Artificial Intelligence in China with Jeffrey Ding

Today on the show we are joined by Jeffrey Ding, creator of the ChinAI newsletter. He is here to tell us all about his work in the AI field and his focus on translating the developments from China to a more western audience. We start off by talking about the reasons why he started his newsletter, namely that the AI community in China are mostly abreast of advancements from the US and UK, while the same cannot be said in the opposite direction. This language asymmetry, as Jeffrey calls it, means there is a gap in the knowledge base in the Americas and Europe around the burgeoning Chinese AI scene. Jeffrey answers a host of questions around rumors and myths related to China’s forays into AI and unpacks some of the key concepts including semiconductors, the facial recognition field, data labelling and data leakage. He brings into contrast many common ideas that misrepresent the state of technology and its motivating factors in China and does a great job of clarifying important touch points such as privacy and government policy. For this fascinating chat, be sure to tune in!              Key Points From This Episode: Understanding the concept of language asymmetry Improvement in the understanding of Chinese AI developments Weighing China’s AI research against that of the west Sensationalizing the AI rivalry between China and the US Why would China still be at a disadvantage at this stage The facial recognition market and accounting for the successes of certain firms The history of data labelling and annotation in China Comparing the Chinese values around privacy and its permutations Some examples of data leakage and cloud security breaches from China Chinese equivalents of the Facebook saga in the west The autonomous car battles in China Research areas that Jeff will be pursuing in the near future Chinese perspective and approached to the danger of super-intelligence Tweetables: “Chinese people care about privacy. I think the difference is about the degree to which they care about privacy versus other tradeoffs and also what privacy means.” — @jjding99 [0:28:19]