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Africablack

Junior Member
Registered Member
iewgnem said:
Unipolarism within communication range IS the natural state and has been for most of Chinese history. China did not come to believe unification is paramount because Chinese culture believes in multipolarity.

In practice US is not in a position to challenge China as the unipolar power at this point, GDP measures transaction volume, not econmic power, Chinese production, consumption and talent pool all dwarfs America even today and the gap is only getting wider. What US has is a desire to be a pole, and as such they pretend transaction volume is economic power, while China has no desire to bring others down, so China let them. This pretense of multipolarity can hold so long as America does not actually try to wield power, but as their recent trade war demonstrated, the moment they try to wield it, they get promptly reminded who has the cards.

And how China views itself is very important as it indicates what China will do, for countries that has no aspirations to be a pole this information is not very important, but for countries that do have aspirations, its very important for them to understand China has no intention of making it easy, or possible.
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I'm glad you mentioned history because when I wrote my response I was going to say "unipolarism isn't natural in a globalized and interconnected world" but I decided not to. Since the world became interconnected unipolarism can only occur if there's major collapse of another major power. When the world stabilizes and the inevitable growth ensues then it becomes harder to sustain unipolarism.

Unless China completely collapses the US will never be in a position to challenge China as a unipolar power. That era has exited stage left, the Americans know it, the Chinese know it and everybody knows it. What we're witnessing is the west panicking and lashing out because the power they once had is slipping away from them.
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
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Does Musk worry about it for humanity's sake or his bottom line? With the West there is a no line between the two. Afterall he made so many warnings over AI and now he's developing his own AI...? The fact is any new technology is seen as bad for the world unless it's by the West. Look at the EU who thinks China has to spend its political and economic capital on whatever they think is important for the world and if China doesn't, it's some great insult to everyone. Then look at Jews. They think because of Oct. 7th somehow China is suppose to spend all its political and economic capital to serve their interests. Why? Because it's more serious than when they hypocritically point the finger to Xinjiang painting China as evil because of it? Yes, all of the sudden China's capital should be spent for them.

Westerners still have an imperialist mindset because it being about for humanity's sake contradicts their entire history of what they're about. Who other can think China is suppose to hand over its leading EV technologies to them for free and get no concessions for it? Europeans think they're not like Trump but they're doing the same thing like around Liberation Day when Scott Bessent said the world should just start writing checks to the US Treasury as some sort of tribute.

I was reading about Elon's latest Starship disaster and the critics are saying his failure one after the other is because the design is flawed and Elon is just putting a band-aid on an open flesh wound. They're saying the design can't handle what Elon is advertising. Is he doing the same with his Optimus robot? On videos where Optimus is moving nimbly it's edited like in a production. When it's live like at that event Elon had for people to see for themselves, Optimus didn't move so quickly and some say they were being operated remotely from a distance. So is Optimus really number one...? Atlas seems to move better than Optimus but just as the West questions if Chinese robots can really dance suspecting it just CGI, the same can be said for Atlas where they don't question.

The reason why the West is attacking the Chinese robot industry is not because they're a danger to humanity. It's because they won't be able to compete. Western robots are going to cost many times more than a Chinese one. Also it's like with AI where the West's goal is to duplicate human intelligence while the Chinese just look to apply it commercially. That's why Western AI will cost trillions while Chinese AI doesn't. Same things is going to happen with robots.
 
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AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
iewgnem said:
And you're also right that China don't want a bipolar world, because as much as people make a big deal out of American exceptionalism, most have no idea the true level of exceptionalism that a country that has called itself Middle Kingdom for 2000 years implicitly believes in.
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@Africablack

I've long thought that "Middle Kingdom" is a bad translation.

The "Central" Kingdom feels more accurate
 
FriedButter

FriedButter

Colonel
Registered Member
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'700 Indian engineers posed as AI': The London startup Builder.Ai that took Microsoft for a ride​

A startup that raised $445 million claiming to revolutionize app development with artificial intelligence has collapsed — after it was revealed that the “AI” behind its operations was, in reality, 700 human engineers based in India.

Builder.ai, once backed by tech giants including Microsoft, marketed itself as a no-code platform powered by an AI assistant called “Natasha,” which could supposedly build software like assembling Lego bricks. But as Ebern Finance founder Bernhard Engelbrecht highlighted in a widely shared post on X, Natasha wasn’t an algorithm — it was a large manual operation disguised as machine intelligence.

“Customer requests were sent to the Indian office, where 700 Indians wrote code instead of AI,” Engelbrecht noted, adding that the resulting apps were often buggy, dysfunctional, and riddled with unreadable code. “Everything was like real artificial intelligence,” he wrote — except that none of it was.

The unraveling began when creditor Viola Credit, which lent Builder.ai $50 million in 2023, seized $37 million from its accounts after the company defaulted. That move left Builder.ai unable to pay employees or continue operations. Additional funds held in India remain locked due to regulatory constraints, Bloomberg reported.

The startup has now entered formal insolvency proceedings, with a court-approved administrator appointed in the
U.K. to explore asset recovery and business salvage options. Builder.ai said on LinkedIn that it is “working closely with administrators” and thanked its staff and stakeholders while acknowledging that earlier missteps had pushed the company “beyond recovery.”

The episode has quickly become a symbol of the growing fragility in the AI startup space, where hype often races ahead of hard technology. “Many AI firms rushed to scale on the back of hype, often lacking strong financial controls or truly
differentiated offerings,” said Phil Brunkard of Info-Tech Research Group.

For a company once touted as the future of no-code AI, Builder.ai’s collapse raises deeper questions about due diligence, transparency, and how easily investor dollars can be misled by the illusion of automation
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“Customer requests were sent to the Indian office, where 700 Indians wrote code instead of AI,” Engelbrecht noted
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AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
AndrewJ said:
Macron :eek: :rolleyes:

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https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1928494139999506619

Full speech: (Relevant part from 14:08)

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What does it say about Western power where they need to make threats to countries if they don't act against other countries for them? How about China still doing business with Russia? What, no demanding Chinese troops fighting for Russia out of Ukraine like Zelensky is accusing? You know Macron is not really angry about that. It's the exposing of French luxury brands actually being made in China and not by French artisans like they want the world to romantically believe. It's about how France being kicked out by their former African colonies that they been stealing their natural resources to this very day. It's how China can strike back at the French economy when they want the EU to ban China.

The usual suspects are complaining about China flooding cheap goods to Europe because of US tariffs. Well someone in Europe is buying them for that to happen. China isn't blindly shipping products to Europe and forcing Europeans to buy them. Are they going to claim their more expensive version is made by Europeans when they find out they were paying for cheap ones from China all along?

The French trying to convince countries to be their colony because they're the better choice from the US and China. All these countries don't make more money from the French and that's what only counts. Chinese tourists into Vietnam is said to be in the tens of billions of dollars into the Vietnamese economy. Do they think countries will give that up just so they can be around them? Of course they do.
 
Xiongmao

Xiongmao

Junior Member
Registered Member
AndrewS said:
@Africablack

I've long thought that "Middle Kingdom" is a bad translation.

The "Central" Kingdom feels more accurate
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I always understood the 'Middle' refers to China is sitting in the middle underneath Heaven above, Hell below and the barbarian kingdoms around. If it was translated as 'Central' then this would imply that China was more important than Heaven.
 
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