[Foreigners argue over Kimi K3, questioning why the U.S. failed to retain Yang Zhilin] According to monitoring by Beating, after the release of Kimi K3, attention on foreign websites quickly shifted from the model to Yang Zhilin. Media outlets began revisiting his background: undergraduate studies at Tsinghua University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, work experience at Google Brain and Meta, and eventually returning to China to establish Moonshadow. K3's performance in programming and agent tasks approaches the cutting-edge models in the U.S., prompting many to ask: 'Why didn’t the U.S. keep him?' One group blames the U.S. immigration system. Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, stated that the U.S. is scaring away top global talent with its immigration policies. YC partner Ankit Gupta went further, calling it outright foolish for the U.S. not to grant every AI Ph.D. a green card directly. However, Yang Zhilin’s mentor Russ Salakhutdinov later clarified that this explanation does not apply to Yang Zhilin. At the time, Yang had many opportunities to stay in the U.S., including an invitation from an Apple executive to join the company. Yang Zhilin still insisted on returning to China to start his own venture, saying he would regret it for a lifetime if he didn’t try. On the other hand, some xenophobic accounts shifted the blame to Russ and U.S. universities. Some claimed that the American academic community had 'failed Americans,' even bringing up the ethnic composition of his students. Meanwhile, other scholars defended Russ, arguing that he was merely proud of his student’s achievements and should not be subjected to nationalist attacks. Carnegie Mellon University professor Jian Ma later commented that while Yang Zhilin’s success is undoubtedly rare, U.S. universities still have many equally outstanding international students. Increasing uncertainty around immigration and international exchanges will only make it harder for the U.S. to attract such talent. [Original link]