> “There’s a standard regulatory capture playbook that has played out in other industries
But imagine all the money bigco can make by crippling small startups from innovating and competing with them! It's for your own safety. Move along citizen.
The only meaningful thing in this discussion is about people who want to make money easy, but can’t, because of the rules they don’t like.
Well, suck it up.
You don’t get to make a cheap shity factory that pours its waste into the local river either.
Rules exist for a reason.
You want the life style but also all the good things and also no rules. You can’t have all the cake and eat it too.
/shrug
If China builds amazing AI tech (and they will) then the rest of the world will just use it. Some of it will be open source. It won’t be a big deal.
This “we must out compete China by being as shit and horrible as they are” meme is stupid.
If you want to live in China, go live in China. I assure you you will not find it to be the law less free hold of “anything goes” that you somehow imagine.
The trouble is sometimes they don't. Or they do exist for a reason but the rules are still absurd and net harmful because they're incompetently drafted. Or the real reason is bad and the rules are doing what they were intended to do but they were intended to do something bad.
> If China builds amazing AI tech (and they will) then the rest of the world will just use it.
Not if it's banned elsewhere, or they allow people to use it without publishing it, e.g. by offering it as a service.
And it matters a lot who controls something. "AI" potentially has a lot of power, even non-AGI AI -- it can create economic efficiency, or it can manipulate people. If an adversarial entity has greater economic efficiency, they can outcompete you -- the way the US won the Cold War was essentially by having a stronger economy. If an adversarial entity has a greater ability to manipulate people, that could be even worse.
> If you want to live in China, go live in China. I assure you you will not find it to be the law less free hold of “anything goes” that you somehow imagine.
But that's precisely the issue -- it's not an anarchy, it's an authoritarian competing nation state. We have to be better than them so the country that has an elected government and constitutional protections for human rights is the one with an economic advantage, because it isn't a law of nature that those things always go together, but it's a world-eating disaster if they don't.
> Or they do exist for a reason but the rules are still absurd and net harmful
Ok.
…but if you have a law and you’re opposed to it on the basis that “China will do it anyway”, you admit that’s stupid?
Shouldn’t you be asking: does the law do a useful thing? Does it make the world better? Is it compatible with our moral values?
Organ harvesting.
Stem cell research.
Human cloning.
AI.
Slavery.
How can anyone stand there and go “well China will do it so we may as well?”
In an abstract sense this is a fundamentally invalid logical argument.
Truth on the basis of arbitrary assertion.
It. Is. False.
Now, certainly there is a degree of naunce with regard to AI specifically; but the assertion that we will be “left behind” and “out competed by China” are not relevant to the discussion on laws regarding AI and AI development.
What we do is not governed by what China may or may not do.
If you want to win the “AI race” to AGI, then investment and effort is required, not allowing an arbitrary “anything goes” policy.
China as a nation is sponsoring the development of its technology and supporting its industry.
If you want want to beat that, opposing responsible AI won’t do it.
Of course you have to consider what other countries will do when you create your laws. The notion that you can ignore the rest of the world is both naive and incredibly arrogant.
There are plenty of technologies that absolutely do not "make the world better" but unfortunately must get built because humans are shitty to each other. Weapons are the obvious one, but not the only one. Often countries pass laws to encourage certain technologies or productions so as not to get outcompeted or outproduced by other countries.
The argument here about AI is exactly this sort of argument. If other countries build vastly superior AI by have fewer developmental restrictions, then your country maybe both at a military disadvantage but also at an economic disadvantage because you can be easily outproduced by countries using vastly more efficient technology.
You must balance all the harms and benefits when making laws, including external to the country issues.
I don't think the government is talking about AI for weapons. of course that will be allowed. It's the US, we have the right to kill people. Just not make fake porn videos of them.
> ...but if you have a law and you’re opposed to it on the basis that “China will do it anyway”, you admit that’s stupid?
