ChinAI #283: Around the Horn (16th edition)

Greetings from a world where…

you get what you give

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Around the Horn (16th edition)

With ESPN laying off Zach Lowe, who knows how long the Around the Horn show will stay on the air. Well, ChinAI’s Around the Horn lives to fight another day. For new readers, here’s how it works (see ChinAI #269 for previous edition):

• I give short previews of ten articles that caught my eye as I was scanning through sources (all published within the past week or so). The title for each preview links to the original article in Chinese.

• Readers vote on next week’s feature translation. Just reply to the email and/or comment on the post with the number of your preferred article. *Votes from readers who are paid subscribers to ChinAI count a little more.

• Main premise is that any of these 10 links would have made for a great feature translation this week — like the Twisters movie soundtrack, there are no skips!

1) A Jiangsu factory installed surveillance cameras in the men’s restroom: employees complained…the company’s response: “installed incorrectly and it has been fixed.”

Summary: One type of story that is often never told in English-language reporting on China is any form of opposition to the expansion of the surveillance state. This article covers a recent dispute between employees and factory management over the installation of surveillance cameras in the men’s restroom, which involves “paid toilet use” and netizen backlash.

Source: 瀟湘晨報 (Xiaoxiang Morning Herald) — largest city daily newspaper in Hunan Province.

2) China’s Comprehensive Computing Power Index (2024)

Summary: This report gives details on China’s computing power, including analysis of the number of racks in use across different centers and the differences between various provinces and cities. Back in 2021, the winner of an Around the Horn vote was a similar white paper by CAICT on China’s computing power development index.

Source: 中国信通院 (CAICT) — a think tank under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

3) Why is (Alibaba’s) Tongyi the most popular open-source large model?

Summary: This article explores the rise of Chinese open-source large models, with Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen (Qwen) as a stand-out. One indicator: based on Hugging Face data, the Qwen series is linked to 50,000 derivative models (the open-source model is fine-tuned for specific use cases), second only to the Llama series (~70,000 derivative models).

Source: AI科技评论(aitechtalk) — focuses on in-depth reports on developments in the AI industry and academia.

4) The three year countdown: how far has it gone with the replacement with domestic databases?

Summary: So much conversation about decoupling stays in the realm of rhetoric and bluster. I like numbers. This piece contains some measures of China’s efforts to “de-IOE (IBM servers, Oracle databases, EMC storage)”, which involves a goal for domestic companies to service 100% of databases for the party and state as well as eight major industries by 2027.

Source: OSChina — portal that covers China’s open source community

5) Chinese-language coding assistant benchmark evaluation released

Summary: SuperClue just released a new benchmark that assesses coding assistants using a combination of automated and human evaluations. One interesting finding: Anysphere, the start-up and Github copilot competitor, lands at the top spot.

Source: CLUE中文语言理解测评基准 (SuperCLUE) — organization that tests the capabilities of large language models from Chinese and international labs.

6) Coming back from "internal injuries", AI applications are opening up overseas

Summary: This is the first of two choices surfaced from the Emerging Technology Observatory’s Scout, a discovery tool for Chinese-language commentary on technology issues. Here’s Scout’s summary: Chinese companies' AI apps are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. and global markets, with recent statistics showing at least three of the top ten AI-related apps in the U.S. are developed by Chinese companies….Large tech companies and startups alike have expanded to overseas markets in search for new revenue sources, deeper capital markets, and access to higher-performance LLM technologies abroad.

Source: 壹度Pro (yiducaijing) — new media group that focuses on emerging technologies and innovative companies.

7) He was in charge of the U.S. math Olympiad team for ten years

Summary: Po-Shen Loh, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, served as the coach of the U.S. math olympiad team for a decade. In the summer of 2024, the U.S. won gold at the 2024 math olympiad, ending China’s five-year streak. A wide-ranging, fascinating discussion of math education in both countries.

Source: 知识分子 (The Intellectual) — a platform that covers the state of science in China, founded by Chinese and Chinese-American scientists.

8) AI has almost polluted the entire Internet

Summary: How has AI-generated content increased the amount of internet garbage? This article digs into examples such as an undercover experiment on Zhihu (China’s Quora-like platform), in which a user demonstrated the amount of influence gained by an account with AI-generated content.

Source: 硅星人 [Gui Xingren] — we recently translated their article on the diffusion of large models to business-facing and government-facing applications.

9) Major changes in China’s class structure are changing the logic of governance

Summary: This commentary unpacks anxieties about class solidification, with some analysis about the role of digital technology in social mobility. Distills 10 characteristics of China’s changing class structure from national statistics.

Source: 文化纵横 (Wenhua Zongheng) — leading platform for contemporary political and cultural thought, which also publishes a quarterly journal.

10) If you could pick among all chip companies, which one pays the highest salary?

Summary: This is the second of two choices surfaced from the Emerging Technology Observatory’s Scout, a discovery tool for Chinese-language commentary on technology issues. Here’s Scout’s summary: The article compares high salaries in various segments of the chip industry using data from the Zhaopin recruitment platform, noting that integrated circuit design engineers can earn nearly 1 million RMB annually, with high-paying companies including familiar names like Huawei/HiSilicon as well as lesser known firms like InfoTM and Haiguang…

Source: 芯潮IC — influential media source that focuses on the semiconductor industry

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***For Around the Horn weeks, I usually mostly read Chinese-language articles, but the Four to Forward recommendations will return next week!

Thank you for reading and engaging.

These are Jeff Ding's (sometimes) weekly translations of Chinese-language musings on AI and related topics. Jeff is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University.

Check out the archive of all past issues here & please subscribe here to support ChinAI under a Guardian/Wikipedia-style tipping model (everyone gets the same content but those who can pay for a subscription will support access for all).

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Any suggestions or feedback? Let me know at chinainewsletter@gmail.com or on Twitter at @jjding99