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Comment by adi2907

4 days ago

What a transformation by Xiaomi to build almost frontier level models. Five years back, when I was in the data science team, they dint really bother about AI models and were using Baidu for NLP and vision under the hood of their APIs

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adi2907

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ignoramous  3 days ago

Wrote this eons ago:

  I fully expect Baidu and other tech giants on the Chinese shores to try and push the boundaries of technology. Silicon Valley (and the US) in general has always been the hot-bed of innovation. But with enormous increase in wealth in China (and to an extent in India), I can see these companies being more and more ambitious. Not long ago Andrew Ng of Coursera and Stanford AI Lab fame joined Baidu to further their rival to the 'Google Brain' project.

  Xiaomi has long been positioning itself as a company with design chops of Apple, engineering chops of Google, and e-commerce chops of Amazon, all rolled into one-- and I can see where they are coming from. If they manage to pull it off, I guess that's when we'd start seeing the proverbial "Death of Silicon Valley" as in, it loosing its strange monopoly and strangle hold on tech world in terms of both talent and innovation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9421471

  • gandreani  3 days ago

    "Death of Silicon Valley" in this case is such a funny perspective. Like, how twisted is the US's view of the market that they think "Competition? Oh no. Sound the alarms."

    • digitaltrees  3 days ago

      Except it’s not competition if US companies can’t access the Chinese market but Chinese companies can access the US market. Just like cars. America is not willing to compete with BYD. But we are 20 years into massive IP theft from China and the naive and short sided leadership in the US that basically traded our knowledge, design and manufacturing knowledge for cheap of shoring, and watch China execute spectacularly to take advantage of the opportunity.

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    • rafram  3 days ago

      I mean, sure, that's just protectionism. It sounds like you're against it.

MangoCoffee  4 days ago

[flagged]

  • unshavedyak  3 days ago

    > While Americans Oppose AI Data Centers

    I know it's more mixed and complex than this, but i think a big opposition is not to the data centers themselves but to their locations. Too often it feels like the centers are exploiting local resources and community infrastructure rather than paying their share or locating themselves in places that are less likely to cause problems to home owners.

    The whole process feels indifferent or even adversarial at times.

    • adfm  3 days ago

      You’d think they’d have the green data center thing down already, but that ain’t going to happen when politicians still boast “clean coal” and moan on about wind farms. It takes real leadership and economic force to transition towards a green economy, therefore you’re going to get pushback while heading toward a brick wall.

      A good start would be to limit new data center construction to zero-emissions DC-only compute. Slap a ZEDCO badge on it and you’ll get that buy-in you’re looking for.

    • organsnyder  3 days ago

      I think the difference is that many data centers are being built as cheaply as possible, with no regards for noise prevention, their effect on the energy grid, etc. Data centers have been located near people for decades, but most of them are completely inconspicuous because they are designed to mitigate their effect on their surroundings.

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  • gostsamo  3 days ago

    Do you know the old anecdote about the russian and american scientists talking about freedom? The one where the american explains that he is free to go and protest against the war in Vietnam and where the russian dismisses him that he is also free to protest against the war in Vietnam.