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

politico.com

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

#541

Post by cobbzilla »

treyd wrote: post #520
capevace wrote: post #350

I‘m not even sure what the argument for banning Chinese models/open weights even is supposed to be? 1. if it’s to stop hackers doing hacking things with „uncontrollable models“ then, well… they’re already doing something illegal to begin with, why would they care about breaking another law running these models? 2. if it’s to stop foreign actors, then that ban would not apply to them anyway 3. it’s not stopping distil…

> But thats also an admittance that the American labs can’t compete on merit anymore This is exactly it. Try to buy a BYD in the United States. You can't (without a complicated process) because they're so much better cars than our domestic brands that our domestic brands couldn't compete and lobbied to keep them out. > should by itself also limit the viability of the idea that all those VC billions will ever make a r…

I can understand (not necessarily defend) protectionism for products with nonzero manufacturing cost and some required physical size and such.

I am befuddled when the same policies are applied to products with marginally zero manufacturing cost, no real physical size, and such. Regulating ideas is hard folks.

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

#542

Post by mcv »

capevace wrote: post #394
Matl wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone please enlighten me what the actual argument here is, cause I can’t see it. > The only thing a ban would do is protect the American market from further downward price pressure on inference, protecting VC investors in the short term. But thats also an admittance that the American labs can’t compete on merit anymore That's the argument. To be precise the publicly stated argument is that they're attacking Amer…

But isn‘t the whole argument of „winner takes all“ already dead, if china is such a big threat that the US labs need import controls? Distilling or not, they are clearly close enough to the frontier, that the supposed „free market“ country needs market controls. That may work for US markets. But not the rest of the world. Idea: petrodollar policy becomes „tokendollar“, enforced by US military dominance. If you force…

> the supposed „free market“ country

Good scare quotes. The US hasn't been free market in the Adam Smith sense in ages, if ever.

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

#543

Post by fbrncci »

Living outside of the US (and EU). I’m in the process of launching an agent assisted automated pentesting and authorized offensive security service. I’m using open weights models to execute the entire audit. So lets for a moment entertain the idea that the US somehow locks open weights. How are they going to stop such audits or actual attackers? A competing service in the US simple won’t be able to execute the same level of audits because many of the models refuse following penetration and offensive security testing instructions. An actual attacker is not going to limit itself to those models either. Why would anyone serious about security then limit itself too.

In the end, as a non-US entity; how would the US even stop me from providing services to US companies in private? Well I have a US LLC now, but the moment they become serious about this it takes me a few weeks to incorporate in HK or SG.

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

#545

Post by throwaway29812 »

treyd wrote: post #520
capevace wrote: post #350

I‘m not even sure what the argument for banning Chinese models/open weights even is supposed to be? 1. if it’s to stop hackers doing hacking things with „uncontrollable models“ then, well… they’re already doing something illegal to begin with, why would they care about breaking another law running these models? 2. if it’s to stop foreign actors, then that ban would not apply to them anyway 3. it’s not stopping distil…

> But thats also an admittance that the American labs can’t compete on merit anymore This is exactly it. Try to buy a BYD in the United States. You can't (without a complicated process) because they're so much better cars than our domestic brands that our domestic brands couldn't compete and lobbied to keep them out. > should by itself also limit the viability of the idea that all those VC billions will ever make a r…

[dead]

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

#546

Post by dtech »

echelon wrote: post #458
staticman2 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "You wouldn't distill..." the hot new Twitter meme or something?

It's a riff on the classic MPAA slogan during the Napster / BitTorrent era, "You wouldn't download a car." ... Yes I would. It's free real estate.

That was not actually the ad, that was "You wouldn't steal a car. [...] Downloading Pirated Movies is stealing. [...] Piracy it's a crime."

Easily misremembered and meme-able.

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

#548

Post by mcv »

capevace wrote: post #350

I‘m not even sure what the argument for banning Chinese models/open weights even is supposed to be? 1. if it’s to stop hackers doing hacking things with „uncontrollable models“ then, well… they’re already doing something illegal to begin with, why would they care about breaking another law running these models? 2. if it’s to stop foreign actors, then that ban would not apply to them anyway 3. it’s not stopping distil…

> The only thing a ban would do is protect the American market from further downward price pressure on inference, protecting VC investors in the short term.

> Someone please enlighten me what the actual argument here is, cause I can’t see it.

But you did see it.

The US has invested trillions in AI that the companies involved are never going to make back. Even without competition from open models, but definitely not with it. And if those trillions turn out to be worthless, that's going to have a massive impact on the market and cause a lot of bankruptcies.

Banning those open weight models isn't going to fix everything, but it would the impossible obstacle slightly smaller.

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

#549

Post by thewebguyd »

lelanthran wrote: post #532
thewebguyd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individuals can. The US GOV can make it so legally risky for US based corporations to host, download, or integrate with foreign open weight models that they become effectively illegal for commercial use. Any sort of sanctions or ICTS regulations, and you'll see them all rapidly disappear from AWS, Azure, GCP, HuggingFace, GitHub, etc.

> The US GOV can make it so legally risky for US based corporations to host, download, or integrate with foreign open weight models that they become effectively illegal for commercial use. They have to tighten that up so much that it would effectively result in "US Corporations cannot source anything from a foreign state". After all, if you are allowed to outsource (for example) customer-support to EU, the company yo…

> They have to tighten that up so much that it would effectively result in "US Corporations cannot source anything from a foreign state".

Sanctions are already that tight since they are strict liability. You do business with an overseas vendor and they use a sanctioned product, you are still liable even if you have no knowledge of its use.

In practice, outsourcing just becomes much more expensive, going through intense know your supplier audits, and you throw an indemnification clause in the contract and pass your fines onto your outsourced vendor.

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

#550

Post by godwinson__4-8 »

an0malous wrote: post #526
davesque wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything he does benefits his adversaries because they're all playing him like a fiddle because he's basically the dumbest person alive.

I don’t think he’s dumb, I think he’s very cynical and only does things he benefits from. He’s not dumb for selling out the country because he doesn’t care about the country, he’s accomplished his goal of enriching himself. I can’t find it now, but I could have sworn Trump made a comment one time where he said something very roughly like, an earthquake can just happen and a million people in India die. And he was mak…

You are on the money with this one.

My favorite example of this showing through was when Bill O'Reilly interviewed him during the superbowl. He tossed him a softball that most presidents would have whacked at to say the United States as a democracy is more virtuous than countries like Russia[1].

But he didn't. His response was, "do you think our country is so innocent"?

The reason he became popular is the country had also grown cynical. The mainstream media wanted to anoint Jeb "Please Clap" Bush and another Clinton. That was the setup he walked into in 2016. A repeat of Bush v Clinton. America was over it.

He is not dumb. But he is clearly not that intelligent. It doesn't take much to be a cynic. He's not even a particularly good one. He's what he has always been - a salesman, really a con artist. But he's not dumb. To be a good con artist you have to be able to read the room. That is arguably, what he is (or has been) best at. It's why his debate performances especially in 2016, shallow as they may have been, were still a masterclass in dismantling the Republican field. "You'd be in jail" and bringing Clinton's own victims to the debate were more memorable than anything Hillary said. He knows how to win. There is intelligence in that. Cynic may not even be the right word. I think he's more of a nihilist. And given how his wealth has increased while in office, he's accomplishing his goals at pretty remarkable speed. The rest is just set dressing. He'll do on AI whatever whoever at Mar-a-Lago writes the biggest check tells him to do.

[1]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74DAI2hr9Kk&t=159s

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