As Chinese AI startup Moonshot released Kimi K3, a new model touted to be almost as advanced as Claude Fable 5 or GPT 5.6 Sol, a major debate erupted on social media as to how this could have been the US's success and not China's, as Moonshot founder Yang Zhilin did his PhD from the US but then went back to China.
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The debate started after Russ Salakhutdinov, who was the supervisor of Zhilin at Carnegie Mellon University, congratulated him on the latest Kimi release. "It feels like just yesterday Zhilin was graduating from my lab at CMU, jointly co-advised with William Cohen. Not only did he complete his Ph.D. in just four years, but he also made truly fundamental contributions to ML during his time at CMU," Salakhutdinov wrote on X.
"What a spectacular career! Congrats again Zhilin, and thank you and the entire Kimi team for everything you're doing for the open-source community," he wrote.
The post went viral with social media users raising questions on why Zhilin did not stay in the US.
Indian-origin tech entrepreneur Ankit Gupta said America's "moronic visa policy" must have been one of the factors why Moonshot is a Chinese startup and not an American one.
"The fact that we don’t staple a green card to every AI PhD completed in America is stupid. would be more logical to seize their passports and force them to stay," Gupta wrote.
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