I don't think that novaRom was not saying that we compete fairly. I read novaRom's comment to say that we can't win if we play fairly.
I also read 'AI Superpowers' and I agree with the book's premise that long term China will win the 'AI war' economic competition because their society allows broad use of data and since they are more of an online Internet-connected society they have much more data to use for training deep learning systems. China is also throwing a ton of money at supporting startup AI companies.
I pains me to be too critical of my own country (the USA) but I think we are really making bad mistakes by: 1) not sufficiently supporting research at the government level. 2) turning our students into life-long debt slaves with student loans. 3) screwing up our long term economic and social health by, for example, not providing free meals to poor kids in schools (one of the very cost effective ways to get a more educated work force - kids who are hungry in school tend to not do well). 4) stop allowing Facebook/Google/etc. unfettered use of private data while at the same time not figuring out a way to get more training data to people doing basic reseaerch.
I haven't read the book, I'm adding it to my encumbered reading list (this site spins off so many excellent recommendations it's difficult to keep up).
1) Is the argument then that only the government can succeed with large scale initiatives? Pretty much everything that government is involved with becomes encumbered, if it's liked to a code base it drives up complexity for diminishing returns performance wise. I like the mission that NASA does and private initiatives are much more cost effective.
2) Schools are expensive with the rise of access to cheap money and ballooning administrators vs instructors. Should this be regulated?
3) I'm not against the "lunch" program. I'm curious why is it a schools job to feed students? The meal programs extended from lunch to breakfast and dinner. Isn't it a parents basic job to feed their kids? If this were someone with a pet would you consider them a good custodian if they can't meet their obligations? I'm not talking about someone on hard times I understand crap happens but more of an extended living scenario.
4) Stop giving information to these companies. This is akin to "I can keep a secret but the people I tell can't". Is it really private data if you share it? If you have a spending problem, stop buying crap.
What are your proposals to drive research domestically? If there were a market for it that's untapped seems like a goldmine.
Thanks for your comments. For 1) occasionally the government does a fine job. I worked on two large scale DARPA projects that were well managed and had good results. Also early funding of the Internet, grants for university research, etc. 2) then why can countries like Germany provide tuition free college, even for foreign students? To me, education is starting to look like big business. 3) because the free food for hungry disadvantaged children is cheap with a large potential payoff. 4) well. It would be better to have a long talk about this, but briefly: I alternate from being a long term FSF/ACLU supporter and decide that the benefits of giving up privacy are worth it. My latest ‘sin’ in this regard is signing up for G Suite and using it for my whole work/research workflow. I try to be mindful about privacy and decide in a case by case basis the value from sharing private data.
Correct, both the U.S. and China plays dirty tricks. In fact the whole world plays dirty tricks. The only difference is that the U.S. is expected to be the role model of the world, and will always look worse than others even when carrying out an equivalent dirty act. China, Russia, and others know this and they use this to their advantage.
