Live data from Hacker News

Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

politico.com

131–140 of 983 posts

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#131
The US government exists to protect American capital and the interests of capital owners. I'm not sure why people are still confused by this.

This is about OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX. OpenAI, in particular, is a bet on there being a moat for AI and OpenAI "winning". Chinese models threaten this moat. The CCP has decided that it is in China's national security interests to not have Western companies "own" or "win" AI. These AI giants are large enough that the US government is going to intervene to try and protect this outcome. This is a losing battle.

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#132

The U.S. does NOT have copyright protections on the data that AI models were and are trained on, it was mass theft. Now all of a sudden, the Chinese are stealing from the thieves and we’re supposed to care? No one cares, we just want cheaper AI models that are equally as powerful. They’re all thieves regardless.

I do care. It's an unfortunate truth that we're exiting a global peace era and entering one of (hopefully just...) implied conflict. Our biggest geopolitical rival that's been threatening a hot war also distilling the things we build is not a good thing. Trump is a huge self-own by our electorate sadly, but being concerned about a conflict between China and the US is a very bi-partisan concern for good reason.

Wow, what happened to no holds barred American capitalism? Is it bad when the Chinese somehow do it better? The US stateowning US Steal, Intel, and possibly openai is no different than the Chinese ownership model… and before the US took stakes in the companies they were just bankrolling them as customers SpaceX Oracle etal.

If life is a meritocracy, you gotta give it to the Chinese for their immense growth and improvement of living from agricultural poverty to technical supremacy. I don't want to hear the they stole our IP argument either, because all math is borrowed from something else. Distillation is innovation, in booze and in models.

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#133
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the major destabilizing force is the country that has been building the infrastructure for a hot war over Taiwan for the last decade while simultaneously blatantly funding the conquest of Ukraine. The US stupidly withdrawing from the world stage is definitely making this worse, of course, but it is not the catalyst. It's unfortunately a very likely side effect of a social media campaign by the same actor to m…

In the decade during which you claim China has been preparing for a hot war, the United States invaded multiple countries and waged hot wars on three continents. It’s ridiculous to compare China to the US when it comes to warmongering. They’re not even in the same ballpark.

Yeah, the US is not an incredible actor, but China is funding the most brutal war in modern history (the invasion of Ukraine) in order to provide a smokescreen for their own invasion.

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#134

The U.S. does NOT have copyright protections on the data that AI models were and are trained on, it was mass theft. Now all of a sudden, the Chinese are stealing from the thieves and we’re supposed to care? No one cares, we just want cheaper AI models that are equally as powerful. They’re all thieves regardless.

Training on copyright was ruled to be transformative.

Anthropic was just fined for not paying for the pirated books they copied into a training database. Same as anyone else who copied pirated IP onto their hard drive.

However, training an AI on copyright has been ruled to be sufficiently transformative and not a violation of IP laws. The same way you can make a gameplay clone of Call of Duty without any issue.

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#135
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do care. It's an unfortunate truth that we're exiting a global peace era and entering one of (hopefully just...) implied conflict. Our biggest geopolitical rival that's been threatening a hot war also distilling the things we build is not a good thing. Trump is a huge self-own by our electorate sadly, but being concerned about a conflict between China and the US is a very bi-partisan concern for good reason.

Might wanna reflect on who’s threatening hot war lately.

It's not a threat anymore if you actually start a war!

/s

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#136
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might wanna reflect on who’s threatening hot war lately.

The main actors threatening (and delivering) a hot war are China, and by proxy, Russia. The Ukraine war is absolutely and transparently enabled by China, who is also trying to actively destabilize the EU and the US in order to make its conquest of Taiwan more likely. Yes, the US has an idiot in charge who is threatening these things in response, too. However, unlike China, the electorate does not support him. His ele…

The US isn’t just _threatening_, it is in an open war right now, invaded Venezuela, started trade war with US allies

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the "hive mind" of HN or whatever. Individuals hold unique opinions. Yes, China is a rival. No, they have not won. Their economy is in a lot of trouble, likely far worse than the shape of the US's currently. That situation may accelerate a hot war though, as has historically been the case globally.

You need to stop watching those “China is gonna collapse any minute now…” youtube videos

I don’t. I do read major reputed economists though, and they are not exactly bullish on China.

Don’t create fictional versions of the people you argue with. This is the second time in a span of 10 minutes that you’ve done it. It completely undermines any attempt to discuss something, and drops your integrity to zero.

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#138
I think that we humans still have a really tough time differentiating and classifying between public and private goods (and everything in between) from an economic sense.

Unfortunately, capitalism of today appears to find public goods and strong, public, healthy public goods to be undesirable investments. Yet, it seems inevitable that some things trend that direction.

I feel if we could get a better handle on what goods fall into which category, and find ways to make those things sustainable and even grow, the situation could get better.

I'm speaking purely from observations here but it also looks like in some ways, the "invisible hand of the economy" (i.e. Adam Smith) might sort these things out by itself, albeit, painfully.

We could look at the fact that LLMs were mostly created from the public domain (except when they were not), and the resulting products/services (expensive to create/operate, benefits a huge swath of humanity, has all kinds of externality issues) as something that perhaps should again almost be considered as a public good.

If we look at the struggles LLM/AI companies have had with legal structure choices, such as nonprofit, for profit, etc and pricing (e.g. do we make it accessible at a loss? Do we extract huge profits?) as a kind of moral dilemma of classifying this new economic good (LLM-based AI).

In the US, the government has been taking investment interests in some tech companies, and recent proposals even include establishing sovereign wealth funds around AI/LLM. I think this is further evidence that the system is trying to figure out how to classify these new economic goods and corporations.

Re: Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

#139

The U.S. does NOT have copyright protections on the data that AI models were and are trained on, it was mass theft. Now all of a sudden, the Chinese are stealing from the thieves and we’re supposed to care? No one cares, we just want cheaper AI models that are equally as powerful. They’re all thieves regardless.

Are public libraries thieves?

Is Anna's Library thieves?

Is Library Genesis thieves?

Is Archive.org thieves?

Is PirateBay thieves?

They all look like public libraries to me. And better access to all human knowledge is a net positive for everyone.

Post reply on HN