More of this kind of thinking is needed in the world, yet is very often vilified as not taking sides.
I continue to be dismayed at how simple it has become to turn people towards hate.
More of this kind of thinking is needed in the world, yet is very often vilified as not taking sides.
I continue to be dismayed at how simple it has become to turn people towards hate.
It's an interesting question, I think, because GGP is correct to say that geopolitical discussion dominates posts about work done by Chinese developers and organisations. That work is fascinating and innovative.
On the one hand, those orgs are tied to a global superpower. I couldn't name a single global superpower that has existed - ever - which hasn't committed acts I personally consider deeply immoral. I don't think we typically discuss OpenAI's work, and learn from it, in quite the same way we discuss the work of Chinese labs. OpenAI is a US defence contractor, and - whether you agree or not - it must be acknowledged that a lot of people would see actions like the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq as deeply immoral. I don't think "which country is more evil?" or "which org is more embedded in its government?" is a productive route for this discussion - to me it seems like whataboutism. Others would disagree.
On the other hand, technical and artistic innovation has been sponsored and patronised by wealthy organisations (nation states and religions, predominantly) throughout history. That wealth was, generally speaking, acquired very violently. What does this do to the moral status of the work itself? I don't have an answer to that.
I do think I have a lot more in common with the average Chinese developer than I have in common with the average British (or American) political leader. I also believe the average Chinese developer has more in common with the average American developer than they do with the average Chinese political leader.
Lots of people might disagree with me about that, which is fine. What would be more difficult to disagree with, I think, is that I personally think I can learn a lot more from talking to people about the work we share than about the politics we do not.
Some examples: I personally think the Kimi line of models have been, for some time, by far the strongest of any lab's at creative writing tasks. I don't know how they've managed that. I'm completely obsessed with Bilibili ("China's YouTube"). I think many of its features are outstanding, and unmatched by anything a western video platform currently offers. The video content hosted there is often innovative, and occasionally artistically brilliant; the AI video usage specifically is notably more artistically advanced than anything I've seen on western platforms.
I'd love to listen and talk to some of the people who worked on this stuff, or who know more about it (perhaps in a less off-topic place!). I'd really love to work alongside those human beings. Because of geopolitics, that isn't easy. That is really frustrating to me. HN would, I think, in an ideal world, be a place that could happen.