So how would I use these Chinese models by API? I assume I'll pay by API call.
China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
141–150 of 978 posts
Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#142Once the US implements meaningful export controls, China will do this as well. They're already mirroring US regulations, but the gates aren't closed yet.
Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#143> I have serious concerns about how these models might reflect Chinese government perspectives (try asking them about Tiananmen Square). And I have serious concerns about the American ones. Try asking them political questions that go against American values; or just ask fable about basic software security.
[deleted]
Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#144AI models cost tens of millions to train. Offering them for free won’t justify the upfront costs. The Chinese model of model training/open sourcing only makes sense in the context of the overall strategy of undercutting American frontier labs’ profit margins.
There is a huge cultural influence opportunity too. Imagine if, in 10 years time, every school kid is learning the causes of the US civil war from an LLM, getting their essays on hiroshima and nagasaki graded by an LLM, and a million other things. A country with competitive LLMs gets to decide whether "it was more complicated than just slavery", and whether "it was tragic but necessary, saving lives over all". Countr…
It might seem so til you consider how an LLM is trained.
An indirect illustration: I can attest that Deepseek has very good 19th German, and knowledge of German 19th c literature, science and historical scholarship. No one in China could control the training that led to this. The German training sources were well aware of the exact nature of eg American slavery, so they are in the weights.
State control operates in the outer layers not the llm itself.
Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#145I’m suspicious of some quotes here, “80% of startups using Chinese models,” doesn’t seem quite right to me. I just interviewed at several startups and they were all using the US models. Maybe they have some minor use of Chinese models but the bread-and-butter of most of these businesses model use is the Claude and Codex subscriptions.
the distinction may be between using the coding agents vs using models for products. for example where i work we're talking about dropping opus for a chinese model for the in-app agent (which is very expensive to run)
Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#146Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#147I’m suspicious of some quotes here, “80% of startups using Chinese models,” doesn’t seem quite right to me. I just interviewed at several startups and they were all using the US models. Maybe they have some minor use of Chinese models but the bread-and-butter of most of these businesses model use is the Claude and Codex subscriptions.
Yeah. People should absolutely be _trying_ the Chinese models, and experimenting with running things locally, but the noise in development is genuinely all Claude and Codex. I put my foot in the mobile comparison the other day, and will again. If you were to go back and be a mobile dev in 2010 by all means specialize on one platform, but play with both as a professional interest to stay realistic. Here it's important…
If startups includes openclaw users then I could see this being true.
Deepseek is barely behind frontier models while 10x cheaper and 99% discount for cache.
Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#148AI models cost tens of millions to train. Offering them for free won’t justify the upfront costs. The Chinese model of model training/open sourcing only makes sense in the context of the overall strategy of undercutting American frontier labs’ profit margins.
Couldn’t you say the same argument about VC funded startups? They lose money following a strategic goal. The main difference here is if a startup goes underwater all the tech is usually lost. The Chinese weights are not going anywhere if the labs fail.
The VC money is only contingent on the strategy eventually bearing fruit. I do imagine going open source -> closed source could work for some model companies who get enterprise/ecosystem buy-in but the probability of ROI is lower.
Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#149Are open weights models secure? E.g. if a Chinese model is run by an American provider then can it still do bad things, like inserting backdoors into generated code or accessing external URLs (if browsing is enabled) to send info to them? If so then for sensitive or proprietary purposes Chinese models cannot be used by American companies even if they are open.
I think we'll pretty quickly see a best practice emerging that any generated code will be subject to an additional pass scanning for vulnerabilities. The scan will be done by a different model than the one that created the code. That will help catch vulnerabilities created by models, whether intentional or not.
This should be done regardless of which model was used - American or otherwise.
Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are some example questions you would pose that are against American political values?
masking the active genocide & war crimes in Palestine
Isn’t Gaza like 10% more populous than on the day its leadership decided to do a final solution on the Jews?