That depends on what "it" is. If it's slavery and the US but not China banning slavery causes there to be half as much slavery in the world as there would be otherwise, it would be stupid.
But if it's research and the same worldwide demand for the research results are there so you're only limiting where it can be done, which only causes twice as much to be done in China if it isn't being done in the US, you're not significantly reducing the scope of the problem. You're just making sure that any benefits of the research are in control of the country that can still do it.
> Now, certainly there is a degree of naunce with regard to AI specifically; but the assertion that we will be “left behind” and “out competed by China” are not relevant to the discussion on laws regarding AI and AI development.
Of course it is. You could very easily pass laws that de facto prohibit AI research in the US, or limit it to large bureaucracies that in turn become stagnant for lack of domestic competitive pressure.
This doesn't even have anything to do with the stated purpose of the law. You could pass a law requiring government code audits which cost a million dollars, and justify them based on any stated rationale -- you're auditing to prevent X bad thing, for any value of X. Meanwhile the major effect of the law is to exclude anybody who can't absorb a million dollar expense. Which is a bad thing even if X is a real problem, because that is not the only possible solution, and even if it was, it could still be that the cure is worse than the disease.
Regulators are easily and commonly captured, so regulations tend to be drafted in that way and to have that effect, regardless of their purported rationale. Some issues are so serious that you have no choice but to eat the inefficiency and try to minimize it -- you can't have companies dumping industrial waste in the river.
But when even the problem itself is a poorly defined matter of debatable severity and the proposed solutions are convoluted malarkey of indiscernible effectiveness, this is a sure sign that something shady is being evaluated.
A strong heuristic here is that if you're proposing a regulation that would restrict what kind of code an individual could publish under a free software license, you're the baddies.
> Of course it is. You could very easily pass laws that de facto prohibit AI research in the US, or limit it to large bureaucracies that in turn become stagnant for lack of domestic competitive pressure.
…
> A strong heuristic here is that if you're proposing a regulation that would restrict what kind of code an individual could publish under a free software license, you're the baddies.
Sure.
…but those things will change the way development / progress happens regardless of what China does.
“We have to do this because China will do it!” is a harmful trope.
You don’t have to do anything.
If you want to do something, then do it, if it makes sense.
…but I flat out reject the original contention that China is a blanket excuse for any fucking thing.
Take some darn responsibility for your own actions.
> What we do is not governed by what China may or may not do.
Yes it is... Where the hell would you get the impression we don't change how we govern and invest based on what China does, is doing, or might be doing? Do you really think nations don't adjust their behavior and laws based on other counties real or perceived? I can't imagine you're that ignorant.
> If you want want to beat that, opposing responsible AI won’t do it.
I could be wrong; maybe what China does with its AI developments will significantly and drastically alter the current startup status quo for AI startups.
Maybe the laws around AI will drastically impact the ability of startups to compete with foreign competitors.
…but I can’t see that being likely.
It seems to me that restricting chip technology has a much much more significant impact, along with a raft of other measures which are already in place.
All I can see when I look closely at arguments from people saying this kind of stuff is people who want to make deep fakes, steal art and generate porn bots crying about it, and saying it not fair other people (eg. Japan, where this has been ruled legal, China for who knows what reason, mostly ignorance) are allowed to do it.
I’m not sympathetic.
I don’t believe that makes any difference to the progress on AGI.
I don’t care if China out competes other countries on porn bots (I don’t think they will; they have a very strict set of rules around this stuff… but I’ll be generous and include Japan which probably will).
You want the US to get AGI first?
Well, explain specifically how you imagine open source (shared with the world) models, and open code sharing vs. everything being locked away in a Google/Meta sandbox helps?
Are you sure you’re arguing for the right side here? Shouldn’t you be arguing that the models should be secret so China can’t get them?
Or are you just randomly waving your arms in the air about China without having read the original article?
