Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#51

Post by jampekka » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

reticulates wrote: post #24

rhyperior wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is censorship not an issue with Chinese models?

As long as you’re not asking it for help discussing a trip to tiananmen square. “Censor” is probably the wrong word. Chinese models are “censored” but much less restricted. For all intents and purposes, Chinese models are less “censored” / “restricted” / “limited”.

Many Chinese frontier models aren't censored, at least for Tiananmen etc. They'll discuss them freely if served through non-Chinese providers. The Chinese providers seem to have some kind of quite crude external censorship latet.

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#52

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

bestouff wrote: post #6

Nowadays I don't understand why you wouldn't use a (more-or-less) nearby hosted Chinese model. You have the security, you have roughly the same performance, and you have an order of magnitude more bang for your buck. Bonus point : the models aren't censored and won't refuse to answer in the middle of your coding session.

One of the people I know works in really sensitive healthcare and I asked them the same thing out of curiosity. Now aside from the first doubt of any thing could be removed because of as you say nearby hosted Chinese model.

The reasons are:

1. A less valid reason but (iirc) its their clients who believe that American models are safer in that context. Fighting their client about that demand is really hard given the really sensitive work that they deal with.

2. Their system actually makes it so from my understanding that even the employes couldn't access the private data itself or have some really hard lockdowns. They use some sort of service provided by Azure for that with GPT models.

IMO, the thing that they were worried about were more the deprecation of previous models and they reluctantly have to switch models and the models censorship which is a real pressing concern for them

The previous gpt model that they were on (I think 4o/5 I am not sure) was more willing to answer their questions. The recent models are more like "let me stop you just right there" and other censorship.

With models switching and being forced to change to models which aren't as effective for use cases, a point comes where they might change from it altogether into open-weights model hosted on nearby servers, but I think that they are waiting to see how things pan out really

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#53

Post by vehemenz » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

the__alchemist wrote: post #25

spiderfarmer wrote: post #3

Never spent more than 40 euros per month on the base plans for Claude and OpenAI. And I’m doing 10x the amount of work I did before. As long as my computer isn’t running at night as well, I’m not upgrading.

Same experience. There was a period where Claude was burning through it's limits very quickly (~2 months ago?), but other than that, the $20/month plan is enough to do loads of work+personal coding. I am curious what workflows people are using that requires the expensive plans, and what they're building/maintaining.

For me, it's the single session limit. With the $20/mo plan, I had to manage it very carefully. And it only works if you're babysitting a single prompt instead of having 4-5 going at once.

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#54

Post by expedition32 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

codemog wrote: post #39

bestouff wrote: post #6

Nowadays I don't understand why you wouldn't use a (more-or-less) nearby hosted Chinese model. You have the security, you have roughly the same performance, and you have an order of magnitude more bang for your buck. Bonus point : the models aren't censored and won't refuse to answer in the middle of your coding session.

China bad. Or if you want to rationalize your xenophobia, you’d say the Chinese models will secretly backdoor your code and kill your grandma.

Nowadays I see more Palestine protests than Tibet.

If the CCP actually gave a shit about how the West sees them they should lean in on this but the difference between the USSR and China is that the Chinese don't secretly crave acceptance.

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#55

Post by claysmithr » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

mdp2021 wrote: post #33

ck2 wrote: post #14

how long until the too-big-to-fail bubble bursts so I can buy a hard drive again?

> so I can buy a hard drive again Well, that is unless the burst also brings a general collapse. Some are seeing similarities with 2008.

:(

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#56

Post by gonzalohm » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #8

Yet OpenAI and Anthropic combined are somehow making $100B in revenue...

What's the source for that? I see a combined revenue of ~33B by looking on the Internet. And we should assume that that's after some crazy financial juggling

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#57

Post by throw-the-towel » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

vehemenz wrote: post #46

Blackthorn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about whether or not their censorship affects you . Their models are censored for the Chinese audience. Meanwhile Anthropic OpenAI etc models are censored for the American audience. So by default you'd be better with one of the Chinese models if you're American.

The restrictions aren't symmetric at all. Chinese models have government-enforced censorship, while American models have security and legal restrictions.

Their deplorable censorship, our necessary legal restrictions. Potayto, potahto.

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#58

Post by Blackthorn » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

vehemenz wrote: post #46

Blackthorn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about whether or not their censorship affects you . Their models are censored for the Chinese audience. Meanwhile Anthropic OpenAI etc models are censored for the American audience. So by default you'd be better with one of the Chinese models if you're American.

The restrictions aren't symmetric at all. Chinese models have government-enforced censorship, while American models have security and legal restrictions.

Legal restrictions are literally government enforced censorship.

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#59

Post by jerf » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

vehemenz wrote: post #46

Blackthorn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about whether or not their censorship affects you . Their models are censored for the Chinese audience. Meanwhile Anthropic OpenAI etc models are censored for the American audience. So by default you'd be better with one of the Chinese models if you're American.

The restrictions aren't symmetric at all. Chinese models have government-enforced censorship, while American models have security and legal restrictions.

I don't care why they're being censored. I care that they're being censored.

You can also make a pretty good case that exactly what you just said, rather than being a demonstration of how free and open the American system is, is a demonstration of how advanced the American system is, wrapping its controls around you with no target to blame or lobby for changes. Is China "more" authoritarian than the American/Western system... or is the American/Western system actually just that much better than China at it?

Re: Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI

#60

Post by xethos » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

vehemenz wrote: post #46

Blackthorn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about whether or not their censorship affects you . Their models are censored for the Chinese audience. Meanwhile Anthropic OpenAI etc models are censored for the American audience. So by default you'd be better with one of the Chinese models if you're American.

The restrictions aren't symmetric at all. Chinese models have government-enforced censorship, while American models have security and legal restrictions.

> security and legal restrictions

The security of American hedgemony, and legal restrictions that are due to laws enacted by the American government

You're using different words to describe the same thing, but trying to imply America's reasons are moral