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Who's afraid of Chinese models?

stratechery.com

671–680 of 965 posts

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#671
>> Going forward, however, I expect the inference market to grow much faster than training costs (and that includes the assumption that training costs will continue to skyrocket), which means they really can make it up in volume.

But as inference becomes cheaper, some of the market will move to self hosted inference. I look forward to someone supplying small servers designed to run inference locally.

With or even without open models these companies are selling compute, and we've been making that rent vs buy decision for 60 years.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#672
post #650

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.

Saying GPT 5.6 Sol is 1:1 with Fable is laughable. OpenAI models are braindead in comparison and I have hundreds of hours with both.

You have hundreds of hours with a model that was barely even released hundreds of hours ago?

The perception of capability varies greatly between task. For my needs for example sol xhigh consistently outperforms fable xhigh.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#673
post #451

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…

https://thereallo.dev/blog/claude-code-prompt-steganography Why should I trust a US company more than a Chinese one?

Your exhibit is an obvious anti-distillation technique. You can expect far worse from less-regulated companies.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If every parochial peasant could recognize Russian official propaganda, why are so many people on board with whatever the propaganda says? I mean, it took longer than the Great Patriotic War before Putin's popularity started visibly falling and people started questioning what the entire "SVO" is for.

Recognising that there is propaganda != being deeply savvy about what the propaganda is. However, I've found it to be an article of faith in America that the US just doesn't engage in that kind of thing--less so in recent years, as the crisis of belief and confidence in institutions has ricocheted, egged on by the disinformation and demagoguery of the Trump years.

Well, these days there's little need for propaganda when people just blatantly do sh!t in the open and get away with it.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#675
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ethics and other details are for humans. AI companies just proving it, even highest IQ teams are against ethics because they want more, even several millions is not enough for them.

AI has forced a dramatic shift in my view on intellectual property. The laws as they exist only protect corporations now. They do not protect individuals no matter how much people want to think they do. AI has proven this. I think to level the playing field all copyright, trademarks, and patents laws should be eliminated. If I want to make a marvel movie, I should be allowed to and profit from it. AI let the cat out…

You are on to something. The extensive copywrite terms have ensured that the work of everyone except the oligarch corporations vanishes into the ether since it cannot be reproduced for over a century if the author lives another 30 years.

There will be no one debating the great minds of the twentieth century because the corporations made it illegal for people to republish critical editions of any such works.

The greats were recirculated every twenty or thirty years for centuries.

The smaller authors will vanish into the nothing and Western Civilization's 20th century onward will vanish and be almost forgotten forever because of that mouse. There will be more ancient literature remembered than literature after the invention of the printing press because they made it illegal to share printed materials for nigh on two centuries if an author was young when they wrote it. There will be more ancient scrolls preserved for the future than books of 20th century philosophy and science because the latter is a crime.

Only the oligarchs who pirated the books will have a cultural memory. They have cursed our era to oblivion when it comes to intellectual property because they can generate billions now for the mouse's henchmen.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#676
post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is it a paradox? guarding their IP overseas has been the modus operandi of American software companies since their inception

The paradox is that their IP was obtained by distillation of the collective IP of humanity.

I'm sure all those stackexchange experts will be getting their checks for helping launch countless software projects over the last 20 years any day now...

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#678
post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They weren’t saints but it’s a matter of degree. When did Obama or Biden abuse their position to enrich their own families? https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/trump-family-corruption...

That’s why I said they didn’t do it openly. Also when you say it’s a matter of degree, where do you draw the line? It’s all just different shades of corruption. Also didn’t Biden pardon his own son before he left the office?

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#679
post #451

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…

https://thereallo.dev/blog/claude-code-prompt-steganography Why should I trust a US company more than a Chinese one?

Exactly my question

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hasn’t it been the same with US since the WWII? US has influenced the world through various ways sometimes even weaponising human rights to spread American superiority and its narrative?

While true, you neglect the fact that US corporations have some autonomy from the government. I doubt that any of the current American AI corporations get regular dossiers of desirable responses to sensitive political topics from Washington and implement them. That would be a reason for a major lawsuit and a major scandal. In China, the image of the country and the preferred narrative is under much tighter control of…

> I doubt that any of the current American AI corporations get regular dossiers of desirable responses to sensitive political topics from Washington and implement them.

That's completely true. What happens is that you get hit with a wall of bureaucratic threats and nonsense by the government out of nowhere, and usually for some unrelated matter. It's like a high level version of getting pulled over for not using your turn signal. Which is why if your company has good legal, they often act in a highly proactive manner about that kind of thing.

What constitutes sufficient rabble rousing to get put on the government's shitlist differs between both countries, but there are plenty of things that will send American politicians into having a conniption, and it's not a static criteria. McCarthyism is a pretty easy example. I'm no Muskboy, but we can point to the procedural harassment he recieved over hitting a blunt on the Joe Rogan podcast to be a related matter. Criticizing the genocide happening in the Levant is frequently saber rattled by politicians as something they're interested in making prosecutable, and there are examples of institutional authority targeting and attempting to punish people over it.

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