Artificial Intelligence thread

Eventine

Senior Member
Registered Member
Accomplished AI researchers are paid absurd amounts of money in the US, and with the current AI investment bubble and exchange rate, it is much more lucrative to do AI work in the US. Many, if not most, of Open AI's top researchers are Chinese. This benefits China in the sense that it means the US AI ecosystem is an open box - there's ultimately no way for them to prevent Chinese researchers from going back to China to share their experiences.

Anthropic is the one major US AI company trying to "close the box," so to speak, due to their close government & defense connections. I expect more Chinese researchers exiting the company in the coming years.
 

HighGround

Senior Member
Registered Member
Anthropic is the one major US AI company trying to "close the box," so to speak, due to their close government & defense connections. I expect more Chinese researchers exiting the company in the coming years.

Then I expect US AI progress to slow down in the coming years too then. In my opinion, as an American, it seems that the only significant advanage US still possesses is in compute, but from what I've read and heard, compute is currently not the bottleneck in AI development. By contrast, human capital will always be a key input.
 

TPenglake

Junior Member
Registered Member
I can't judge him based on the fact that I don't know what he was contributing or capable of doing but I stand 100% by my previous post: if he's a man with skills that China wants, he's obligated to return or he has shirked his duty to his nation and his bloodline. If he's not such a man but he's out-competed in China, if his skills are largely redundant in the Chinese market and his choice is between "star talent" in the US vs desk grunt/code monkey in China, or if he plans to build more experience with modest contributions to American companies before ultimately joining a Chinese company to truly blossom his skills, then I will not judge him (negatively).
Not justifying them, but for people that far into their careers many of them have obtained a green card or at the very least sunk at least 2 million dollars already into a house. Whatever one's political beliefs, having that much in assets does create a kind of golden handcuffs situation that they would be hesitant to part with even as dire as the situation is getting.

Other things to consider too. Even if they wish to work in Chinese AI in the future, with the release of Sora 2, the USA is still undoubtedly the place to be in AI. So I wouldn't be surprised if many of these engineers, even if they have plans to return to China, figure it'd be beneficial to obtain more expertise in America before doing so.

None of this changes current trends, where with the $100,000 H1-B fee and China's K-visa, talent will begin flowing in one direction from here on out. So as long as China can get its chips up to Nvidia's computing power, the AI sector will eventually catch up and everyone from fresh out of college grads to long time veterans in the US industry will follow suit.
 
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