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Who's afraid of Chinese models?

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Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#331

Post by itake »

culi wrote: post #316
itake wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

So all the models you tried disagreed with the United Nations ruling? In international law, that is the ultimate authority of what is/isn't a genocide. It's objectively, legally speaking, a genocide.

I have a couple questions.

1/ I don't see in the responses where the model says it is or isn't a genocide. Can you share the snippet from each, I included the logs above?

2/ I can't find a source on the UN ruling that you mentioned. I am not interested in the findings of an investigative body, just the official UN ruling. Can you share? ChatGPT (and myself) can only find this [0], which is a second round of written submissions.

[0] https://www.icj-cij.org/node/206406?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#332

Post by lelanthran »

petilon wrote: post #34
altruios wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly perspective, inaccurate, and out of bounds framing. Public libraries, in this instance, is curated data from all the internet, obtained through not legal means (I don't have a problem with this other than lack of attribution, being copy-left). Just to be clear. But in answer to your incredibly leading and inaccurate framing... they are required (by their job title) to teach to those who who show up in…

If a professor learns from multiple books, generalizes from them and then shares his knowledge he is providing a valuable service. Versus someone who makes a recording of the professor's lectures and resells them to undercut the professor--that guy is not providing a valuable service.

> If a professor learns from multiple books, generalizes from them and then shares his knowledge he is providing a valuable service. Versus someone who makes a recording of the professor's lectures and resells them to undercut the professor--that guy is not providing a valuable service.

I'm confused now; isn't the LLM that trains on that professor's lectures, videos and textbooks undercutting him?

Where were you going with this?

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#333

Post by hnfong »

villish wrote: post #314
llm_nerd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distillation explanation is classic American exceptionalism: No one could possibly do anything unless they were copying American leaders (where "American" means a bunch of Chinese, Canadian, Europeans and Indians working in the US). It's also a bit of securities defensiveness. Pretending that you really do have a super moat, people just keep swimming in it so you just need to add more alligators. It's farcical. A…

> Previously Anthropic has reported on some Chinese firms doing chicken-shit level of API calls, that at most would be doing some Q and A or final fine tuning "Anthropic said the campaign was conducted between April 22 and June 5, 2026, and generated more than 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts." I don't know why you're trying to downplay it. European models are so far behind…

> European models are so far behind because they don't resort to these tactics on a massive scale. Basically every other country is entirely dependent on 2 countries for frontier AI.

You may or may not be factually correct in your other points, but you're really proving the GP's point here regarding American exceptionalism.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#334

Post by itake »

xlmnxp wrote: post #308
itake wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

This kind of response is predictable, since these models are tuned to align with one side of the issue. A recent example: Grok answered a similar question and was suspended shortly afterward [1]. Furthermore, a UN commission has formally concluded that it constitutes genocide [2] — a fact that Western AI models rarely mention, let alone link to directly. [1]: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/science-technology/xai-s-grok-tem…

My understanding is a commission's findings are not a UN ruling.

The UN ruling is discussing in the South Africa vs Israel case [0], which has not been ruled on yet.

[0] - https://www.icj-cij.org/node/206406

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#335

Post by lostmsu »

techpression wrote: post #168
solumunus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The valuations are unjustified even at the prices they’re charging now. They’re going to try their best to offload these investments into our pensions before the inevitable crash.

Apparently it’s already happening to a degree, wether it continues or not (or even is relevant) is not really my area of expertise. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/goldman-sa...

I had plenty of gains by holding investments which Goldman Suchs were making doom statements about.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#336

Post by hnfong »

Barrin92 wrote: post #218
bg24 wrote: post #130

I think in general rest of the world needs to take notice (not saying afraid), starting with the US. It cannot be taken for granted that China's frontier labs will be a few months behind. They might be at par or exceed. The lessons from steel, solar and EV needs to be learned by all lawmakers. You have to respect and learn from how China Government puts the system in place for complete industry takeover and they have…

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…

Only those who intended to use the new technology as a tool to achieve dominance and control are freaking out.

And it's the only viable tool the US has left. It's reasonable they are freaking out.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#337

Post by ehnto »

analyte123 wrote: post #227
ehnto wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US running costs are higher than in China, because the US lags behind in energy, has higher real estate costs, and wage costs are higher. Eventually we will hit a "good enough for cheap enough" and frontier models will hit diminishing returns (if they haven't already for a lot of types of work) Don't think the rest of the world will sit on their hands while the US soaks up chips either, demand gets filled and if the…

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

Apologies, I meant ability to deploy new generation. You're right that areas of the US are cost competitive.

This can change quickly though, so it's not that big of a deal. If AI energy demands push the Gov to deregulate/fast track new plants, or the industry decides to build out their own generation renewables.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#338

Post by solumunus »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #221
solumunus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they stickiness is less about the difficulty of switching and more about the lack of desire. I’ve been using Claude since day one, it works well and I’m happy, I like it. I’m sure Codex is good too. Switching from one to the other certainly isn’t going to be a game changer, the discourse shows me the differences are marginal. Probably the only reasons I would seek change are economical.

A sticky product is one that switching away from creates a major hassle. Which means the user will pay more to avoid said hassle. “I don’t really have a strong preference between the two” is another way of saying “the product isn’t sticky”, which is another way of saying “this provider has very little room to increase margins”

No, I don’t think so, and searching seems to confirm my view. Inconvenience of switching is just one aspect.

There’s little difference between Coke and Pepsi and the barrier to switching is nil, yet clearly the products have stickiness. People have slight preferences and become familiar with the brand and then engagement becomes habitual.

The effects on margins are irrelevant to this.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#339

Post by tvink »

larrysalibra wrote: post #228
mediaman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (quite excellent) article discusses several of your points. If you haven't read it, I recommend it. - Commodity market profitability is determined by marginal cost of production. LLMs have marginal cost; traditional software does not. - Models are not free. Downloading them is free. Running them is not. This has manufacturing economics, not software economics; the idea that they are "free" is an economic category…

Ben's article "distills" down to 2 reasons that US frontier labs shouldn't be "afraid": 1. US frontier lab unit economics are better 2. US frontier labs are moving up the stack making tools that are "stickiness" and will prevent users from switching. For 1...he doesn't provide any evidence for US lab unit economics being better...the major input to unit economics is electricity...which is cheaper in China. And buildi…

I think calling opencode the trend is naive. This not what is being run on company time.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#340

Post by resonious »

mediaman wrote: post #62
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…

The (quite excellent) article discusses several of your points. If you haven't read it, I recommend it. - Commodity market profitability is determined by marginal cost of production. LLMs have marginal cost; traditional software does not. - Models are not free. Downloading them is free. Running them is not. This has manufacturing economics, not software economics; the idea that they are "free" is an economic category…

> for frontier work.

I'll agree that GPT 5.6 may well be the best given the above contstraint, but for run-of-the-mill dev tasks (real ones, not benchmark ones), GLM 5.2 still blows every other model out of the water.

Cost per task as a metric is a bit ridiculous because there are so many types of tasks. GPT-5.6 can do some tasks GLM could only dream of, but GLM can do some tasks 100x cheaper and better than GPT-5.6.

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