this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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From chatbots to intelligent toys: How AI is booming in China (www.bbc.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

One of the secrets to China's engineering success is its young people. In 2020, more than 3.5 million of the country's students graduated with degrees in science, technology, engineering and maths, better known as STEM.

That's more than any other country in the world - and Beijing is keen to leverage it. "Building strength in education, science and talent is a shared responsibility," Xi told party leaders last week.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

My company in China added AI to its products basically to receive government subsidies.

They introduced it into courseware to track student faces and tell parents whether kids were enjoying lessons, paying attention, etc etc. It was weird to see in action. I used the software and acted like a "bad student" to see what it would say about my face and lack of attention.

I'm also a voice actor. They tried to replace me with AI voices but the voices in 2021 were stuck in the uncanny valley and clients complained.

The company pretty much went belly-up when Beijing introduced the Double Reduction policy. I wonder what became of the their software? And I wonder if they ever made an AI version of my voice

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

added AI to its products basically to receive government subsidies.

Damn, I opened this post bracing myself for BS comments praising AI slop but this was actually interesting, thanks for sharing! Do you have any references (in English ideally) where I could read about such trends there, not propaganda & tech marketing like that BBC piece?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I have no good references that aren't boring propaganda from state media... Search China Daily for stories about ed tech

Or more broadly, search for "Ed tech" or "educational technology"

I think our "AI" was mostly BS, but I guess it had its niche.

Oh that reminds me... When I worked at state media, we ran stories about AI facial recognition at the winter Olympics. The stories claimed that they could identify more than 99 percent of people wearing COVID masks (I suspect this may be an exaggeration, as airport immigration officials and train station officials would make people remove masks and smile for cameras)

Also, just remembered: During my time at state media, I recall reading some Xi Jinping quote along the lines of "Whoever has the best AI will control the future"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

IMHO that's the linchpin, what's the gap between what a leader (political or business) would claim to be true versus... what's actually working, and beyond that, what's actually useful then used in practice.

Working in innovation we called this the "marketing gap" and it's quite a funnel, from broad claim that AI or any other emerging technology will "change everything" to what people, workers and consumers alike, actually use frequently and are wiling to pay for.

One needs bold claims, even if false, to get votes or funding money.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Ah yeah, well... At least in America, the marketing gap is pretty wide I think! (mostly based around LLMs)

Our "AI" courseware was pretty basic outside of the facial recognition (which I found impressive, if not TOO useful). It would keep track of student responses and tailor some questions based on previous performance, but that's pretty basic (I think it would have been better if our content developers knew how to work with the software)

About the marketing, we were actually a multimedia educational materials maker. Textbooks, courseware, video series , etc etc

The founder/CEO liked to pretend we were a tech company, but our bread and butter was VIPKids-style English lessons and textbook series with long shelf life. (I often felt like he was cosplaying as Jack Ma, Steve Jobs, or Jeff Bezos, if you know what I mean)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I hope you found gainful employment after you got cut loose. That sucks. I've been eyeing getting into voicework for a long time. Now seems to be about the worst time in history to enter the field.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In case any parent is reading this and feels (somehow!) like "Oh no... my child will be left behind!" to the point of considering buying some BS humanoid or animaloid "pedagogical" robot, get yourself a (European designed) good "old" Lego set! They've been at it for decades (literally, since at least 1998 with Mindstorms) and they focus specifically on pedagogy at school with e.g. https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-education-spike-essential-set-45345

Do NOT get a cheap piece of plastic that you do not understand, that behaves in "smart" ways you can't explain and that passes data long you have no idea about!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Soooo, buy expensive Danish plastic?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

LOL at this guy not wanting to deal with facts.
At least you chose the right name.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

Blocked, you're just trying to be provocative instead of having a constructive discussion. I don't have time to waste on that so don't bother replying to my comments, I won't see what you write anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That opening photo is so telling, a chess robot ... while one could literally run https://lichess.org/ from ANY device (tablet, mobile phone, laptop, etc) and have a functionally equivalent experience for free (both open source and free of cost, no ad either), in fact arguably a much better one due 0 setup time (literally none, it's all Web based!) to all the community, tutoring exercises, etc.

This is such a blatant fail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

"Timmy hugged his little robot friend before heading to bed. He doesn't have a name for it – yet. "It's like a little teacher or a little friend," the boy said"

... it's way WORST than a fail. How do you think this human will develop assuming friendship with a (commercial) product rather than another human being? My bet, but I'm no psychologist, is poorly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Akira!