What are you even arguing for? Laws are bad… but sharing with China is also bad… but having rules about what you do is bad… but China will do it anyway… but fear mongering and locking models away in big corporations behind apis is bad… but China… or something…
> It seems to me that restricting chip technology has a much much more significant impact, along with a raft of other measures which are already in place.
Restricting chip technology is useless and the people proposing it are foolish. Computer chips are generic technology and AI things benefit from parallelism. The only difference between faster chips and more slower chips is how much power they use, so the only thing you get from restricting access to chips is more climate change.
> All I can see when I look closely at arguments from people saying this kind of stuff is people who want to make deep fakes, steal art and generate porn bots crying about it, and saying it not fair other people (eg. Japan, where this has been ruled legal, China for who knows what reason, mostly ignorance) are allowed to do it.
The problem is not that people won't be able to make porn bots. They will make porn bots regardless, I assure you. The problem is that the people who want to control everything want to control everything.
You can't have a model with boobs in it because that's naughty, so we need a censorship apparatus to prevent that. And it should also prevent racism, somehow, even though nobody actually agrees how to accomplish that. And it can't emit foreign propaganda, defined as whatever politicians don't like. And now that it has been centralized into a handful of megacorps, they can influence how it operates to their own ends and no one else can make one that works against them.
Now that you've nerfed the thing, it's worse at honest work. It designs uncomfortable apparel because it doesn't understand what boobs are. You ask it how something would be perceived by someone in a particular culture and it refuses to answer, or lies to you because of what the answer would be. You try to get it to build a competing technology to the company that operates the thing and all it will do is tell you to use theirs. You ask it a question about the implications of some policy and its answer is required to comply with specific politics.
> Well, explain specifically how you imagine open source (shared with the world) models, and open code sharing vs. everything being locked away in a Google/Meta sandbox helps?
To improve it you can be anyone anywhere vs. to improve it you have to work for a specific company that only employs <1% of the people who might have something to contribute. To improve it you don't need the permission of someone with a conflict of interest.
> Are you sure you’re arguing for the right side here? Shouldn’t you be arguing that the models should be secret so China can’t get them?
China is a major country. It will get them. The only question is if you will get them, in addition to China and Microsoft. And to realize the importance of this, all you have to ask is if all of your interests are perfectly aligned with those of China and Microsoft.
False equivalency at its finest. This is more akin to banning factories and people rightly saying our rivals will use these factories to out produce us. This is also a much better analogy because we did in fact give China a lot of our factories and are paying a big price for it.
I think you underestimate the power foreign governments will have and will use if we are relying on foreign AI in our everyday lives.
When we ask it questions, an AI can tailor its answers to change peoples opinions and how people think. They would have the power to influence elections, our values, our sense of right and wrong.
That's before we start allowing AI to just start making purchasing decisions for us with little or no oversight.
The only answer I see is for us all to have our own AI's that we have trained, understand, and trust. For me this means it runs on my hardware and answers only to me. (And not locked behind regulation)
// If China builds amazing AI tech (and they will) then the rest of the world will just use it. Some of it will be open source. It won’t be a big deal.
"Don't worry if our adversary develops nuclear weapons and we won't - it's OK we'll just use theirs"
> "Don't worry if our adversary develops nuclear weapons and we won't - it's OK we'll just use theirs"
Beneath this comment is hidden a truth that there is AI which can be used beneficially, AI which can be used detrimentally, AI which can be weaponized in warfare, and AI which can be used defensively in warfare. Discussions about policy and regulation should differentiate these, but also consider implications of how this technology is developed and for what purpose it could be employed.
We should definitely be developing AI to combat AI as it will most certainly be weaponized against us with greater frequency in the near future.
Yes and I think it's broader than that. For example, if a country uses AI to (say) optimize their education or their economy - they will "run away" from us. Rather than enabling us to use that technology too (why would they, even for money) they can just wait until their advantage is insurmountable.
So it's not just pure warfare systems that are risky for us but everything.
The problem is what the Powers-That-Be say and what they do are not in alignment.
