I wonder how a US lab hasn't dumped truckloads of cash into various laps to ensure these researchers have a place at their lab
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ICE has been detaining Chinese people in my area (and going door to door in at least one neighborhood where a lot of Chinese and Indians live). I was hearing about this just last week as word spread amongst the Chinese community here (Ohio) to make sure you have some legal documentation beyond just your driver's license on you at all times for protection. People will hear about this through the grapevine and it has a massive (and rightly so) chilling effect. US labs can try but with US government behaving like it is I don't think they will have much luck.
*edit: not that it matters, but since MAGA can't help but assume, these are all US citizens and green card holders that I am referring to.
Yeah, the Hyundai factory fiasco kind of dashed the idea that the enforcement would spare people working in favored industries setting up in the US.
The Hyundai factory "enforcement" wasn't even legal. Those workers were here to train US workers and the Hyundai employees had proper visas for this.
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-raid-hyundai-korea-ic...
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/foreignaffairs/20251112/hundred...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/attorney-says-detained-k...
The regime is powered by racism and doesn't think through things.
Allegedly, though the local labor unions seem to disagree. I guess we'll have to wait for the facts to come out in court.
There are 2 groups of new Chinese immigrants in the US, they are quite different:
1.Those who arrived through legal channels (most studied at U.S. universities and remained on H1B visas, with a smaller number through EB5 or other visa categories) and eventualy got green card.
2.Undocumented immigrants, which include several sub-groups/waves. In the 1990s, most came from just a couple provinces, Fujian and southern Zhejiang. After COVID, they were from different parts of China and entered through the southern border.
The contributors to AI development belong to the 1st group. They are spread across the country but a large number work in high-tech companies in Northern California.
The 2nd group was intially concentrated in New York and Southern California (Los Angeles area). Later they have expanded into nearby regions. They provide labor for Chinese-owned small businesses such as restaurants, grocery stores, and hotels.
There is an industry created largely by Chinese political dissidents helping Group 2 through asylum applications using fake materials and exploiting common Western beliefs or narratives about China like human rights concerns. For example, Alysa Liu’s father is an asylum lawyer.
ICE enforcement efforts would likely focus more on Group 2 if they are knowledgable. Ohio should not be a high-priority area. I could be wrong due to changes over time. One indicator you can observe: Are there many Chinese-owned small businesses in your area?
They were operating in a traditional "China town" neighborhood for the detentions and the neighborhood they were going door to door in is one populated mostly by white collar professionals (tech, college professors, etc.).
ICE arrests citizens and legal immigrants on a regular basis. Only 5% of the people they arrested had an immigration related conviction on their record:
https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ice-detainees-have-violent-convi...
The Bay Area is mostly exempt for now because, after Trump announced ICE was going to surge in SF, a bunch of tech billionaires with economic interests in the region convinced him not to.
Also, over the last year, there have been a bunch of high-profile arrests of Ohioans by ICE. In one example, they arrested someone for showing up to their immigration hearing, leaving their young kid separated from them outside the court.
"Papers, please." comes to the US of A.
"Papers, please" is not just ID, but also authorization to travel internally. The idea that asking for ID* is anywhere equivalent is asinine.
*Reminder that folks visiting the US on a visa are legally required by the terms of said visa to always carry upon their person at least a copy of identity papers backing up that visa, and that this law has been in place for a very long time.
You have to show ID to pick up a prescription or open a bank account. You have to show ID for routine traffic stops. This is such a juvenile, tired argument.
Every administration since the foundation of ICE has removed illegal immigrants and funded ICE and immigration policy/border operations [1].
[1] Removals by president: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re...
Yes. Yes, so true. And the phd types building these models are probably even scared in China that ICE will fly there to deport them.
This thread is about bringing these people to the US.
What the US has done is dumped truckloads of cash to make it likely that as a legal immigrant you will be abducted and sent to a camp.
They already kind of do, but I think anyone who was into US money has already left for it, and the money China is throwing at the problem is pretty good also. You can also have a lot more influence in a Chinese company without having to adopt a weird new American corporate culture.
Indeed; or, Europe badly needs a competitive model to hedge against US political nonsense.
Offering „You are welcome“ relocation package to Anthropic might be a good idea.
Anthropic has gone out of their way to make a point about how much they love and admire the US state and its defense sector. Only drawing the line at a very far point and even when they drew the line it was with a big thing about how they believe in the American defense sector blah blah blah.
In any case, there's no way Anthropic's investors in Silicon Valley would countenance such a move.
Also, I'm biased the logical place is Canada, not Europe. Much of the fundamental/foundational research on LLMs, and a large part of the talent, came from universities in Canada anyways.
Given how American govt. has treated Anthropic, I think you might be right. EU truly has a remarkable opportunity to make Anthropic/Claude European.
It'd be great if they went to Mistral!
Competitive models are illegal in the EU.
They probably have tried, but you have to have more cash than those researchers feel they can get starting their own lab. When you consider the fact that their new startup lab would have the entire nation of China as, in effect, a captive market; you start to see how almost any amount of money would be too little to convince them not to make a run at that new startup. If money is their aim.
