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Who's afraid of Chinese models?

stratechery.com

431–440 of 965 posts

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh give me a break. Using a Chinese LLM will not put a Marxist under your bed. Did you know Gemini is shockingly bad at French poetry? Hasn’t stopped me for using it for all other tasks though.

> Using a Chinese LLM will not put a Marxist under your bed. Interesting tangent - it might be taught to introduce stealthy backdoors in your company though. Maybe even across multiple PRs where each session puts a small chink in the armor, and together they allow unlimited access to the attacker who knows about them. After all, LLMs are mostly black boxes. How comfortable would you be running a Chinese compiler?

If that happens one time at any company, it would be discovered and reported on eventually, and people would never trust any Chinese model again. The motivation for China is clearly to prevent America gaining a monopoly on AI, not spycraft. They have much more effective ways to do the latter anyway.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err.. I would like preserve my own right to decide who I'll do business with.

You already do not have that unfettered right in the USA.

Yes, sorry I didn't mean to imply that I didn't want to do business with minorities or protected classes.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#433
post #316
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.

The UN and “international law” are not the final authority on anything. International law is a loose collection of treaties, trade agreements, conflicts, supply lines, and pinky promises. It only takes effect in a democratic nation if the people vote in a government which makes it a law.

The UN is a political organisation, not a neutral arbiter. During the Rwandan genocide, the genocidal government still held a seat on the Security Council while the UN reduced its peacekeeping force. Iran was elected to the Commission on the Status of Women. Libya and Russia were elected to the Human Rights Council. These appointments are driven by bloc voting, diplomatic deals and state interests.

International courts are not above politics or error. Their judges are selected through a system in which dictatorships and abusive states have a vote. The UN is not a democracy. While each member state might appear to have one vote, that does not indicate their power, influence, credibility, or moral standing.

Note how I did not make a judgement on whether Gaza is a genocide. I am merely explaining that deferring to the dictatorships and pinky promises is not a good argument.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#434
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private companies will figure it out. Across sectors, China added 543 GW of energy in 2025. Next year, USA is expected to add between 70 and 80 GW of energy

You really have to look at energy/capita and how much energy is embedded in exports. The gross numbers are misleading. The US wasn't building new electrical generation capacity because it didn't need it and there was no market for it (caveats apply, but in a broad sense this is the major reason). Now that the market exists the question is how much can the US actually bring online and how rapidly, which is a real chal…

Oh, the UK and Europe castrated themselves and want others to follow the example. They still don't have made the connection between "I give up ability" and i get attacked by a proxxy opponent by those i gave ability up too.

They do not want to life in the world that is and thats going to be, but in the past and the world they green ideology promised. Reality denial be a addictive poison.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#435
post #308
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…

Man, it's so important to read sometimes. I really hope HN people passing by this comment take a second to contemplate what's being said here.

The claim: "the models are tuned to align with one side of the issue, he is an article from ArsTech about it"

The reality: grok got mass-reported on X by pro-Israel accounts, leading to an automated suspension, which was undone by the X team shortly thereafter.

Absolutely nothing to do with the models aligning to one side or the other on this conflict. The claim is unfounded.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#436

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…

> humanities, creativity, entertainment, or financial transparency > monetizing these strengths > real advantage over China is freedom Please tell me if I'm unfairly paraphrasing but these seem to be your main argument and they seem to be oxymorons

[dead]

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost of electricity isn’t a long term advantage in my opinion. Private companies will figure it out. What matters most is $/completed task. It does seem like OpenAI and Anthropic are winning here even with worse electricity rates. Perhaps it is made up by the efficiency of Nvidia and Broadcom chips, which China can’t get in mass. I do think that OpenAI and Anthropic are moving up in stickiness. My company has rallied…

I'm a model nomad, using whatever solved my last problem the best and where it makes the most sense to start my next work in. However with the latest models Fable, Kimi K3, 5.6, it's getting to a point where I sometimes forget what model I am on without noticing a difference. And once I realize it because something may not be exactly like I expected it I won't switch for that work either because I don't want to inval…

You didn't say what kind of problems you solve with AI. It matters a lot if you are doing HTML versus C++, for example.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure about Codex but Claude Code works with Github Copilot and can even work with open source models like Kimi/Deep Seek.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#440
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private companies will figure it out. Across sectors, China added 543 GW of energy in 2025. Next year, USA is expected to add between 70 and 80 GW of energy

You really have to look at energy/capita and how much energy is embedded in exports. The gross numbers are misleading. The US wasn't building new electrical generation capacity because it didn't need it and there was no market for it (caveats apply, but in a broad sense this is the major reason). Now that the market exists the question is how much can the US actually bring online and how rapidly, which is a real chal…

That last para is a novel idea. I wonder if there's any evidence to support/undermine it though?
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