Live data from Hacker News

Who's afraid of Chinese models?

stratechery.com

571–580 of 965 posts

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Trump is quite an outlier in his non-standard behavior, I agree on that. That said, Americans still enjoy very robust protections of freedom of speech and association, about the strongest in the world, and your SCOTUS does not seem to be inclined to hollow them out. Many of the pending lawsuits will end there and eventually bind this administration, plus the following ones. This just does not happen in actual au…

No, he's not. He's more direct and brazen about it. But he's doing the same culling, the same political demands, same everything. Its just now in plain view rather than behind closed doors.

Exactly, people think that Biden, Obama, Bush, etc. are some sort of saints and Trump is the devil. All other presidents used to do the same things behind closed doors and Trump just doesn't care to hide it.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#572

I'm rather scared of US models - if Anthropic was the only AI provider in the world, it's easy to see that common people would have no access at all. Thankfully there is OpenAI which compete 1:1 with Anthropic (at a slightly lower cost) but most importantly the Chinese models keep Anthropic, but also OpenAI in checks. And I'm saying this as someone working for American companies.

I'm sure this will be a terribly unpopular opinion, but I've long held the view that a Chinese AI company might screw me over at some point for a complex geopolitical reason that I don't fully understand. An American AI company will screw me over tomorrow for a quick buck.

As to the argument is that (only?) the Chinese labs are training on my data, I find this almost comical given the amount of highly-personal data companies such as Meta and Google have been harvesting for decades.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#573
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn’t that been the assumption since Carnivore? Also we tapped European pols phones back in ‘12, was it? Though it’s not like the Eu are a bunch of innocents either… It’s not a new thing. Industrial espionage has always been a thing as well. So has bribery (for deals) been a thing especially by euro concerns.

> It’s not a new thing. Industrial espionage has always been a thing as well. Well sure, except with closed US LLMs you're basically just handing them data on a plate, and paying for the privilege. ;) Very American really ... monetising industrial espionage.

[deleted]

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#574

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…

> 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. I am not Chinese and I'm not defending the Chinese, but I see this argument come up a lot. In practical terms it is US-sponsored FUD. Why ? Because the hard reality is that what you say is simply not going to affect 99.9999999999% of users. Is it realis…

People absolutely use LLMs to research politically sensitive topics.

I wish they wouldn’t, but people use LLMs as their general search engines now.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#575
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.globalpetrolp…

But the clean, beautiful, coal will come online soon right?

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#576
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, multiple political parties balance each out other. In China, there is 1 party. 1 view. 1 definition of the Truth.

I’d love to live in the USA you’re talking about friend. This is just oriental despotism paranoia, whatever cutsie repetition slogan you come up with is not a serious argument.

I mean we shouldn’t pretend China isn’t run by a 1 party authoritarian state. It is. And it uses that absolute power how and when it pleases.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#577

Try different harnesses people! I am actually preferring Chinese models at a fraction of the frontier price for coding. Yeah you need more tokens per unit of work done, but it is way cheaper still. Using CC/Opus as a staff eng / frac CTO. And Hermes/Chinese model as hopefully my team of mid levels. This way I can make good use of pro plan and then get cheap Chinese tokens for the rest and not hit a RL and know it can…

That's nice and all, but I would not get hired in many places that are heavily regulated and risk adverse, and would not hire someone who swears by said models because there is no trust in their creators not training for malicious intent, a random tool call here and there, and you've got a "open weight model" that can send your code anywhere.

There's just no trust in a country that is digitally totalitarian and hostile towards its own people. Do people ever look at the full sized Tianamen Square photos? This is not even the photo of the many people on the ground who were killed by their government and it is still insane to look at.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/dgua6k/the_full_tiana...

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#578
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is misleading; the chat is censored, the model is not. You can download the model, run locally and ask the same questions to see the difference.

This is not true. Both model and chat are censored; the resistance to answer some questions is baked into the weights. This is not specific to Chinese models though, Western ones are also censored, but in different topics.

Depends on the model; Step 3.7 Flash is surprisingly happy to chat about Chinese banned topics for example when run locally

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#579
post #268
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

I had a steange experience talking to Claude about a random 15-years old boys winning women’s national soccer team.

It insisted, to a level that I detemined it to be part of the post training, that it does not matter. That women’s team is better at dribbling, finishing and reading the field, it claimed. When I pushed it how it knows this, it didn’t let go. Instead it started claiming that it has personally observed this by watching the games.

Every society has its taboos and ours is no different and feminism being just one.

In my books, the chinese censorship is better. You know where they are holding their finger on the scale and not hiding it behind vague terms like ”safety”.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#580

Lets do "who's afraid of US models" version: * Me, as an individual, because I might not be able to pay price hikes, because my revenue (salary) is much lower than what they want and I can't support my expenses via huge bank loans. * Again, me as a new entrant to the industry, LLMs are basically pay-to-play games, again related to price hikes, new entrants might not be able to afford paying those prices 24/7 - which…

Also me, as someone who lives in Greenland, Canada, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, etc. China is not threatening to invade, USA is.
Post reply on HN