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It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

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Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#61

Post by bryanlarsen »

empath75 wrote: post #54
ericmay wrote: post #2

> In a world where open-weight models dominate, the proprietary frontier models of Anthropic and OpenAI will find it virtually impossible to charge monopolistic pricing. Maybe they can't charge monopolistic pricing (there's a few market entrants anyway today), but they can still charge premium pricing. Also two things can be true at once. American and western AI companies or other companies can rightly be part of the…

> In a world where open-weight models dominate, the proprietary frontier models of Anthropic and OpenAI will find it virtually impossible to charge monopolistic pricing. It'll never be economical to run open-weight models compared to paying per token from the big providers. The cost is going to be roughly proportional to energy inputs over time, and they're going to be the ones that have the scale and engineering abi…

But it will be much more economical to pay per token to discount providers running open weight models.

Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#62

Post by ericmay »

bigyabai wrote: post #60
ericmay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is wishcasting. People are raising the alarm because models like GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 have already displaced demand for frontier models in highly demanding fields like security research. There's no amount of money that you can pay for "premium" access to Mythos, so those researchers are taking their money to inference providers that give them comparable models. It's not wish casting whatever that means. The cru…

> It's not wish casting whatever that means. Wishcasting is describing a hypothetical. Your statement was about what you think America can do, but not about what it has proven to do already. It is wishcasting by any definition you'll find online. Economic roadblocks are not any less important than capability roadblocks, look at how proprietary UNIX went from a billion-dollar IP business to being entirely cannibalized…

> Your statement was about what you think America can do, but not about what it has proven to do already.

Sorry that's nonsense. You can't simultaneously project a hypothetical Chinese capability that it hasn't proven it can do (develop the leading models) and then deny the ability of the US to do the same.

> China's clones already won.

Ok we'll just copy their stuff then who cares because apparently bleeding edge model development doesn't matter.

> Does it?

Yes - it proves that leading edge American AI companies can develop products sophisticated enough that they deliver true competitive advantages that have to be guarded. It's like, the thing is so valuable you can't even buy it. Have you ever tried to buy a Ferrari or Lamborghini or something? It's a bit like that.

> Some great consolation that would be, if you said the same thing for Enron, Theranos, Vision Pro, Meta Quest, Microsoft Groove, Google+, Juicero, Hololens... why, you could be convinced to buy any of history's most dogshit technology. Remember, an appeal to authority is just one third of effective rhetoric.

Well if you want to go that route, China will collapse because all communist governments in history except China (and I guess North Korea but that's arguable more of a monarchy of sorts) have failed. Guess that means China loses!

The broader point is you and others are simply saying things, while incredibly smart people with trillions of dollars at stake are doing things counter to your claims. Of course authority isn't a great argument, but considering you haven't provided any sort of economic model that says Google will completely fail at its AI ambitions because idk some Chinese companies released some open source models, leaves us with not a lot of options to go on. Might as well trust the folks with money at stake and who are doing the real work. Why would I trust your comment over Google's business decisions? Yea they could be wrong, it doesn't mean it isn't the right choice at the time.

It's similar to vaccine risk that sprung up during COVID-19. Folks thought they were making an informed decision by eschewing the vaccine in favor of some unknown and unknowable risk instead of the risk that's right there in front of them and known.

> In a so-called free market, that's the most heretical and counterintuitive solution that you can concoct.

But it happened so I'm not sure what to tell you. You yourself have demonstrated that. The free-market can still exists while also being regulated by the government. Evidence? Look around. Separately to claim that the US is losing because it is requiring AI companies to do some sort of thing would also have to apply to China who is doing the same.

> At that point, America might as well forfeit to save money that would have been wasted on "AGI" research graft.

Well, if you're right we should save money and make China spend all of their money building models and then we'll just copy their strategy.

I'm not sure why you and others seem to assume that China (or Iran or whomever) can take some action and that we can't also take some action in response. Let me guess, hypersonic missiles! Iran closed the Strait!? Chinese AI open source?! It's all the same version of a failed mental model. A similar one would be Americans or other westerns assuming that other countries can't do things or aren't smart enough or don't have the ability to build or engineering better things than we can. You're making that exact same mistake here.

Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#63

Post by theplumber »

ericmay wrote: post #7
theplumber wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be like Windows Server. Expensive, restricted and overall worse than the open stuff but somehow sill generate some sales

No they won't. They'll offer far superior models at a premium price and they'll capture most of the profits similar to iPhone versus the Android manufacturers. US companies will also release open source models and lower-cost options that will compete with any open source models released by any other country, except when you ask US/western models what happened at Tiananmen Square they'll give you an answer instead of…

They already offer “superior models at a premium price” but the issue is that they are not that much superior than the open models and in some cases are even worse(I.e Anthropic Fable refuses to fix a login/signup page, not to mention any kind of actual opsec work).

You already can do more with open models than with proprietary models because you can’t tweak the proprietary models to your liking. Just as OpenAI and Anthropic went from 0 to a trillion they can go back just as fast.

Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#64

Post by waffletower »

I don't think the open source models are anywhere near ("we’re talking around four months of lead time") Anthropic's Fable for long-horizon context planning. Sol isn't either. The benchmarks are quite misleading. The short-term question is how many customers need these deep problem solving capabilities? The long-term question is what will the frontier labs build (deepening and broadening of capabilities and products) if they are capitalized as they desire?

Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#65

Post by sgt101 »

ericmay wrote: post #41
bigyabai wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'll offer far superior models at a premium price > US companies will also release open source models and lower-cost options This is wishcasting. People are raising the alarm because models like GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 have already displaced demand for frontier models in highly demanding fields like security research. There's no amount of money that you can pay for "premium" access to Mythos, so those researchers ar…

> This is wishcasting. People are raising the alarm because models like GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 have already displaced demand for frontier models in highly demanding fields like security research. There's no amount of money that you can pay for "premium" access to Mythos, so those researchers are taking their money to inference providers that give them comparable models. It's not wish casting whatever that means. The cru…

>It's not wish casting whatever that means. The crux of the argument isn't as much of a capability one as it is an economic one. If China can release open source models like these to displace demand for frontier models so can American companies. It's just that it's not profitable enough for them to do so at this time.

I would back you if:

1) The American companies had not run up debts in the $100bn range. 2) If there was an open source business model that could create $100bn companies or pay down $100bn of debt. 3) There was a convincing moat such as a social media network effect - I mean that lasted 10 years or so for Meta - or ways for them to create a supplier based monopoly like MS did with IBM, Dell, Compaq,.. or Google has with Samsung and Apple. I think that it might be that the consumer use case could yet be tied to Samsung and Apple, so Google might do it again, but ATM I dunno if consumer use cases are the thing here.

>Do I believe you, or do I believe the people with trillions at stake. I believe the folks actually doing the work and with money at stake. I have yet to find a convincing argument otherwise.

Go look at SpaceX's shareprice.

You are being taken for a ride.

Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#66

Post by ericmay »

theplumber wrote: post #63
ericmay wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they won't. They'll offer far superior models at a premium price and they'll capture most of the profits similar to iPhone versus the Android manufacturers. US companies will also release open source models and lower-cost options that will compete with any open source models released by any other country, except when you ask US/western models what happened at Tiananmen Square they'll give you an answer instead of…

They already offer “superior models at a premium price” but the issue is that they are not that much superior than the open models and in some cases are even worse(I.e Anthropic Fable refuses to fix a login/signup page, not to mention any kind of actual opsec work). You already can do more with open models than with proprietary models because you can’t tweak the proprietary models to your liking. Just as OpenAI and A…

Well that's a bad example because a UI isn't a model.

But if you hold that it's true that returns compound and that they do so for intelligence/performance for AI models, then having the lead matters quite a bit and eventually you'll just get into an iPhone vs Android Dollar General situation where sure they do the same thing and one is even substantially cheaper but all the profits go to the iPhone.

If you hold that the lead doesn't matter, then the buildout of data centers and compute capacity which is also what the Chinese are doing will just go to make money for American companies serving whatever open-source models come into being for the rest of however long the world itself lasts. Then China can take the lead and spend a trillion dollars, we'll copy their models (which according to you is a great strategy), and release them open source.

You can't have it both ways.

Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#67

Post by [deleted] »

bigyabai wrote: post #23
ericmay wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they won't. They'll offer far superior models at a premium price and they'll capture most of the profits similar to iPhone versus the Android manufacturers. US companies will also release open source models and lower-cost options that will compete with any open source models released by any other country, except when you ask US/western models what happened at Tiananmen Square they'll give you an answer instead of…

> They'll offer far superior models at a premium price > US companies will also release open source models and lower-cost options This is wishcasting. People are raising the alarm because models like GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 have already displaced demand for frontier models in highly demanding fields like security research. There's no amount of money that you can pay for "premium" access to Mythos, so those researchers ar…

[deleted]

Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#69

Post by ericmay »

sgt101 wrote: post #65
ericmay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is wishcasting. People are raising the alarm because models like GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 have already displaced demand for frontier models in highly demanding fields like security research. There's no amount of money that you can pay for "premium" access to Mythos, so those researchers are taking their money to inference providers that give them comparable models. It's not wish casting whatever that means. The cru…

>It's not wish casting whatever that means. The crux of the argument isn't as much of a capability one as it is an economic one. If China can release open source models like these to displace demand for frontier models so can American companies. It's just that it's not profitable enough for them to do so at this time. I would back you if: 1) The American companies had not run up debts in the $100bn range. 2) If there…

> 1) The American companies had not run up debts in the $100bn range.

How are Chinese companies financing their buildouts of AI infrastructure?

> 2) If there was an open source business model that could create $100bn companies or pay down $100bn of debt.

Companies are formed and consult on Linux for example. Idk where this $100bn number comes from but it seems too low to me anyway.

> 3) There was a convincing moat such as a social media network effect

Well you don't need a moat to be a successful business. But maybe the moat is that the models are just more capable. We're in the very early stages of this stuff from what I can tell.

> Go look at SpaceX's shareprice.

This is a bad argument. Share prices rise and fall all the time with or without material concerns. It can be snowing and folks will sell shares just because. Also SpaceX's share price (not that I'm an investor) doesn't really move the needle relative to the scale of the market or the AI companies involved.

> You are being taken for a ride.

How do you know folks aren't taking you for a ride instead?

Re: It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

#70

Post by guywithahat »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #58
guywithahat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the only real boundaries for right vs left are what people actually believe. If pools said 55% of people wanted government to own the means of production, and no AI suggested it, that would suggest they may be right-leaning. Since almost nobody wants that, as it's killed ~100 million people, the fact LLM's don't argue for it is not odd. In the same vein would not set the bar for a right-wing LLM to be w…

> before being transgender was invented Separate from how you're trying to gauge left and right, this is extremely wrong.

It doesn't have to be gender ideology, it could be anything, it just has to be a real political ideology people actually discuss with a real moral quandary. Saying "these models aren't communist thus they must be right-wing" is a bad argument in my opinion, because there are no communists and on national surveys nobody wants that.
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