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Qwen 3.8

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Re: Qwen 3.8

#671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> human rights and all that rubbish Denying human rights. Classic. Sorry - you instantly lost any respect I could have maybe had for your opinion.

I don't think you're taking the good-faith reading of the sentence's grammar here, which is: "[When China is mentioned] the comments section stops discussing [technical aspects], and instead starts going on about [non-technical aspects], and all that [stuff which I do not feel is relevant]." I'm struggling, though, to find a good-faith reading of what you meant by: "Denying human rights. Classic. Sorry - you instantl…

More of this kind of thinking is needed in the world, yet is very often vilified as not taking sides.

I continue to be dismayed at how simple it has become to turn people towards hate.

Re: Qwen 3.8

#672
post #583

I’m a developer from China. So, is this what Hacker News is all about? Whenever a model comes from China, the comments section stops discussing its technical architecture, optimisation points or real-world performance, and instead starts going on about politics, human rights and all that rubbish? To be honest, we Chinese IT professionals possess a genuine geek spirit. That’s why you’re lagging behind in open-source c…

In case there is a decent forum about tech somewhere in the Alibaba cloud, I'll be interested. HN has built a certain unhealthy bias in a lot of subjects. But so far other places haven't gained enough traction, yet.

Re: Qwen 3.8

#673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> human rights and all that rubbish Denying human rights. Classic. Sorry - you instantly lost any respect I could have maybe had for your opinion.

I don't see anyone talking about Trump, ICE executing people in the streets, the insane level of US politics, the slow build up of the surveillance state, etc when discussing claude or openai

You don't? Have you tried opening your eyes?

Re: Qwen 3.8

#674
post #583

I’m a developer from China. So, is this what Hacker News is all about? Whenever a model comes from China, the comments section stops discussing its technical architecture, optimisation points or real-world performance, and instead starts going on about politics, human rights and all that rubbish? To be honest, we Chinese IT professionals possess a genuine geek spirit. That’s why you’re lagging behind in open-source c…

I looked at the comments here but it doesn't appear to be an accurate characterization of the discourse. If anyone has links to such comments shaping the discourse from before the parent posted I'd be interested.

There's one top-level comment that's just an opinion of censorship of Qwen models (which might be argued to be politically adjacent if one assumes the censorship is referring to sensitive political subjects) but no specifics and there was a rebuttal reply anyway, while an unrelated top-level comment has a child reply believing China models are commoditizing AI to unseat US based models (could be argued a whiff of politics but also just competition) but it was still a positive impression.

Then I went to archive.org to check the earliest crawl of this page (prior to parent's post), but nothing different. So I enabled showdead in my settings to check dead-marked posts and there's one post near the bottom talking about how Chinese models are rarely ground-up foundational models, while another dead comment had an angle about it's a geopolitical strategy (neither of which had replies). Ironically some of the dead comments are praising Qwen.

Re: Qwen 3.8

#675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people aren't entirely convinced that AI will ever be "too valuable" in the first place. There will be a generational leap that makes current LLMs obsolete in every way. Let's say China gets there first, why would the CCP let it be released publicly? That is an insanely valuable advantage in everything from war fighting to economics and more. Humans for millennia have used technological advances to make better…

> Let's say China gets there first, why would the CCP let it be released publicly? That is an insanely valuable advantage in everything from war fighting to economics and more. Because China is based in a completely different set of values than the USA. They look at the world differently, and have a different understanding of it. Your assumption that your attitude is pure human nature is deeply grounded in your cultu…

"I'm no expert in Chinese culture"

You've made that plenty clear.

Re: Qwen 3.8

#676
post #583

I’m a developer from China. So, is this what Hacker News is all about? Whenever a model comes from China, the comments section stops discussing its technical architecture, optimisation points or real-world performance, and instead starts going on about politics, human rights and all that rubbish? To be honest, we Chinese IT professionals possess a genuine geek spirit. That’s why you’re lagging behind in open-source c…

In case there is a decent forum about tech somewhere in the Alibaba cloud, I'll be interested. HN has built a certain unhealthy bias in a lot of subjects. But so far other places haven't gained enough traction, yet.

