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Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

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Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#21

Post by benxh »

bpodgursky wrote: post #17
badsectoracula wrote: post #11

> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better models, and a crackdown on model distillation. You have to be the embodiment of hubris to believe the only reason a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people with several AI labs and government support can make competitive models is because they all d…

Nobody thinks a distillation crackdown is a long term plan, but it does delay Chinese labs for the couple years while they are compute-starved. Of course they could make competitive models if they were drowning in NVIDIA chips but they aren't, and the native ones aren't at scale production for at least a year.

At the current pace of iteration from Deepseek I think this is a moot point, they'll keep building their own RL environments, and just keep RL on top of whatever flavor of model they can train/host on their Huawei SuperPods

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#22

Post by toasty228 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #17
badsectoracula wrote: post #11

> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better models, and a crackdown on model distillation. You have to be the embodiment of hubris to believe the only reason a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people with several AI labs and government support can make competitive models is because they all d…

Nobody thinks a distillation crackdown is a long term plan, but it does delay Chinese labs for the couple years while they are compute-starved. Of course they could make competitive models if they were drowning in NVIDIA chips but they aren't, and the native ones aren't at scale production for at least a year.

If anything it'll speed up their progress by forcing local solutions.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/DeepSeek-orders-160-000-Huawei-...

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#23

Post by SkyBelow »

bix6 wrote: post #5
marcuskaz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenRouter or Fireworks are two of many that allow you to run numerous different models. You can use open code harnesses like Pi or Opencode that connect easily to these services. https://openrouter.ai/ https://fireworks.ai/ http://pi.dev/ https://opencode.ai/

Thank you! Is there one you’d recommend in particular when working with sensitive data?

I think this would depend upon the level of sensitive data.

For OpenRouter, you can setup an API key and limit it to only models that claim to not train on data, but that is just a claim. You can then use trust to judge which providers will honor that claim.

But if the data is really sensitive, you might want either a local model or a business subscription with some big name in the US that legally promises no data training.

So are we talking some app idea you are playing around with, or files filled with PHI/PII that you have legal mandates to safeguard? If the latter, I would stick to only provider with enterprise agreements to not store/train on the data. Even the ones who promise no training are likely storing the data for monitoring for abuse or such short term.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#24

Post by tolugenius »

bix6 wrote: post #12
tolugenius wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to consider a local setup? Personally I do model + llama.cpp + Pi + tmux, that's as barebones as you can get and everything is great. I also use opencode for bigger task, I could probably hook that to a local model but I'm not sure (still new to this). But if you work with sensitive data you need a local setup purely.

I am interested in a local setup but whenever I read about it, it seems the money is better spent on cloud inference since even with thousands of dollars of my own hardware I wouldn’t have frontier like capability? I am bad at choosing models though (I just throw everything at Opus atm).

Well yes you won't have frontier capability but that doesn't mean you'd have nothing, I'm not sure what you have but I know there are tools that let you see what models (and their quant variants) you can safely run, I'd look into that first and see what options you have and what you're willing to delegate to a smaller model vs use opus for. Maybe opus to plan vs smaller models for focused implementation, or what works for you workflow and needs.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#25

Post by bpodgursky »

toasty228 wrote: post #22
bpodgursky wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody thinks a distillation crackdown is a long term plan, but it does delay Chinese labs for the couple years while they are compute-starved. Of course they could make competitive models if they were drowning in NVIDIA chips but they aren't, and the native ones aren't at scale production for at least a year.

If anything it'll speed up their progress by forcing local solutions. https://www.heise.de/en/news/DeepSeek-orders-160-000-Huawei-...

> According to Bloomberg, supply bottlenecks for high-end memory and other key components could limit chip production this year. Since Huawei also has to serve other customers, DeepSeek might have to wait over a year for the full delivery, estimates Bloomberg.

Like I said, it will delay the Chinese labs for a couple years. These are not even top-line chips.