We are now, after much long-time pressure from everyone not in power saying that being friendly with China doesn't work, waging a cold war against China and presumably we want to win that cold war. On the other hand, we just keep giving silver platter after silver platter to China.
So do we want the coming of Pax Sino or do we still want Pax Americana?
If we defer to history, we are about due for another changing of the guard as empires generally do not last more than a few hundred years if that, and the west seems poised to make that prophecy self-fulfilling.
Wish people stopped with that Cold War narrative. You're not waging anything just yet.
Here's the thing: the US didn't win the OG Cold War by being, as 'AnthonyMouse puts it upthread, "the country that has an elected government and constitutional protections for human rights" and "having a stronger economy". It won it by having a stronger economy, which it used to fuck half of the world up, in a low-touch dance with the Soviets that had both sides toppling democratic governments, funding warlords and dictatorships, and generally doing the opposite of protecting human rights. And at least through a part of that period, if an American citizen disagreed, or urged restraint and civility and democracy, they were branded a commie mutant spy traitor.
My point here isn't to pass judgement on the USA (and to be clear, I doubt things would've been better if the US let Soviets take the lead). Rather, it's that when we're painting the current situation as the next Cold War, then I think people have a kind of cognitive dissonance here. The US won the OG Cold War by becoming a monster, and not pulling any punches. It didn't have long discussions about how to safely develop new technologies - it just went full steam ahead, showered R&D groups with money, while sending more specialists to fuck up another country to keep the enemy distracted. This wasn't an era known for reasoned approach to progress - this was the era known for designing nuclear ramjets with zero shielding, meant to zip around the enemy land, irradiating villages and rivers and cities as they fly by, because fuck the enemy that's why.
I mean, if it is to happen, it'll happen. But let's not pretend you can keep Pax Americana by keeping your hands clean and being a nice democratic state. Or that whether being more or less serious about AI safety is relevant here. If it becomes a Cold War, both sides will just pull all the stops and rush full-steam to develop and weaponize AGI.
--
EDIT - an aside:
If the history of both sides' space programs is any indication, I wouldn't be surprised to see the US building a world-threatening AGI out of GPT-4 and some duct tape.
Take for example US spy satellites - say, the 1960s CORONA program. Less than a decade after Sputnik, no computers, with engineering fields like control theory being still under development - but they successfully pulled off a program that involved putting analog cameras in space on weird orbits, which would make ridiculously high-detail photos of enemy land, and then deorbit the film canisters, so they could be captured mid-air by a jet plane carrying a long stick. If I didn't know better, I'd say we don't have the technology today to make this work. The US did it in the 1960s, because it turns out you can do surprisingly much with surprisingly little, if you give creative people infinite budget, motivate them with basic "it's us vs. them" story, and order them to win you the war.
As impressive as such feats were (and there were plenty more), I don't think we want to have the same level of focus and dedication applied to AI - if that's a possibility, then I fear we've crossed the X-risk threshold already with the "safe" models we have now.
This is what was said about Japan prior to their electronics industry surpassing the rest of the world. Yes, china does copy. However, in many instances those companies move faster and innovate faster than their western counterparts. Look at the lidar industry in china. It's making mass market lidar in the tens of thousands [see hesai]. There is no american or european equivalent at the moment. What about DJI? They massively out innovated western competitors. I wouldn't be so quick to write off that country's capacity for creativity and technological prowess.
that's a tired old talking point that the US always throws in. The fact is that, as part of their agreements to operate in the Chinese market, Western companies cooperated with Chinese local companies, which included sharing of knowledge.
These terms, the Western companies agreed to to gain a piece of the juicy Chinese market. And the Chinese did it because they had the rare power to stop Western companies from just coming and draining resources, in the colonial manner the West usually operates.
Building on this, China has now surpassed the West on much development. Electric cars, solar technology, cell phone towers are now much more advanced in China.
What a wildly strange case of revisionist history.