It's probably in Chinese, which would cut out most of us here.

Re: Qwen 3.8

#677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anyone talking about Trump, ICE executing people in the streets, the insane level of US politics, the slow build up of the surveillance state, etc when discussing claude or openai

You don't? Have you tried opening your eyes?

I don't see it in grok or chatgpt launch threads.

Re: Qwen 3.8

#678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't? Have you tried opening your eyes?

I don't see it in grok or chatgpt launch threads.

> I don't see it in grok or chatgpt launch threads.

There's some wilful ignorance in your comments. Elon Musk's businesses have been taking a colossal hit due to his role in the Trump administration and pushing fascism across the world. To say that grok, the very models that have been announced to be trained as "anti woke", as not being subjected to criticism, is beyond belief.

Re: Qwen 3.8

#679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're taking the good-faith reading of the sentence's grammar here, which is: "[When China is mentioned] the comments section stops discussing [technical aspects], and instead starts going on about [non-technical aspects], and all that [stuff which I do not feel is relevant]." I'm struggling, though, to find a good-faith reading of what you meant by: "Denying human rights. Classic. Sorry - you instantl…

More of this kind of thinking is needed in the world, yet is very often vilified as not taking sides. I continue to be dismayed at how simple it has become to turn people towards hate.

It's an interesting question, I think, because GGP is correct to say that geopolitical discussion dominates posts about work done by Chinese developers and organisations. That work is fascinating and innovative.

On the one hand, those orgs are tied to a global superpower. I couldn't name a single global superpower that has existed - ever - which hasn't committed acts I personally consider deeply immoral. I don't think we typically discuss OpenAI's work, and learn from it, in quite the same way we discuss the work of Chinese labs. OpenAI is a US defence contractor, and - whether you agree or not - it must be acknowledged that a lot of people would see actions like the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq as deeply immoral. I don't think "which country is more evil?" or "which org is more embedded in its government?" is a productive route for this discussion - to me it seems like whataboutism. Others would disagree.

On the other hand, technical and artistic innovation has been sponsored and patronised by wealthy organisations (nation states and religions, predominantly) throughout history. That wealth was, generally speaking, acquired very violently. What does this do to the moral status of the work itself? I don't have an answer to that.

I do think I have a lot more in common with the average Chinese developer than I have in common with the average British (or American) political leader. I also believe the average Chinese developer has more in common with the average American developer than they do with the average Chinese political leader.

Lots of people might disagree with me about that, which is fine. What would be more difficult to disagree with, I think, is that I personally think I can learn a lot more from talking to people about the work we share than about the politics we do not.

Some examples: I personally think the Kimi line of models have been, for some time, by far the strongest of any lab's at creative writing tasks. I don't know how they've managed that. I'm completely obsessed with Bilibili ("China's YouTube"). I think many of its features are outstanding, and unmatched by anything a western video platform currently offers. The video content hosted there is often innovative, and occasionally artistically brilliant; the AI video usage specifically is notably more artistically advanced than anything I've seen on western platforms.

I'd love to listen and talk to some of the people who worked on this stuff, or who know more about it (perhaps in a less off-topic place!). I'd really love to work alongside those human beings. Because of geopolitics, that isn't easy. That is really frustrating to me. HN would, I think, in an ideal world, be a place that could happen.

Re: Qwen 3.8

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's say China gets there first, why would the CCP let it be released publicly? That is an insanely valuable advantage in everything from war fighting to economics and more. Because China is based in a completely different set of values than the USA. They look at the world differently, and have a different understanding of it. Your assumption that your attitude is pure human nature is deeply grounded in your cultu…

"I'm no expert in Chinese culture" You've made that plenty clear.

Are you an expert?
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