What evidence are there that this statistical gap in AI enthusiasm shouldn't be interpreted as is? What if China IS just more enthusiastic about AI? It sounds like the author pointed out differences in surveyed enthusiasm, and then basically said "well this can't be real."
Basically true. I lived in a northern city in the 90s. My parents worked at state-owned company. That period was genuinely brutal. The companies weren't just laying people off, they were also constantly delaying wage payments. I remember at one point wages went unpaid for over half a year. For newer employees with little savings, the life will be difficult.
But to be fair, by that time those companies had reached a point where reform was simply unavoidable. They offered lifetime employment and ran their own schools, hospitals, even shopping malls. Jobs were inherited, when parents retired, their children took over the position, and it was completely normal for multiple generations of a family to work at the same company. This meant the company had virtually no competitiveness. From top to bottom, people just coasted along for stability, while the companies bled losses year after year, relying on state subsidies and bank loans just to make payroll. So they went through a "socialized reform", the consequence was mass layoffs.
At the same time, society was unstable, and some people used the chaos to get rich. For example the mother of [0]. When a company was restructured or sold off back then, the assets were supposed to be used first to pay severance to employees. She took a farm and land worth 2.3 billion, cooked the books to make them look like negative assets, and sold them to her friends' shell company for just 60 million. Then she pocketed the money that should have gone to laid-off workers, driving more than 500 families into bankruptcy. This ties into another point the article makes: having experienced the pain of change, but also understanding that change was necessary to survive, people became much more open to new things.
Dario and Sama would do well to state their intentions on what they'll do with all the money they get from AI. If they said they were going to open a research institute studying cures for cancer or whatever, and they were going to donate $x00 million to the cause, and create a million new jobs, it would be a lot easier to be optimistic about the future.
This hits hard. Everyone wants to be relevant in the next iteration. But how exactly to do that is still up in the air.
This was an incredible read, take my upvote!
What evidence are there that this statistical gap in AI enthusiasm shouldn't be interpreted as is? What if China IS just more enthusiastic about AI? It sounds like the author pointed out differences in surveyed enthusiasm, and then basically said "well this can't be real."
I read it as an excuse to share their very interesting narrative, I hadn't realized the northern provinces had been hit that hard by Deng's reforms.
Basically true. I lived in a northern city in the 90s. My parents worked at state-owned company. That period was genuinely brutal. The companies weren't just laying people off, they were also constantly delaying wage payments. I remember at one point wages went unpaid for over half a year. For newer employees with little savings, the life will be difficult.
But to be fair, by that time those companies had reached a point where reform was simply unavoidable. They offered lifetime employment and ran their own schools, hospitals, even shopping malls. Jobs were inherited, when parents retired, their children took over the position, and it was completely normal for multiple generations of a family to work at the same company. This meant the company had virtually no competitiveness. From top to bottom, people just coasted along for stability, while the companies bled losses year after year, relying on state subsidies and bank loans just to make payroll. So they went through a "socialized reform", the consequence was mass layoffs.
At the same time, society was unstable, and some people used the chaos to get rich. For example the mother of [0]. When a company was restructured or sold off back then, the assets were supposed to be used first to pay severance to employees. She took a farm and land worth 2.3 billion, cooked the books to make them look like negative assets, and sold them to her friends' shell company for just 60 million. Then she pocketed the money that should have gone to laid-off workers, driving more than 500 families into bankruptcy. This ties into another point the article makes: having experienced the pain of change, but also understanding that change was necessary to survive, people became much more open to new things.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanting_Qu
Almost reads like state policy-induced FOMO.
Dario and Sama would do well to state their intentions on what they'll do with all the money they get from AI. If they said they were going to open a research institute studying cures for cancer or whatever, and they were going to donate $x00 million to the cause, and create a million new jobs, it would be a lot easier to be optimistic about the future.
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