.

Yo' homie, can I hide in your basement from T1000?

Eventine said:

For example, if I asked "is China a dictatorship that oppresses minorities," and ChatGPT wasn't trying to censor the results, it'd probably say "yes" simply because that's what the English speaking internet believes, and not because it's accurate.

But you'd be surprised at how well you can do in many subjects just by having enough data to "average."

If I asked "how do you smoke fish," the vast majority of resources out there will tend to be close to being accurate; and if you were doing this research yourself, you'd be doing the same thing ChatGPT does - going through all those resources and looking for common guide lines.

ChatGPT is basically a "internet knowledge expert" - ie it doesn't know anything the internet doesn't. But it can organize the information available on the internet in such a way, such that it can answer the vast majority of common knowledge questions with high accuracy. That's the data advantage afforded by the English language internet simply being bigger & more diverse.

Click to expand...

I have compared ChatGPT like tooling as that one middle level tech management that got a last minute note about how he has to give a presentation to high level management. He will make a good sounding presentation with tech terms like AI, big data, web scale etc..
It might sound good and believable for people far away of those topic but subject matter experts will quickly find gaps in the slides.

Some numbers on how many people have applied for Erniebot so far. Looks like they have no shortage of trial users.

tacoburger said:

So thoughts on Baidu's ERNIE?

Click to expand...

It is pretty much crap. But countries other than China and the U.S. don’t even have crap, so that’s something.