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Who's afraid of Chinese models?

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Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#731

Post by gwerbin »

myrmidon wrote: post #637
desterothx wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost like the entire worlds manufacturing was pushed to China the last 40 years (and is now getting moved to cheaper countries with the rising Chinese middle class). Is there a similar explanation for why the US number is so high?

Outsourced manufacturing is much less of a factor than people typically assume: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/imported-or-exported-co-e... US numbers are insanely high because cheap hydrocarbons are locally available (=> bad incentives) and everyone is wealthy (that correlation is very strong; just compare Luxembourg, which is much wealthier and more polluting than surrounding nations) and also population densit…

There are so many bad incentives all over the place in the USA, and it's not so much that cheap hydrocarbons create them as it fails to prevent them.

Consider the gradual takeover of SUVs on the roads (many which to be fair are probably about as efficient as sedans were 20 years ago, albeit more expensive in real terms and significantly more dangerous for pedestrians), or the heavy reliance on trucking rather than rail for heavy freight transportation between logistics hubs, or the heavy reliance on air for long-distance travel due to having literally zero high-speed rail, or the fear of nuclear power, or the overt political opposition to green energy.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#732

Post by gwerbin »

myrmidon wrote: post #721
flakeoil wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that correlation is very strong; just compare Luxembourg, which is much wealthier and more polluting than surrounding nations Well, your theory does not hold at all if you look at Switzerland which pollutes 1/4 of the US per capita. CO2 pollution is not and does not have to be correlated with standard of living.

The reality is obviously more complex, and many countries have already managed to somewhat decouple economic growth from CO2 emissions (very good!), but as a crude approximation: More money => everyone gets more stuff => more CO2 emissions (producing and running that stuff). If you want meaningful CO2/capita comparisons, you also have to be very careful with countries that get ("free") hydro power opportunities for e…

How much of that "decoupling" is actually just "exporting"? Not being glib or dismissive, I think it's an important distinction and I don't know enough about Europe to know how the two compare.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#734

Post by random3 »

JimsonYang wrote: post #733

Why hasnt the EU develop an competitive open source model? Ive only of mistral, but with the chinese models you have GLM, Kimi, Qwen, Deepseek etc all of which seems to be better and better

Because the European researchers and engineers are busy building models in the US

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#735

Post by sarchertech »

gwerbin wrote: post #731
myrmidon wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outsourced manufacturing is much less of a factor than people typically assume: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/imported-or-exported-co-e... US numbers are insanely high because cheap hydrocarbons are locally available (=> bad incentives) and everyone is wealthy (that correlation is very strong; just compare Luxembourg, which is much wealthier and more polluting than surrounding nations) and also population densit…

There are so many bad incentives all over the place in the USA, and it's not so much that cheap hydrocarbons create them as it fails to prevent them. Consider the gradual takeover of SUVs on the roads (many which to be fair are probably about as efficient as sedans were 20 years ago, albeit more expensive in real terms and significantly more dangerous for pedestrians), or the heavy reliance on trucking rather than ra…

The rest of that is true but the US moves a much higher percentage of its freight by rail than almost any large developed country.

Just in comparison to Europe “46 percent of European freight goes by truck while only 11 percent goes by rail, while in the United States more than 40 percent goes by rail while just 30 percent goes on the highway."

This is in ton-miles, so it’s the metric most directly relevant to emissions.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#737

Post by jppope »

ChaitanyaSai wrote: post #215
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…

The thing I do not understand here because it seems obvious: AI will be a commodity market and you simply cannot have a large PE multiple. So the valuations imagine a global commodity monopoly or duopoly coupled with the increased intelligence still disallowing other suppliers from becoming competitive? Without any network effects to help?

There are many ways to create "sticky" products, even commodity products (e.g. coca cola, starbucks, etc). Network effects are just one.

Regarding Price to Earnings... I'm not sure everyone fully fleshed out the end game for the frontier companies. It appears the pitch is that this current phase is a stepping stone to Artificial General Intelligence or Super Intelligence. I can understand the perspective of investors though... If you can get half of the world on these products at some point you will find something you can sell them even if its not the core product (i.e. loss leader).

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#738

Post by myrmidon »

gwerbin wrote: post #732
myrmidon wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is obviously more complex, and many countries have already managed to somewhat decouple economic growth from CO2 emissions (very good!), but as a crude approximation: More money => everyone gets more stuff => more CO2 emissions (producing and running that stuff). If you want meaningful CO2/capita comparisons, you also have to be very careful with countries that get ("free") hydro power opportunities for e…

How much of that "decoupling" is actually just "exporting"? Not being glib or dismissive, I think it's an important distinction and I don't know enough about Europe to know how the two compare.

> How much of that "decoupling" is actually just "exporting"?

Some fraction certainly is. Here is trade-adjusted CO2 per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

Note how this still trends down for most western industrialized countries despite positive economic growth over the last two decades.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#739

Post by joering2 »

flybarrel wrote: post #730
samiv wrote: post #717

I'm afraid to trust technology coming from companies operating under the jurisdiction of a rogue aggressive nation that is continuously attacking other nations both (so called) ally and foe using economic and military actions.

Sir, given what's happening in the world these days, I cannot really tell which nation you meant by your statement :D

Really? Ok, name list of rogue aggressive nations that are continuously attacking other nations both allies and foes, and I tell you which one he meant...

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#740

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

nixon_why69 wrote: post #711
1234letshaveatw wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you advocating for not changing administrations?

Is that a good faith question? Please check the site guidelines.

It is, and certainly relevant (although perhaps inconvenient) considering the recent elections in China. Aren't shifting priorities a side effect of free elections?
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