Enter the Dragon: America Is Unhealthy
November 4, 2024
Written by a humanoid dinobaby. No AI except the illustration.
The YouTube video “A Genius Girl Who Is Passionate about Repairing Machines” presents a simple story in a 38 minute video. The idea is that a young woman with no help fixes a broken motorcycles with basic hand tools outside in what looks like a hoarder’s backyard. The message is: Wow, she is smart and capable. Don’t you wish you knew person like this who could repair your broken motorcycle.
This video is from @vutvtgamming and not much information is provided. After watching this and similar videos like “Genius Girl Restored The 280mm Lathe From 50 Years Ago And Made It Look Like”, I feel pretty stupid for an America dinobaby. I don’t think I can recall meeting a person with similar mechanical skills when I worked at Keystone Steel, Halliburton Nuclear, or Booz, Allen & Hamilton’s Design & Development division. The message I carried away was: I was stupid as were many people with whom I associated.
Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough. (I slipped a put down through your filters. Imagine that!)
I picked up a similar vibe when I read “Today’s AI Ecosystem Is Unsustainable for Most Everyone But Nvidia, Warns Top Scholar.” On the surface, the ZDNet write up is an interview with the “scholar” Kai-Fu Lee, who, according to the article:
served as founding director of Microsoft Research Asia before working at Google and Apple, founded his current company, Sinovation Ventures, to fund startups such as 01.AI, which makes a generative AI search engine called BeaGo.
I am not sure how “scholar” correlates with commercial work for US companies and running an investment firm with a keen interest in Chinese start ups. I would not use the word “scholar.” My hunch is that the intent of Kai-Fu Lee is to present as simple and obvious something that US companies don’t understand. The interview is a different approach to explaining how advanced Kai-Fu Lee’s expertise is. He is, via this interview, sharing an opinion that the US is creating a problem and overlooking the simple solution. Just like the young woman able to repair a motorcycle or the lass fixing up a broken industrial lathe alone, the American approach does not get the job done.
What does ZDNet present as Kai-Fu Lee’s message. Here are a couple of examples:
“The ecosystem is incredibly unhealthy,” said Kai-Fu Lee in a private discussion forum earlier this month. Lee was referring to the profit disparity between, on the one hand, makers of AI infrastructure, including Nvidia and Google, and, on the other hand, the application developers and companies that are supposed to use AI to reinvent their operations.
Interesting. I wonder if the “healthy” ecosystem might be China’s approach of pragmatism and nuts-and-bolts evidenced in the referenced videos. The unhealthy versus healthy is a not-so-subtle message about digging one’s own grave in my opinion. The “economics” of AI are unhealthy, which seems to say, “America’s approach to smart software is going to kill it. A more healthy approach is the one in which government and business work to create applications.” Translating: China, healthy; America, sick as a dog.
Here’s another statement:
Today’s AI ecosystem, according to Lee, consists of Nvidia, and, to a lesser extent, other chip makers such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Collectively, the chip makers rake in $75 billion in annual chip sales from AI processing. “The infrastructure is making $10 billion, and apps, $5 billion,” said Lee. “If we continue in this inverse pyramid, it’s going to be a problem,” he said.
Who will flip the pyramid? Uganda, Lao PDR, Greece? Nope, nope, nope. The flip will take an outfit with a strong mind and body. A healthy entity is needed to flip the pyramid. I wonder if that strong entity is China.
Here’s Kai-Fu kung fu move:
He recommended that companies build their own vertically integrated tech stack the way Apple did with the iPhone, in order to dramatically lower the cost of generative AI. Lee’s striking assertion is that the most successful companies will be those that build most of the generative AI components — including the chips — themselves, rather than relying on Nvidia. He cited how Apple’s Steve Jobs pushed his teams to build all the parts of the iPhone, rather than waiting for technology to come down in price.
In the write up Kai-Fu Lee refers to “we”. Who is included in that we? Excluded will be the “unhealthy.” Who is left? I would suggest that the pragmatic and application focused will be the winners. The reason? The “we” includes the healthy entities. Once again I am thinking of China’s approach to smart software.
What’s the correct outcome? Kai-Fu Lee allegedly said:
What should result, he said, is “a smaller, leaner group of leaders who are not just hiring people to solve problems, but delegating to smart enterprise AI for particular functions — that’s when this will make the biggest deal.”
That sounds like the Chinese approach to a number of technical, social, and political challenges. Healthy? Absolutely.
Several observations:
- I wonder if ZDNet checked on the background of the “scholar” interviewed at length?
- Did ZDNet think about the “healthy” versus “unhealthy” theme in the write up?
- Did ZDNet question the “scholar’s” purpose in explaining what’s wrong with the US approach to smart software?
I think I know the answer. The ZDNet outfit and the creators of this unusual private interview believe that the young women rebuilt complicated devices without any assistance. Smart China; dumb America. I understand the message which seems to have not been internalized by ZDNet. But I am a dumb dinobaby. What do I know? Exactly. Unhealthy that American approach to AI.
Stephen E Arnold, October 30, 2024
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