Who's afraid of Chinese models? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#341

Post by hnfong » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:50 AM UTC

killingtime74 wrote: post #279

credit_guy wrote: post #185

People who claim that the Chinese open weight models have some type of manifest advantage don't realize that the close weight models have a huge advantage as well: the researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Meta are not dumb, they can read the white papers written by DeepSeek, Moonshot, etc, and they can inspect all those architectures and they can pick and choose the best tricks there are out there, and of…

If the Google and meta engineers are not dumb how come they consistently trail behind the frontier labs and even the Chinese labs with a fraction of the funding. Probably bad leadership

I always suspect they have the most to lose if legal decisions on copyright issues don't go their way.

Imagine a scenario (theoretically possible but increasingly unlikely) where a US court decides that using "pirated" copyright data to train models is illegal. Now the AI developer has invested hundreds of billions of capital into a thing that is declared illegal and has to be scrapped.

This risk affects existing megacorps more than "startups" like OpenAI and Anthropic (and Chinese companies), because the megacorps have much more to lose. They actually have the cash to pay damages if the flood of copyright claims arrive at the door. This will not only bomb their AI development, but also the rest of their established businesses as well.

And thus I strongly suspect legal issues are holding them back a bit. Megacorps want to win the AI race, but not to the extent they stake the rest of their established business, while the newer companies' only product is AI, so they have to go all in.

Notice for example how Meta's Llama performed much more poorly after they got smacked by a bunch of lawsuits claiming that they torrented a bunch of copyright data.

(Disclaimer: I'm an outsider and everything I base my speculations on is public knowledge.)

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#342

Post by platevoltage » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:55 AM UTC

AlexCoventry wrote: post #248

isodev wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how cool it would be if actual competition prevents Anthropic or OpenAI from becoming an Apple/Google kind of cartel. I don’t care if it comes from China or not.

[flagged]

Are the Marxists in the room with you now? Do you need assistance?

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#343

Post by ArtRichards » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:56 AM UTC

New, smaller models can outperform the previous generation's foundation models.

What if there's a way to extract the commodity of intelligence from smaller models?

I've seen for many use cases it's well enough. :)

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#344

Post by samtp » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:56 AM UTC

oeatwell wrote: post #322

I think frontier labs should start building ecosystems by partnering with companies that already have software products, and even collaborating with hardware manufacturers. The ultimate goal should be to create a much broader range of products that integrate naturally into people's everyday lives. The United States' real advantage over China is freedom. Chinese LLMs simply can't compete with American ones when it com…

This is a really ironic comment given how the US gov is getting politically involved in pretty much all science research funding and speech at the moment.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#345

Post by rootsudo » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:57 AM UTC

culi wrote: post #311

AlexCoventry wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

And here I was believing the Red Scare was for the history books

Same, if only they would take a look at where their iPhone and MacBook was manufactured. Oh wait, you have a thinkpad? Isn’t that Lenovo?

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#346

Post by platevoltage » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:58 AM UTC

yonaguska wrote: post #175

lorecore wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 100% certain that China won’t be sending any goons to my front door.

This is true, but there is another foreign country that can send people to your door. What's to stop China from eventually buying that type of influence over our govt officials?

Given the nations that have actually bought influence over our government officials, China would be an upgrade. I doubt the president needs another decked out 747 though.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#347

Post by rootsudo » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:58 AM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #335

techpression wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Always buy opposite, buy low and sell high.

Too many people here buy high and sell low.

When Goldman makes statement, half the time it is prepped by an associate or two that has minimal experience and goes through a MD that enjoys the gloom and doom. That’s why they publish. Goldman makes money on both sides of a trade.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#348

Post by platevoltage » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:59 AM UTC

alex1138 wrote: post #256

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…

I'm a civilian, not a VC. In my own case, I'm worried how many things pass through the CCP. How censorship of mentions of Tiananmen Square is something they're quite interested in

Claude refuses to call Trump a Fascist.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#349

Post by hack1312 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:00 AM UTC

tvink wrote: post #339

larrysalibra wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OpenCode is absolutely used on company time.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#350

Post by MintPaw » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:00 AM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #258

ballon_monkey wrote: post #233

The 2 things people need to remember: 1) China can (and does) use the models to influence the west. They train in false information about Taiwan and Hong Kong. Or pretend like history is in favor of China. 2) Ignoring the models containing false information, they are incredible. But you should be scared of running inference via the model creators directly. If you think your data is safe compared to running it via mod…

On (1), models are an aggregation of large volumes of data sources, whatever the culture producing them, you'll get the average bias of that culture. We see that on what minorities are associated with inside the model, or how things that aren't online will have a completely different weight. Or how 2/4/5/8ch or X will be disproportionately present in specific models despite being the places where facts go to die.

I see your point, but this isn't exactly true, it only takes a single person to bias a model by deleting specific training data or over training on certain facts.