Adam Tooze: “The key difference between 2022 and now is more subtle. We need to look to the very definition of crisis to understand it. The term, common to many western languages, derives from ancient Greek medical doctrine. It refers to the moment in the course of a disease when the patient reaches a turning point between life and death. Either the fever breaks, or it proceeds to a terminal conclusion. A crisis, therefore, requires two things: a body, in the broad sense, an integral unit that is still alive but whose existence is threatened; and a threat that has a naturalised logic of progression. One reason that crisis seems less apt a term in the current moment is that the disruptions are so intentional.”
WSJ: “In “The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China,” Ms. Jia and Mr. Li (with their contributing author, Claire Cousineau) explain why the test so dominates China’s education system and society. The authors direct this lively and informative volume at foreign readers who want to learn about gaokao culture, elements of which might appear in local American schools as large numbers of Chinese students go abroad to study. The gaokao-focused education system, we are told, is “a centralized hierarchical tournament” that promotes fewer and fewer students with each round. It is the epitome of a zero-sum game, children competing against their neighbors for one of the quota-allocated spots at the next level. By high school, those students most intent on achieving a high gaokao score will dedicate endless days to practice tests, training their minds for the marathon exam looming at the end of their secondary education. More than 10 million students take the gaokao each year, with only 500,000 entry spots available at the country’s officially ranked 100 most-elite universities. A single point in either direction can seal a student’s fate.”
Computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton: “AI will make a few people much richer and most people poorer.” More: “He makes a passionate pitch for how we might overcome some of the risks of modern AI systems, developed by “ambitious and competitive men” who envision AI becoming a personal assistant. That sounds benign enough, but not to Hinton. “When the assistant is much smarter than you, how are you going to retain that power? There is only one example we know of a much more intelligent being controlled by a much less intelligent being, and that is a mother and baby . . . If babies couldn’t control their mothers, they would die.” Hinton believes “the only hope” for humanity is engineering AI to become mothers to us, “because the mother is very concerned about the baby, preserving the life of the baby”, and its development. “That’s the kind of relationship we should be aiming for.””
NYTimes: “In mid-2015, the Chinese government announced a program called “Made in China 2025.” It would provide companies in 10 strategic industries with large, low-interest loans from state-owned investment funds and development banks, assistance in acquiring foreign competitors and generous subsidies for scientific research. At the time, the stated goal was that Chinese companies would control 80 percent of the domestic markets of those industries by 2025. That effort has largely succeeded, Dr. Wong Leung and other analysts said. Chinese clean tech companies have come to dominate both domestic and international markets. While Western countries like the United States and Australia pioneered now-widespread technologies like solar panels, batteries and supercapacitors (which are like batteries, only smaller, and provide quick bursts of energy), China is now building on those designs and creating new, groundbreaking versions.”
