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China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

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Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#941

Post by ChrisLTD »

muldvarp wrote: post #582
ChrisLTD wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The datacenter antipathy is odd, but then again so are the AI corps' marketing strategy of making everyone afraid for their jobs and the future of the species.

What else would they advertise with? "Our model constantly makes mistakes so you still have to hire expensive humans to proof-read everything"? The entire point of the AI industry is to automate human jobs. There is nothing else to advertise with.

"Our AI makes your workers X times more productive"

"Our AI takes the drudgery out of X, Y, and Z"

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#942

Post by nonethewiser »

thomaslord wrote: post #158
nonethewiser wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your country’s pharmaceutical companies pushing the entire industry forward?

This doesn't seem to be relevant to the comment you replied to. They didn't mention anything about paying less to pharmaceutical companies, they argued that the administrative overhead of providing the insurance itself is lower. As I read it, your argument seems to be that American healthcare must be more expensive than similar-quality healthcare elsewhere because we're paying higher pharmaceutical prices to fund res…

The cost of medicine is a factor in the cost of healthcare. R&D has to be funded somehow. I agree it’s not the only factor.

Does his country’s pharmaceutical industry push the frontier of medicine forward?

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#943

Post by muldvarp »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #941
muldvarp wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would they advertise with? "Our model constantly makes mistakes so you still have to hire expensive humans to proof-read everything"? The entire point of the AI industry is to automate human jobs. There is nothing else to advertise with.

"Our AI makes your workers X times more productive" "Our AI takes the drudgery out of X, Y, and Z"

> "Our AI makes your workers X times more productive"

This is still replacement, it's just not _total_ replacement.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#944

Post by MetroWind »

gpt5 wrote: post #386
geophile wrote: post #352

The lesson of the last 50 years of the computer and software marketplace is that free and low-end eventually wins. - PCs destroyed minicomputers. Mainframes survive, but serving a much tinier portion of the market than they used to. - PC office productivity software destroyed expensive professional products. - Windows (low end) and Linux (free) completely destroyed the UNIX marketplace, and again, have taken huge mar…

The problem (right now) is that Open Weight models depend right now on huge companies to spend billion of dollars to train and develop them, all backed up by their incentives and their state to support this, while essentially giving away their monetization path. With open source projects, the benefit was that each individual could improve the complex system (e.g. Linux Kernel) interpedently, and over time the benefit…

Nope, that's not true at all in China. Everybody in China is using AI, even the elderlies and the kids. DeepSeek is already earning money.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#945

Post by Isamu »

ericmay wrote: post #909
Isamu wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the discussion. >This argument boils down to X is good, therefore more of X is good. No, I only argued that it was a moral good, the kind of good. I actually may disagree with others about whether you should pursue a good just because it’s good. >says who? Why? Good question, it’s just a common framing that I see in classical discussions. I didn’t intend for it to be exclusive, I think there’s moral good o…

That's fair, I don't really take a large issue with anything you wrote here. My general point was to shake loose some dogmatic apples hanging on to their naive and unsubstantiated beliefs that open-source must be some moral good and closed-source must be some moral bad. Both can be good or bad. Thanks

Absolutely. I think “open” can be used as a cudgel to force an agenda that is ultimately about the benefit to some small group. Nobody should feel obligated to support something that is open, they should be wondering if it’s a benefit to society in the long run.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#946

Post by rapind »

gpt5 wrote: post #386
geophile wrote: post #352

The lesson of the last 50 years of the computer and software marketplace is that free and low-end eventually wins. - PCs destroyed minicomputers. Mainframes survive, but serving a much tinier portion of the market than they used to. - PC office productivity software destroyed expensive professional products. - Windows (low end) and Linux (free) completely destroyed the UNIX marketplace, and again, have taken huge mar…

The problem (right now) is that Open Weight models depend right now on huge companies to spend billion of dollars to train and develop them, all backed up by their incentives and their state to support this, while essentially giving away their monetization path. With open source projects, the benefit was that each individual could improve the complex system (e.g. Linux Kernel) interpedently, and over time the benefit…

The way I frame it is like the space race (except probably more consequential). China is collaborating with and encouraging their industry, definitely leaning into the state sponsored NASA route, while the United States fully embraced minting oligarchs that they'll most likely bail out later.

We'll see what happens, but I suspect history will show us that the United States badly fumbled what was a pretty great initial lead. China might have just floored the gas pedal.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#947

Post by lostmsu »

bwestergard wrote: post #51
atleastoptimal wrote: post #34

AI models cost tens of millions to train. Offering them for free won’t justify the upfront costs. The Chinese model of model training/open sourcing only makes sense in the context of the overall strategy of undercutting American frontier labs’ profit margins.

"the overall strategy of undercutting American frontier labs’ profit margins" I don't doubt that's an unregretted side-effect for political leaders in China. But the major motivation is to accelerate diffusion within their own massive economy in the pursuit of an across the board productivity boost in the face of an aging population.

The party is in for a shock when Kimi K8 replaces them.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#948

Post by mbgerring »

stanzeo wrote: post #919
DrScientist wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who funds the majority of cutting edge scientific research? Is it companies or is it governments? If governments around the world see LLMs built from public knowledge as pre-competitive as the public knowledge itself, then why wouldn't they sustainbly fund it?

Because the business model for governments is difficult. Income are mostly taxes, so you have to be able to explain constantly why it is a good idea to keep on spending budget on that funding.

If AI optimists are correct, and AI can increase productivity across the board, tax revenues go up. Not rocket science.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#949

Post by mbgerring »

It makes me feel like a crazy person seeing that “the government should fund basic R&D that broadly benefits industry” is a concept that so many people find confusing, hard to grasp, or even offensive.

The government should fund AI research and model training. The weights and the models should be free. The provision of inference and tooling should be a competitive business. This feels completely obvious to me.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#950

Post by SubiculumCode »

orwin wrote: post #512
SubiculumCode wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cherry picked examples don't prove that it isn't context dependent.

That why i usually keep to the insurance example, i agree that comparing municipality power to private companies owning a monopoly is unfair. Administrative costs for insurance are very easy to verify, and the facts stay consistent across countries. If i cherry picked something, it is the admin overhead for US insurers. US health care insurers are particulary effective with their average of 14% admin overhead, SwissL…

I mean insurance is very specific industry, and does not easily generalize.
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