I think Alibaba needs to just give these guys a blank check. Let them fill it in themselves. Absent that, I'm pretty sure they'll make their own startup.
I do think it'd be a big loss for the rest of the world though if they close whatever model their startup comes up with.
> I do think it'd be a big loss for the rest of the world though if they close whatever model their startup comes up with.
That's very likely to happen once the gap with OpenAI/Anthropic has been closed and they managed to pop the bubble.
I don’t know, the EV bubble deflated and Chinese firms are still pumping them out with subsidies like their life depends on it.
If memory serves the father of the Chinese bomb studied in America and went back. It may be inconceivable to Americans but Chinese patriotism exists.
Besides you can live a comfortable life in PRC nowadays or live in a racist America.
China is also giving them dump trucks full of cash though. Plus you have to content with the nationalism reason (unfortunately this has died off in America for too many). The idea of building your country is valued for most Chinese I have met. Plus China is incredibly nice to live in, especially if you have lots of money and/or connections. So you can work in China, get paid lots of money, feel like you are doing good. Or In America you can get paid lots of money, and get yelled at by people online because the Government wants to use your model.
China city life is amazingly convenient. Trains and subways are just such an enormous quality of life boost. Add to that the relative cleanliness of having nearly zero homelessness and you’ve got something very compelling.
I will say we are winning in accessibility. China doesn’t have much of a ramp game
All very true.
I wonder if you max out your options in China. It seems the Party is suspicious of ambition and high profile winners. I'm sure you can live comfortably, but there's a ceiling.
I got an offer out of the blue for a consulting gig in ML, offering USD 400/hr in China. Assuming this was legit (the offeror seemed legit), it looks like China is also throwing a lot of Benjamins around...
> China is incredibly nice to live in
I'm sure it's a very nice place to live if you're content to just stay quiet in society and never put a political sign in your yard or even just talk about the wrong thing with your friend in a WeChat.
> never put a political sign in your yard or even just talk about the wrong thing with your friend in a WeChat.
Practically, how many care about that? Consider that in other part of the world they also cancel folks based on social media opinion...
and that Benjamin Franklin's opinion on security and freedom? Thats terminally online phenomenon only. I once tried to bring that without specifically mentioned that it came from ol Ben himself to folks IRL. Many thought it was some anarchist blabbers.
This is an exaggeration. Nobody in China cares about what you speak with each other privately, and people talk about stupid policies all the time. The government cares about _public_ actions.
In practical terms, if you're not kind of person who would want to run for an office in the US, China is incredibly comfortable. Cities are safe, with barely any violent crime. Public drug use is nonexistent. And with the US-level AI researcher income, you'd be in the top 0.1% earners.
try to protest in america and see how that works out for you long-term. or say protest against genocide in gaza at an uni or generally in public…
Chinese people are very racist towards non-Chinese. It might seem like a happy utopia, but if you aren't Chinese, then you may not really enjoy your time there. It may not be quite as bad as being black in rural US south, but being black (or anything non-Chinese) in China is still not going to be a good time.
Racism in even the worse parts of America doesn't even begin to touch the racism present in monocultural/monoracial countries.
What do you mean by racist? I'm a white/hispanic American and spent 3 months in China and didn't really notice anything problematic towards me.
Wild to call 1.42 billion people racist despite having met very few of them.
> Or In America you can get paid lots of money, and get yelled at by people online because the Government wants to use your model.
Isn't it just straight-up illegal in China to refuse the government from using your model? USA isn't perfect, but at least it has active discourse.
> get yelled at by people online because the Government wants to use your model
Well duh, as recently demonstrated, an US model used by the US gov will 100% end up murdering actual children sooner than later, in this case less than a calendar year in some far flung war that many Americans do not support. Alternatively PRC model used by CCP might kill in some hypothetical future but for national reunification/rejuvenation that many Chinese support. At the end of the day, researchers and population on one side sleeps more soundly.
Damn that social conscience, huh?
Yeah that was my first thought is it’s a tit for tat poach. They got the Gemini researcher so google responded in kind.
Well, the problem aren't just the NSF funding cuts. Everyone else is already dumping truckloads of cash. There's also the public health situation (who wants measles or polio?), the risk of retaliatory attacks from the countries we're at war with, etc. You could write paragraphs about why the US is less attractive to researchers.
When I was a deep learning PhD in the first Trump administration, US universities were already very deeply affected by the Muslim ban, and so a lot of talent ended up in other countries.
Sibling commentators are rightfully pointing out that foreigners, especially those who would not be recognized as white, face an onerous and risky customs process with long-term and increasing risks of deportation. When you see a headline like the NIST labs abruptly restricting foreign scientists, _everything_ else feels uncertain. Even if someone doesn't believe they're personally at risk for deportation, they're still seeing everything else.
And then it all boils down to a reputational thing. The era where we were the top choice for research is in the past. If you start a PhD in the US on your resume during this era, you might be anticipating how you'll answe the question of why you weren't good enough to get accepted somewhere better.
Where do researchers go instead of USA then? Genuinely curious