For China, the answer is fairly simple: talent.

An example: At the moment, 9 of the top 10 algorithms for Stanford Question Answering Dataset, including all of the top 5, are by Chinese teams. (2 of them by Microsoft Asia which is based in Beijing and the other 7 are by Chinese companies).

https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/

I wrote this about 3 months ago and the trend becomes quite concrete faster than I thought:

> Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace.

> ...

> My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the proportion will be about five times as large. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be around 20 times. ...

> ...

> The distinct advantage of the US is that it is the magnet for top talents and ambitious people from all over the world, including the Chinese, so it might continue to lead for a while. However, if the US becomes inhospitable to talents or potential talents, it is clear that China with its quality and quantity of human resources will soon take the lead.

Full comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339

So why isn't Google lobbying for free and better college education in the US, if they foresee a decreasing pool of talent in the US in the future?

Because that's not Google's job, that's the job of the local, State and Federal Government of the United States.

Edit: they do fund a lot of PhD research in US universities, including fellowship for PhD students. But one can't expect a company, even Google, to overhaul the entire system

The parent said lobbying, not paying for it themselves. I do believe it's a government's job to provide and support equal opportunity when it comes to educations though; that is, allow anyone, regardless of background or wealth or whatever, to attend a school matching their intelligence and ambitions.

As it stands, US education is all over the place, and worse, it's more and more only becoming available to the elite; social mobility is low, that is, if you're born poor chances are you'll end up poor yourself.

This is unlike where I came from, where my dad was a low paid metalworker but I got an effectively free college education and repaid that government funding multiple times over in income taxes in just a few years, whilst simultaneously bringing a lot more money home than my parents did (to oppose any "but income taxes screw with my income" claims).

Anyway, since the government isn't doing it, I do think it's up to the big companies to offer it. That's what the US is all about, isn't it? Changing it to a capitalist government, where it's big companies that rule the people, not the government.

Your experience is exactly why investing in education by the Government is a good idea. Education is a super-long term investment, whose returns can only be reaped over a long period of time, via taxation. And that is only viewing it from a purely investment perspective; the gains to society by skilled and educated workforce is priceless.

It is for this reason that I don't think private companies can significantly change that, even in the US. Even the most innovative/successful companies don't last that long in the US to make a significant change in the Education system.

> Because that's not Google's job, that's the job of the local, State and Federal Government of the United States.

And to an even larger extent it's up to the citizens of the U.S. Most don't care enough to support/reward such efforts at the ballot booth, so the politicians aren't motivated, and things don't get done.

The government's job is to lobby itself into spending more money on public education?

The government's job should be to not be swayed by lobbyists, do their own analysis and make policies that best serve the country long term.

I prefer to deal with the world as it is, rather than as I wish it to be. The US government has never worked the way you describe.

Unfortunately, when it comes to legislation and budget considerations (including education), lobbying works.

There is a lot of top talent in the US as well, but they'd rather make their own start up or make 7/8 figures doing prop trading. This isn't an option for most Chinese people.

They are, as are many people. They have been for quite some time though with limited effectiveness it would seem, and it isn't likely to get any better in the immediate future because US politics is currently, to use presidential terminology, a shithole.

They will continue to lobby I'm sure, as they will prefer to find the talent they need near their existing infrastructure instead of needing to build new - but they are at the point where plan B (building infrastructure elsewhere) is looking like competitive value for the investment in time and money.

Another argument (of several, large investments like this are very far from simple single-variable issues) may also be that their competitors don't have a foothold there: so by investing first they get access to that talent pool more exclusively than they do the pools elsewhere, at least initially.

It's simple math really. Expanding their regions expands the talent pool by reaching talent in new populations who may not want to move. If they get kicked out by the regime they don't lose the tech, it's exported immediately no doubt.

Not everyone wants to study and/or work in the US, not only for financial reasons.

Well, one reason could be that Saudi-Arabia is planning so-called "smart" cities and Google wants to be in the center of it all (a UN driven program - IMO a potential tyranny sprayed in rose perfume).

https://www.saudismartcities.net/

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Sa...

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingo...

> What’s with their support of authoritarian regimes

Because the US is very familiar with them?[1] US companies continue to make billions off of authoritarian regimes. Why should tech be a stranger?

From a practical perspective, they are being smart, and safe. They know that China is positioning itself as the de facto global leader in trade, aid, finance, development, consumerism, etc, and their AI research is way ahead of ours. They know the Saudis have a butt-ton of money and can help them open up other middle eastern business. And they're getting in on the ground floor before their competitors do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...

Revenue.

How does a data center support an authoritarian regime, and why don't Amazon's planned data centers in Saudi Arabia also support an authoritarian regime?

Makes it harder for the us to go to war. Imagine if Afghanistan had lots of US company / investments. There'd be more backlash.

Reminds me of the Toby Ziegler quote from The West Wing: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895

It's building infrastructure.

Infrastructure that people outside of Saudi Arabia can use to monetize Saudi Arabians. The huge data centers that employ a handful of people in backwards oppressive states like the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia haven't made tech powerhouses out of those regions but have allowed people in Silicon Valley to get rich off of them with Internet products and services.

The two are not mutually exclusive, personally I am quite happy to see that there can be support for socially conservative values despite the progressive supremacist cadre's most strident efforts in the US.

'conservative values' ... 'Saudi Arabia' ... something doesn't add up here.

Since when is conservative synonymous with authoritarian?

At least since the days of the Moral Majority, I'd say. (Or possibly since the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Or maybe since Industrial Revolution-era strike-breaking? (Or maybe - if you're gay, transgender, etc. - roughly since the Old Testament was penned?)))

In other words: IMHO, social conservatism is very much authoritarian, in that it seeks to proscribe certain modes of living as contrary to the moral fabric of society. Saudi Arabia is, in this view, a prime example of this as it approaches its logical extreme. Fiscal conservatism, OTOH, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with authoritarianism. We've unfortunately managed to conflate the two in modern American politics, which is how you end up with counter-productive policies like "tough on crime", "war on drugs", "cut basic social services", etc. that end up costing more than necessary in the service of "proving" a moral point.

Since at least the early 19th century? In Europe, conservatives were the ones who supported absolute monarchies.

Thats because absolute monarchies were the status quo in the 19th century (except for switzerland and france -- on and off). Conservatism is a political agenda to preserve the status quo. Going further back and revive concepts of a long forgotten past is usually called reactionary.

What is now the UK hasn't had anything like an absolute monarch since the 17th century - indeed you could argue that the last one got his head chopped off!