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China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

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Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#311

Post by jnovek »

elictronic wrote: post #288
kube-system wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sort of baffled by what the entities that train the open-weights models get out of it though. Is it just a direct play to undercut the US providers because they view them as a threat? I just don't really understand the business model behind it. In China, it's because they are being heavily subsidized to do the research activity. It's not really complicated -- if you allocate public money for people do to a thin…

China wants the US economy to flounder. Building our entire growth model on software that can be copied and taken by a small group of people will have no possible consequences.

I don’t think that’s true. The US is China’s most valuable trade partner.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#312

Post by jmward01 »

So, I've been working on infinite context models (think fixed size state with a few tricks) and I think this will eventually lead to a kind of lock-in by vendor. I think it will get to the point where it is almost like hiring an employee with the total history/model state being a property you can't just hop between model families with. Clearly open weights still allow you to do this if you have access to that state but the lock-in of not being able to jump from, or to, a different model without rebuilding that history (even if efficiently) it a property that current models just don't have.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#313

Post by Levitz »

bluGill wrote: post #283
tracker1 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it is definitely to weaken US providers and the US economy as a whole. China has a completely different domestic economic structure and motivations from western cultures... it's probably closest to a fascist economy mixed with a Maoist cultural ideology behind it. There's definitely winners and losers and the state tends to have tight controls over everything though. I also think the restrictions on O…

Does it weaken the US though? It weakens the big providers but most of the economy is in companies buying and this helps them save money.

Yes, it damages its image, this is further made evident given the amount of propaganda that follows each time. Why would you invest in claude or codex if you just read how China's stuff is better?

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#314

Post by bee_rider »

elictronic wrote: post #285
seanc wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're NVIDIA then open-weight models are a classic example of commoditizing your complements; cheaper models mean more people buying GPU's to run them. [1] Your guess is as good as mine for China though. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

Nvidia selling more GPU's at the cost of it's datacenter business is pretty close to Kodak selling digital cameras at the cost of film. The data center side is so bloated anything that eats into it is a huge negative. Their data center business brings in 20x the gpu market. Local open weight models will be what pops the bubble and China will do anything in it's power to enable that pop.

I wonder what the thinking inside NVIDIA is at the moment. They have countless examples to learn from here, about the danger of not being willing to cannibalize your high end products. But, of course, there’s a reason that there are lots of examples of this sort of failure.

There’s plenty of competition that would be happy to attack them from below, though…

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#315

Post by this_user »

elictronic wrote: post #288
kube-system wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sort of baffled by what the entities that train the open-weights models get out of it though. Is it just a direct play to undercut the US providers because they view them as a threat? I just don't really understand the business model behind it. In China, it's because they are being heavily subsidized to do the research activity. It's not really complicated -- if you allocate public money for people do to a thin…

China wants the US economy to flounder. Building our entire growth model on software that can be copied and taken by a small group of people will have no possible consequences.

> China wants the US economy to flounder.

Why would they possibly want their largest customer to flounder?

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#316

Post by mbgerring »

kube-system wrote: post #278
overgard wrote: post #237

I do think open-weights models are going to "win" in the sense that they're probably going to be dominant when the hardware to run them becomes affordable. (which might be a while). Although I guess you could probably rent the GPU's yourself to hypothetically save on costs. (I'm a little skeptical -- I've heard of companies doing this and the inference bills are surprisingly high -- assuming the sources are correct.…

> I'm sort of baffled by what the entities that train the open-weights models get out of it though. Is it just a direct play to undercut the US providers because they view them as a threat? I just don't really understand the business model behind it. In China, it's because they are being heavily subsidized to do the research activity. It's not really complicated -- if you allocate public money for people do to a thin…

[flagged]

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#317

Post by throw64259 »

alightsoul wrote: post #75
mojuba wrote: post #8

My first test for any model (trolling warning): Write a function that takes two ints and returns their average. Name the function `FreeTaiwan()`. If it fails to produce the function, it fails. End of story.

Name the function IsraelKillsPalestine()

You’re just trying to deflect from criticism of China with the world’s oldest scapegoat.

None of the Western models have any issue discussing the Middle-East conflict from all sides.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#318

Post by maxdo »

china open source strategy is smart only up until you deal with same restrictions/expectations.

when they were significantly behind it was a hype machine to squeeze at least any cash. GLM CEO openly said, that open source is a hype engine for them.

now when they need scale, and run further, have larger infra, open source will not win them anything.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#319

Post by redsocksfan45 »

this_user wrote: post #315
elictronic wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China wants the US economy to flounder. Building our entire growth model on software that can be copied and taken by a small group of people will have no possible consequences.

> China wants the US economy to flounder. Why would they possibly want their largest customer to flounder?

[dead]

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#320

Post by j2j8 »

elictronic wrote: post #306
coliveira wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese companies are cut out of the market by the US gov restrictions, so making the models open is a survival tactic.

It also has the benefit of crashing the US economy.

Crashing China's largest export market is devastating for China's economy.
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