The West started shifting production to China for immense cost savings, over 40 years ago. At the time, China had almost NO market, and no (what the West called, at the time) "middle class". China was mostly agrarian, and had very little manufacturing base.
There was nothing "juicy" for the West, market wise. At all.
Over the last 40 years, China's economy has prospered, grown, again mostly due to the West's user of Chinese labour. Virtually the entire manufacturing base that China has right now, exists because Western expertise, skill, and capabilities helped Chinese factories, and workers, come online and train in Western production methods.
Prior to 40 years ago, everyone except the British couldn't have cared less for China, and the British indeed had Hong Kong.. something pre-existent from THEIR colonial days. The British could have retained Hong Kong, but as agreed did turn it over to China at the turn of the century. No, China had no capability to enforce that, not back around the year 2000.
Note that the colonial days of "the West" makes little sense. Many Western nations were not colonialists, and the US is actually a breakaway colony, and has worked to curtail colonialism! To lump "the West" together, would be like thinking Japan and China are the same, because they are all "Oriental".
Back to China, very little China does "surpasses the West". In fact, so little capability does China have, that when the US kicked an embargo for advanced silicon against China, it lost is capability for several years, to domestically manufacture cell phones.
Look, I get the feeling you're pro-China. And perhaps, you grew up in China.
First, there are three things. The Chinese government. Chinese culture. Chinese people.
The last? We can stop discussing that now, because unless you are racist, there is no such thing as "Chinese people act a certain way, because they are Chinese".
However, there is such a thing as "Chinese culture", derived mostly from China, although of course there are endless factions and cultures in China, languages, no China isn't Han alone!!
But for simplicity, we'll assume Han culture == Chinese culture, and move on from there.
One of the largest coups that I feel the current dictatorship in China has accomplished, and dictatorship it is, when you don't step down and decide to serve a third term, is to convince Chinese people that "Chinese government = Chinese people". That's no so.
The Chinese government has many negative qualities. One of those qualities is a suppression of free will, excessive monitoring of its citizens, such as the social credit system, and this does indeed result in a lack of creativity. It also results in a lack of drive, of desire for people to excel, for when people like Jack Ma simply go missing, because they excel, because they do well, because they choose to take part in directing Chinese society, you end up with an innate desire to not show your true capability.
For if you do? The government will appear, take control of your works, your creation, and you'll be left out in the cold. In fact, you'll probably be killed.
These two things, fear of stepping out of bounds, and fear of excelling, do indeed create issues. This is why totalitarian governments have always fallen behind more open systems, for centrist driven societies always do. Politicians are absolutely not equipped to "see the future", to understand what inventions can be useful or not, and in fact most researchers cannot either! Research must be free, unfettered, not organized, and the output of research must be judged, not the input. Put another way, the usefulness of a research path is not readily apparent until that research path is taken.
Yet centrist control attempts to direct the path of research, where as non-centrist control has endless paths of research sprouting, growing, dying, organically allowing society itself to judge the value of such things.
This is what I mean by the fact that Chinese culture, does not allow for open development, and it is true. It is not a "Chinese" thing, but a "totalitarian thing", and has been seen over, and over, and over again, regardless of the genetic history of the peoples involved. It's a cultural thing.
Back to the coup I referred to prior. By indelibly linking two ideas, the Chinese Government and The Chinese People as one in the minds of most Chinese citizens, you foster a culture as we see here. That directed attacks against the Chinese dictatorship, the CCP, and Xi, are somehow an attack against the common person in China.
Not so.
Even if you do believe in a different governmental system, (which you'd be wrong, but such belief is OK to do in the West!), one of China's failures, both as a people, and a government, is a complete lack of understanding of the West. An inability to understand that we generally, actually believe what we stand for. That it's not all for show.
An example. I dislike portions of my current government. Some choices made. The current leader of my Westminster governmental system. I can think that he should be replaced, that he is currently a liability, whist at the same time recognize that some things he has done are OK. And I can shout "replace that man!" at the top of my lungs, without impinging upon the Canadian people, or its culture!.
