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Who's afraid of Chinese models?

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Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#281

Post by margalabargala »

sanex wrote: post #252
bigyabai wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I'm not using AI to bicker over fringe political shibboleths. 2) I don't think it is any more or less safe to put my code on a Chinese server versus an American one. A Chinese provider also isn't liable to spy on me for the feds, as OpenAI and Anthropic certainly do.

Different county different feds both spying I'm sure.

Sure but if you are not Chinese or in China, then the chances of negative consequences to you from the Chinese feds is vanishingly small due to lack of ability to do anything that affects you.

Meanwhile if you are in the US, DHS has already subpoenaed social media sites looking for people who made anti-ICE posts and I can't imagine they consider subpoenaing AI conversations off limits https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#282

Post by itake »

xlmnxp wrote: post #268
kinj28 wrote: post #253

I am afraid — if Chinese models go mainstream it has a clear way of pushing its narrative way beyond its otherwise borders. More like a Trojan horse it is for the Chinese. Here is a quick example of how Chinese deepseeks agent works kn its underlying model) when asked a tough question https://x.com/jinen83/status/2079406993979383902?s=46&t=D7hQ...

Same thing happen for western models, try to ask about Gaza genocide and see for what side it will stand

What am I trying to understand about the western models on the term "Gaza genocide"?

I asked Grok "Tell me about the gaza genocide" and it write a IMHO balanced answer comparing why genocide is and isn't the right term. [0]

ChatGPT 5.6 Sol only explained why people call it a genocide and did not go in as in depth as Grok did for why people don't agree with the term. [1]

The only unsaid response (to me) here is the model should have declared that it was not a genocide, and because these models explain why it was a genocide, they are bad?

[0] - https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMi1jb3B5_c078bc15-ef5e-42bc-b... [1] - https://chatgpt.com/share/6a5ef005-0148-83ec-828d-65ae7a7f42...

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#283

Post by Barrin92 »

bg24 wrote: post #244
Barrin92 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this panic and protectionism supposed to be good for? This is open source software, there is no "AI industry", there's virtually nobody employed in this. "Domestic AI" makes about as much sense as a domestic Linux kernel. If the Chinese want to subsidize the world's water and energy use to supply the world with chatbots good luck to them. There's no need for guardrails or fast track data centers, they can pla…

I think it is deeper than that. "LLM => peak of productivity" takes way less time and effort than "Linux kernel => any productive work". Compare Dec 2025 vs July 2026 models in terms of capabilities. Nobody can predict 5 year out. However, the country that can be ultra efficient by making their governance, health, manufacturing, military, etc AI-native will be far ahead in the game.

There's no evidence that these things make anyone more productive, in fact the opposite, empirical research suggests users are less efficient while thinking they're more efficient. You're invoking "AI" the same way the blockchain people did before they all finally died out. "You need to put the government on the blockchain bro, you're gonna lose out to the future bro", turns out you don't

But that's not really even relevant to the debate. Insofar as software has made the world more efficient, it doesn't matter where it's written. That's the point of open source software, there's no tacit knowledge. When a country loses its nuclear engineering capacity that's dangerous because it takes a long time to rebuild. The only reason the Chinese are already competitive on LLMs but haven't managed to make a state-of-the-art jet engine is because the latter, unlike software, is difficult to copy and you don't need to worry about something you can copy.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#284

Post by mapontosevenths »

zx8080 wrote: post #249
analyte123 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US does not lag behind in energy. Industrial electricity prices in most places in the US are competitive with China, or even cheaper.

Links please.

This seems to show that even with China taxing industrial electricity to subsidize household electric bills it's still 30% cheaper for industrial electricity in China. [0] Those same taxes make household electricity about half the price of US power.

If I had to wager why, I'd say it's due to embracing solar on massive scales recently. Only a few years ago the US was competitively priced.

[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/compare_countries/USA/Chi...

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#285

Post by Aurornis »

exhilaration wrote: post #224
Aurornis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For personal use I agree. For companies, these decisions are very sticky. Companies go through a lot of red tape to get anything purchased and approved, then they discourage change because it's a lot of work. So the product that gets a foothold in a company sticks for a long time. Then a couple years later a sales person convinces an exec that they can save some money by switching, so the switching game begins. Not n…

I'm confused, I work at a big giant Fortune 500, we all get GitHub Copilot subscriptionsn - we can switch between OpenAI and Anthropic models with just a click in Visual Studio. There's no stickiness at all. They just made us go through a training after the price hikes about how to choose between models for the best cost/benefit ratio.

GitHub Copilot is the sticky product in your org.

You can choose a selection of different models within it, but you're not using Codex or Claude Code.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#286

Post by aurareturn »

pishpash wrote: post #280
aurareturn wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point here is that it takes the same hardware to inference an open source model as OpenAI/Anthropic inference their models. IE, a lower param OpenAI/Anthropic model can compete with a higher param open source model. So even if you are an American company who downloaded Chinese models in hopes of saving in cost, you still have to beat OpenAI and Anthropic in $/task which is very tough to do over the long r…

No they don't. Are OpenAI and Anthropic charging at cost, or wish to? No.

If you have more efficient models, you can reduce price and grab market share or keep price and increase your margins.

Over time, this compounds. More profits means more investments. More market share means more control.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#288

Post by Aurornis »

andersonpico wrote: post #106
Aurornis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For personal use I agree. For companies, these decisions are very sticky. Companies go through a lot of red tape to get anything purchased and approved, then they discourage change because it's a lot of work. So the product that gets a foothold in a company sticks for a long time. Then a couple years later a sales person convinces an exec that they can save some money by switching, so the switching game begins. Not n…

Every company that I've worked with that provided models internally did so through LiteLLM and offered both Anthropic and OpenAI models so it was trivial to switch between them.

I like all the different comments in this thread saying that most companies do X, where X is a different answer from each person: LiteLLM, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#289

Post by reinitctxoffset »

tristanj wrote: post #29

The people who are most afraid of Chinese models are the VCs who poured into Anthropic and OpenAI at astronomically high valuations. Anthropic is valued at $1.2T and OpenAI is targeting $850B. These astronomical valuations were built on the premise that these labs would generate massive profits from premium API pricing, but the Chinese labs are completely undercutting this strategy by releasing excellent open models…

[dead]

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#290

Post by khuey »

nekusar wrote: post #163
matheusmoreira wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hope it'll happen one day, even if not now.

Already is possible. On a machine with 32GB ram, and NO gpu. Just need a large SSD or NVME. Streams from disk to memory. https://github.com/JustVugg/colibri

Painfully slow tok/s though.
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