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

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661–670 of 983 posts

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

#661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was referenced by other legal cases. Why would they mention it if it didn’t help their case?

Because lawyers have a broad ability to simply attempt to persuade the other party -- and "Meta is a big rich company with lots of lawyers and they didn't pursue this" is valuable because it is something that could persuade the opposing side not to bring a case. It wouldn't persuade a court if it got that far, but it could be useful in convincing someone not to bring it to court. (e.g. "are Meta's high paid lawyers s…

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

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is precisely what the people worried about AI risk and job displacement want, so they should be strongly in favor of open weights then, right? I'm getting a "gotcha" vibe from how you worded the question, but the answer -unironically - is "Yes." Anyone who is not a closed-weight AIaaS provider[0] will have their lot significantly improved by equally capable, open-weight models. 0. Or their investors. I'm surpr…

There are two subsets of that group who tend to oppose open weights: 1) The people who think LLMs are "inchoate super-intelligences", but then your argument is entirely correct and they should be happier to see less exuberant development of the things than to make sure the rapid advancement of the world-destroying technology is locked up inside corporate entities that are themselves poorly-aligned. So these people ei…

I am admiring the cromulent word usement you structure, embiggening our vocabularian capacity.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inchoate

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

#663
post #583

Someone explain to me how the US would stop people from using Chinese models? Anyone in Europe can download and run a Chinese model and serve it up on the open internet to people in the US. What can the US do about that? The only thing the US can maybe do is ban exports of high powered GPUs to the EU. However the EU can retaliate by banning export of ASML machines to the US, so I don't think the US has that card to p…

Just declare it illegal (national security risks). Treat it like sexual abuse material, scan cloud services for copies, and jail everyone who has them.

Have you seen my latest model, called HLM, from y.ai, there is one single model weight that is different from the popular open source model, but I promise you it is no longer the same thing..

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

#664
People want to get from A to B. Someone makes a rule to stop them. So they go from A to C to B instead — or settle for something close enough to B.

The rule-makers don't stop anyone, and often the end state is worse than before the rule existed. This happens constantly with tech and the laws that try to contain it.

Tech is like reality: there are endless routes to roughly the same destination, and rules are slow. The asymmetry is the whole problem — you only need to find one new route; they have to block every possible one.

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

#665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find such beauty in the fact that the robbers are getting robbed but it's all part of progress overall. It's not that China won't come up with what the US are coming up with. Just a matter of when it would happen.

Yep. We'll steal China's IP as well so all of this really is just no big deal. Everyone is a robber in some way. Though one must ask, why are American models banned in China? Hmmm. > It's not that China won't come up with what the US are coming up with. Just a matter of when it would happen. I agree. All this discussion about China releasing open weight models is amusing. It's like ok they release open weight models.…

genuine question, what IP does america presently steal from China?

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

#666

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…

Freedom means having choice. So we gave you two choices, and you're going to use both and you're going to love it.

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

#667
post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 argument is - these models costs hundreds of billions to develop - to BOTH US and China. China is giving them for free despite not making financial sense because they want to weaken US's tech firms ability to compete - because China sees AI dominance as critical for their national security. The US also sees AI dominance as critical for their national security, and relies on a market economy and non-state-owned la…

> The US also sees AI dominance as critical for their national security, and relies on a market economy and non-state-owned labs.

[...]

> but the fact the discussion here ignores the fact that these concerns and dynamics are real just lower the discussion level instead of actually discussing potential solutions.

We had this problem solved for DECADES. Build the best post-secondary education system in the world. Lure all of China's (and the rest of the world's) best and brightest. Educate them. Give them well deserved, high paying jobs doing what they love and invite them to build a life and stay here.

Now we appear to be busy dismantling that system.

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

#668
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally on their border and the history is akin to if The South established its own nation state in Cuba after the Civil War and China became its ally. At least admit the double standard. I don't mind realpolitik but it's so tedious when it's not plainly stated and there's this veneer of civility. Yes, the US is allowed to do whatever it wants to in South America. No, other nation states don't have a sphere of…

Taiwan has been self governing for longer than almost everyone that lives there has been alive. It's also a vibrant democracy. If you care about democracy and human rights, it's morally reprehensible NOT to support Taiwan. We can debate the ethics of intervening in strongman dictatorships like Venezuela, Cuba, or Iran, but Taiwan is clear.

"Democracy and human rights", "strongman dictatorships". Dear God this rhetoric has aged like milk. I can't believe we ever fell for it.

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

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wrap my head around the idea that distillation is IP theft but mass training on books, music and art without consent is fair use. The two stances are incompatible. If it is transformative use of a book, it is transformative use of AI output.

No, it is stealing the R&D of another company.

Ok, but only if you also conceed that all of these AI companies were stealing to train their models in the first place.

Either everyone was stealing all along, and they should all be sued out of existence, or nobody is stealing.

Personally, I think its all fair use and support all of the training, including distilations.

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

#670

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…

It’s to try and direct investment capital into US foundational model firms and to capture that market globally. It requires the containment of China, and cutting it off from the rest of the world, which is the broader geopolitical play at work
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