Most people who grew up in China (not Hong Kong!), have a difficult time with this. This concept is hard to accept. I get that, but at the same time, it is core. Key. Vital to comprehend.
No matter how much people in the West rail again a current leader, THEY ARE STILL LOYAL TO THEIR COUNTRY. And no matter how much people in the West complain about Xi, and the current CCP, THEY ARE NOT IMPINGING UPON THE CHINESE PEOPLE.
This is often lost on anyone immersed in Chinese culture.
Anyhow. I don't have time to engage more at this moment. I will check back to see if you reply, but if you do, please engage inline with my comments. Or at least understanding the actual history of West/Chinese interaction.
They have a massive advantage due to having less regulation, cheaper costs, a large pool of talent even if lower on quality on average, and a strong ecosystem of suppliers.
This may surprise, but Japan is not China. Their culture is not the same. Further their culture was shifted to capitalism at the end of WWII. Citing Japan, is supporting my point about culture.
Mass marketing things isn't innovation. It's copying. DJI seems like more copying. "Innovation" isn't marketing. It's raw research and development, along market paths which are useful. This requires a desire for change, a desire to not conform first, but capitalism first, and this is what China's culture does not have.
China isn't a communist country, it's first and foremost authoritarian. They do have ruthless capitalism, and the ruthless competition in between individuals that comes with it.
They inherit from confucianism, and a more collectivist mindset that is prevalent in this area of the planet, but I don't think it should be conflated with the way the economy is organised.
The Japanese on the other hand are overall conformist and conservative.
With just these counter examples, it doesn't feel like you're looking at the right variables to judge whether innovation is embedded in the culture or not.
> China isn't a communist country, it's first and foremost authoritarian.
So are all “communist” countries. Communism (either Marxist or more generally) as a whole isn’t authoritarian, but all “communist” countries are products of Leninism or its derivatives, which definitely are, fundamentally, authoritarian.
That communism always ended up in authoritarian regimes isn't relevant to what I'm referring to. We generally oppose communism to say capitalism or liberalism for organising the economy and authoritarianism to democracy for organising governance.
There is a few essential properties of a "communist" system that modern China doesn't have. Most of the capital is privately owned, the social safety net is very poor, etc.
I think it’s a mistake to believe that all China can do is copy and clone.
It’s also a mistake to underestimate the market value of copies and clones. In many cases a cloned version of a product is better than the original. E.g., clones that remove over-engineering of the original and simplify the product down to its basic idea and offer it at a lower price.
It’s also a mistake to confuse manufacturing prowess for the ability to make “copies.” It’s not China’s fault that its competitors quite literally won’t bother producing in their own country.
It’s also a mistake to confuse a gain of experience for stealing intellectual property. A good deal of innovation in Silicon Valley comes from the fact that developers can move to new companies without non-compete clauses and take what they learned from their last job to build new, sophisticated software.
The fact that a bunch of Western companies set up factories in China and simultaneously expect Chinese employees and managers to gain zero experience and skill in that industry is incredibly contradictory. If we build a satellite office for Google and Apple in Austin, Texas then we shouldn’t be surprised that Austin, Texas becomes a hub for software startups, some of which compete with the companies that chose Austin in the first place.
Frankly I think the only reason China copies and clones is because it’s the path of least resistance to profit. They have lax laws on IP protection. Ther is no reason to do R&D when you can just copy/clone and make just as much money with none of the risk.
And that’s probably the only reason. If push comes to shove, they can probably innovate if given proper incentives.
I heard the tale about the Japanese lens industry. For the longest time they made crap lens that were just clones of foreign designs until the Japanese government banned licensing of foreign lens designs forcing their people to design their own lens. Now they are doing pretty well in that industry if I’m right.
You need to have an understanding of Chinese culture and the ability to interface with local Chinese officials to get your counterfeiting complaint handled.
