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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

#901

Post by wasfgwp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #839
rapidaneurism wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great points, but I think that banning open source databases would have been better not for employees, but for shareholders.

Aren't employees of US tech companies typically also shareholders, by virtue of part of their compensation being paid in company stock?

For private companies to an extent yes. In public companies that’s just a way to increase your employees compensation without harming your free cashflow. I don’t think tax wise it’s any different than them paying you more in cash and then you buying the same amount of shares.

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

#902

Post by wasfgwp »

allarm wrote: post #846
blackqueeriroh wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is making this argument because this is a normal thing that companies do. It's so common it is named in business strategy: "commoditize your complements." It is common in business strategy, far less so in nation-state governance. The reason you, me, and so many people in the United States still have a far better quality of life and level of freedom than most people in China is because it’s bad to run a count…

> you, me, and so many people in the United States still have a far better quality of life and level of freedom than most people in China Whether this is true or not is still open to debate, but the fact that it’s presented as some kind of absolute truth that needs no substantiation is simply ridiculous.

Well no.. regardless of anything else the median American generally has q higher standards of livin than the resident of pretty much any major country (including Europe). While compared to e.g. Germany or France those in the lower percentiles are probably doing worse China specifically still has a huge amount of poverty. Even if you happen to be legally allowed to live in one of the major cities and have a decent job.. well 966 is still a thing and you don’t get paid $500k like the OpenAI employees allegedly forced to sleep under their desks.

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

#903

Post by handle584 »

chii wrote: post #782
thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they're so much better cars than our domestic brands Is that objectively true? True after factoring in harms they do to human rights and the environment? Nope. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/may/12/c... https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-... Remember, even EU despite claiming to be morally superior to the US, heavily tariffs BYD (much more than the tariffs that…

> Is that objectively true? objectively true. And there's zero need to factor in things like "human rights" or "environmental protection", because these are costs that have been externalized and the consumer don't pay for it (in their lifetime anyway). That's what objectively means. Chinese cars are unavailable in the US because US manufacturers are 100% unable to compete. Japan was in the exact same position before,…

> because US manufacturers are 100% unable to compete.

In the June just passed Tesla Model Y is the best selling EV in China.

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

#904

Post by wolvoleo »

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…

It's to protect the market dominance of US providers of course, the security concerns are just an excuse.

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

#905

Post by ngl999 »

wasfgwp wrote: post #896
ngl999 wrote: post #884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't. China doesn't have the training capacity and the quality data sets, the former because of access to fabs, the latter because of internal censorship that is getting worse by day. Simple as that.

> the latter because of internal censorship Having limited amounts of high quality Chinese data to train on doesn’t really decrease or affect the appeal of these models to the rest of the world. I don’t think the CCP is restricting or limiting the datasets that models can be trained on. Also the models themselves don’t even seem to be censored or restricted that much. If the Chinese government is fine with the guardr…

> doesn’t really decrease or affect the appeal of these models to the rest of the world

Anyone who tried using Chinese models for serious programming tasks ditch them quickly if they have a choice.

> I don’t think the CCP is restricting or limiting the datasets that models can be trained on.

What I meant was censorship limits the amount of high quality training sets by limiting the amount of all training sets from which high quality sets grow out from, e.g. the entire set of posts on Baidu forums before 2017 is gone forever.

> so we can only hope that Huawei

Chinese companies do not have access to commercial-scale advanced nodes. The impact is at best negligible.

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

#906

Post by wasfgwp »

pbgcp2026 wrote: post #706
blackqueeriroh wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is making this argument because this is a normal thing that companies do. It's so common it is named in business strategy: "commoditize your complements." It is common in business strategy, far less so in nation-state governance. The reason you, me, and so many people in the United States still have a far better quality of life and level of freedom than most people in China is because it’s bad to run a count…

"you, me, and so many people in the United States still have a far better quality of life and level of freedom" LOL - are you sure about this?

That’s extremely American centered, though? Despite the constant complaining the median American is still very well off compared to almost everyone else. If you go to the top 10 percentile or so them maybe only Switzerland and some very small countries (tax havens, petro states and such) can really compete.

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

#907

Post by wasfgwp »

andrekandre wrote: post #685
mcv wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

well free markets meant something very different in adam smith's time; what they meant by free was 'free from rents' whereas today its usually mean in the milton freedman terms as 'free from any interference' which is how i interpret the parent poster... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market#Classical_Economic...

> free from any interference

That’s even less true in the US these days, though

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

#908

Post by wasfgwp »

einpoklum wrote: post #843
andrekandre wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well free markets meant something very different in adam smith's time; what they meant by free was 'free from rents' whereas today its usually mean in the milton freedman terms as 'free from any interference' which is how i interpret the parent poster... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market#Classical_Economic...

D: "I want to be free" by Milton Schulman. H: Milton Friedman. D: Why are they all called Milton? Anyway, I've only got as far as Milton Keynes. H: Maynard Keynes. D: I'm sure there's a Milton Keynes. H: Yes, there is, but it's... [appears quite miffed] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgUemV4brDU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes

Coincidentally it’s where the British version of the Office is set

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

#909

Post by wasfgwp »

one33seven wrote: post #798
mcv wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Adam Smith himself knew you had to constrain the market in ordner to protect capitalism from capitalists. His work didn't end with his first book.

Yes, it’s freedom both from state interference but also from monopolies, oligopolies and trusts using their position to suppress the competitiveness of other market participants. Which is generally impossible to prevent without the state interfering in the markets.

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

#910

Post by root_axis »

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #756
scoofy wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I mean, both sides do implement protectionist laws. Did we already forget about Biden raising tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect the auto industry & unions? I’m not sure you’re looking at things quite fairly.

The fact that you're likening a sparing few narrowly targeted tarrifs to capriciously applied illegal global tarrifs suggests you're not quite looking at things fairly.
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