Frankly, China was not going to allow them to depend on NVIDIA forever, I don't think this motivates domestic production that much over the counterfactual. If NVIDIA didn't have export controls, China was going to set up formal import controls. They want to own their entire supply chain.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#26

Post by scottLobster »

toasty228 wrote: post #20
badsectoracula wrote: post #11

> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better models, and a crackdown on model distillation. You have to be the embodiment of hubris to believe the only reason a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people with several AI labs and government support can make competitive models is because they all d…

They have such a weird and outdated view of China, it's almost comical. It's like America's answer to everything bad coming to them is protectionism. They still think China is a third world country with a bunch of factories and polluting industries not able to do anything else other than manufacturing products for foreign companies

The alternative to protectionism is Chinese-style industrial policy. Which necessitates Chinese-style "we don't care if you're a billionaire, you will do as we say or men with guns will make you" levels of governmental control. Which I'm not sure any of us really want, as satisfying as it would to watch these CEOs get publicly re-educated.

They aren't patriotic and they don't really care about competing with China, they fancy themselves princes and are playing on the silents/boomers in charge being irreparably stuck in the Cold War.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#27

Post by bix6 »

SkyBelow wrote: post #23
bix6 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Is there one you’d recommend in particular when working with sensitive data?

I think this would depend upon the level of sensitive data. For OpenRouter, you can setup an API key and limit it to only models that claim to not train on data, but that is just a claim. You can then use trust to judge which providers will honor that claim. But if the data is really sensitive, you might want either a local model or a business subscription with some big name in the US that legally promises no data tr…

For anything sensitive I have Claude business (team?) which (claims) no training but I would like to find an alternative for them. I’m just really tired of supporting Anthropic each month (same feelings for all the major providers).

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#28

Post by rglover »

toasty228 wrote: post #20
badsectoracula wrote: post #11

> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better models, and a crackdown on model distillation. You have to be the embodiment of hubris to believe the only reason a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people with several AI labs and government support can make competitive models is because they all d…

They have such a weird and outdated view of China, it's almost comical. It's like America's answer to everything bad coming to them is protectionism. They still think China is a third world country with a bunch of factories and polluting industries not able to do anything else other than manufacturing products for foreign companies

China played the smart long game and took advantage of America's ignorance and short-sighted thinking. They already "won" in the sense that they outmaneuvered the U.S. because they relied on flaws in human nature (specifically, greed). Their moves around AI are just more of the same clever behavior.

I don't agree with all of their means for getting here, but to accomplish what they have in ~30 or so years [1] should blow minds far more than it does in the West. And they did it by convincing us to give them control of our manufacturing and selling us (literal) boatloads of cheap junk. Historians will look back on this era as one of the greatest demonstrations of "winning without firing a single shot."

This whole insular POV is tired, ignorant, and frankly just another indicator that America has lost the plot, shit-faced on its own arrogance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#29

Post by amluto »

badsectoracula wrote: post #11

> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better models, and a crackdown on model distillation. You have to be the embodiment of hubris to believe the only reason a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people with several AI labs and government support can make competitive models is because they all d…

It’s not only hubris — I think it’s actively counterproductive. The US could choose to:

(a) Sell many billions of dollars of fancy chips to China, thus bringing in billions of dollars of money and billions of dollars of trade balance improvement. And let China continue to build models quickly when they seem oddly happy to export the trained weights for free.

Or

(b) Decline to do so, thus reducing exports and very very strongly encouraging China to do everything in their power to avoid needing to depend on our chips.

In exchange for (b), what do we gain? A temporary advantage in model training and availability?

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#30

Post by Ciantic »

Roark66 wrote: post #16
bix6 wrote: post #3

Can anyone recommend me a viable alternative to these clowns? I would like to move my work (excel and light coding) off the big guys. My computer isn’t very powerful though so I need to upgrade or find hosted models (host my own?) that won’t steal my sensitive data? Edit: miss me with the downvotes. These guys are clowns. I want alternatives. Thank you to everyone offering help!

Openrouter is not ideal, because you don't know who they send your traffic to and there are rumours of vendors cheating by providing quantized models. I'm very happy with Deepinfra. Less model coverage, but good prices and quite fast. However I have to caution you about one thing. No one will give you as many input tokens for so little money as Claude Max x5 (maybe x20 too, I use x5). I tend to use 1.1B to 1.4B a wee…

> Openrouter is not ideal, because you don't know who they send your traffic to and there are rumours of vendors cheating by providing quantized models.

OpenRouter allows to make an API key locked to certain provider, I do that myself.

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