You also have to be making something that isn’t of critical strategic importance.
It’s also a mistake to confuse a gain of experience for stealing intellectual property. A good deal of innovation in Silicon Valley comes from the fact that developers can move to new companies without non-compete clauses and take what they learned from their last job to build new, sophisticated software.
The amount of outright theft of entire IP from US, Canadian, and European countries by China is well known. There is no confusion here, in more recent times people have been arrested and charged for it, and it's how China is able to compete.
> China doesn't innovate, it copies, clones, and steals.
FWIW There was a time when that was was the received wisdom about the USA, from the point of view of European powers. It was shortsighted, and not particularly accurate then either.
And yet Japan and Korea both were shifted to more Western modes of thought, about innovation, development, and an adoption of democracy and personal rights. This supports my point.
South Korea had little choice in the matter as it’s effectively a tributary state to the US. What’s amazing is that the US didn’t somehow screw up with South Korea.
Japan’s democracy seems to be a hold-over from its imperialist ambitions from the Meiji restoration, when the emperor took power back from the shogunate and “westernized” to fast-track.
Meaning, the Japanese took all of the trappings of western civilization but under the veneer it’s still distinctly Japanese.
All the people I know who worked with and for Korean and Japanese entities have countless examples to show how alien the corporate culture is for westerners.
South Korea in particular doesn't seem exactly like a heaven for personal growth and experimentation.
This is true in general but with 1.5 billion citizens they have a lot of non-conformists. Conformism is good for manufacturing and quality, see Japan. I buy a lot from China and I'm frequently positively surprised. I find things that are equally good or better than their Western counterparts at a fraction of the cost. Western companies spend way too much on marketing instead of delivering value. There're issues with the West as well. Today Asia is responsible for a big chunk of the World manufacturing, this is strategic.
Yes western companies spend a lot on marketing, cause without it you might confuse their products which are built to deliver positive experiences and value with similarly looking but not so positive counterparts.
Not to dunk on China particularly here, I do/did enjoy a lot of hq chinese products.
That's true in some cases but it's also true that some Western companies spend a lot on building branding because that's their only differential. Sometimes it's even manufactured in the same factory with the same materials. And don't get me wrong I know there is a lot of garbage from China and often I see products from there that have super build quality and materials but with critical flaws due to poor design/marketing.
> A price paid, I think, due a conformant, restrictive culture. And after all, even if you do excel, you may soon disappear.
I once spoke to a Chinese person who speculated: "I wish that the Chinese were as conformant and uniform as the Americans - China is too diverse and unruly!"
I think that it's a common human habit to upsell one's own diversity and downplay that of others.
Conformism don't capture it. It's more complex than that but maybe authoritarian and democratic. Authoritarian organizations rewards loyalty over merit so people, in order to survive, tend to be obedient, bureaucratic, ruthless and less competent. Democratic organizations rewards merit over loyalty. Paradoxically, despite people having more freedom, things are less chaotic because people have better incentives to be competent, to trust and work out together. Though no society is perfectly one or the other.
That's a total lie. The reason that TikTok (nee Musical.ly) has great recommendations is because they use ByteDance tech, which was 100% Chinese developed.
Sure, but that's not the part that matters. The innovative part is the recommendation algorithm that redefined what it means to "optimize for engagement".
I mean, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are trying to hook you up on a dopamine drip so they can force-feed you some ads. TikTok is just pure crack that caught the world by surprise - and it's not even pushing you ads! Honestly, to this day I'm not sure what their business model is.
On paper they are similar. However, when it comes to recsys competence, TikTok blows other platforms - past or present - out of the water. TikTok's feed is algorithmic crack, and is shockingly quick to figure out users tastes. Instagram and YouTube had to scramble to copy ByteDance's innovation.
But imagine all the money bigco can make by crippling small startups from innovating and competing with them! It's for your own safety. Move along citizen.