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China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

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Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#341

Post by paxys »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #238
paxys wrote: post #223

This entire piece boils down to “I like open source therefore it is winning”. Everyone here has already raised good counterpoints, but one more is that all the companies publishing open weights models are heavily VC funded. What is their exit strategy? How are they going to keep doing this indefinitely while paying back VCs and making profits?

I think it's as simple as looking at the incentive structure. The Chinese gov't has incentive to kneecap US monopoly on frontier models. It makes sense for them to continue down this course if it strengthens their position.

The Chinese govt has a strong incentive to break dependence on the US for AI needs and build domestic models, but not to spend trillions to subsidize these models for the rest of the world.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#342

Post by dr_dshiv »

elictronic wrote: post #288
kube-system wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sort of baffled by what the entities that train the open-weights models get out of it though. Is it just a direct play to undercut the US providers because they view them as a threat? I just don't really understand the business model behind it. In China, it's because they are being heavily subsidized to do the research activity. It's not really complicated -- if you allocate public money for people do to a thin…

China wants the US economy to flounder. Building our entire growth model on software that can be copied and taken by a small group of people will have no possible consequences.

Assume, crazy business, that china wants what’s best for the world. Recognizing the danger of an AI arms race rapidly producing uncontrollable superintelligence, it focuses on open weights to reduce the economic incentives for further advancement of AI beyond the “highly useful for humans” stage.

Seems like the only thing that could avert an intelligence rapid take off. Everyone wins except for shareholders.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#343

Post by dwa3592 »

Aboutplants wrote: post #299
dwa3592 wrote: post #290

In the end its really VC money (US) versus State resources (China). In my personal opinion, building reliable LLMs is kind of a fundamental science problem which if done right has the potential to help everyone regardless of the background, so it should definitely be funded by states resources (taxes etc), which is what China is doing. In them doing so, the rest of the world also benefits, I think its a net win.

I always see comments like this, alluding to how China (the government) provides so much more assistance to industry than the US does but in reality that is not really that true. The government spend in the US on AI is much greater than government spend on AI from China

In absolute terms, you are absolutely right but relatively i don't think so. if we were to compute private money divided by state resources for AI, i think china might have more share than the US. also, even if government spend in the US on AI is so high, shouldn't we get then some models for free? maybe thinking machines is doing that, but its funded privately by a16z.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#344

Post by floatrock »

Levitz wrote: post #297
kube-system wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sort of baffled by what the entities that train the open-weights models get out of it though. Is it just a direct play to undercut the US providers because they view them as a threat? I just don't really understand the business model behind it. In China, it's because they are being heavily subsidized to do the research activity. It's not really complicated -- if you allocate public money for people do to a thin…

China is known to spread love and kindness through markets with no self-interest, after all.

"public" doesn't mean "love and kindness with no self-interest".

We only think "government spending is for hippies" in the US, and only when we don't look at public spending like defense bills.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#345

Post by stuxnet79 »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #259
chermi wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dario's PR strategy is one of the most confusing things I've ever witnessed.

Most of the AI hate largely springs from Dario popping up everywhere with threats of mass unemployment Like what am I supposed to do if AI is going to take my job?

> Like what am I supposed to do if AI is going to take my job?

(1) You call your local representatives to start working on AI legislation.

(2) Legislators seek advisors from frontier labs (specifically Anthropic) because there is a lack of in-house expertise in government.

(3) Advisors set up a regulatory body that scrutinizes new innovations in the AI space. Causes a chilling effect in the industry effectively knee-capping OAI and Chinese model providers who don't have a direct line into Washington.

(4) Profit (for Anthropic)

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#346

Post by nicce »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #238
paxys wrote: post #223

This entire piece boils down to “I like open source therefore it is winning”. Everyone here has already raised good counterpoints, but one more is that all the companies publishing open weights models are heavily VC funded. What is their exit strategy? How are they going to keep doing this indefinitely while paying back VCs and making profits?

I think it's as simple as looking at the incentive structure. The Chinese gov't has incentive to kneecap US monopoly on frontier models. It makes sense for them to continue down this course if it strengthens their position.

Chinese gov is not even needed. Deepseek was already profitable before this whole thing started. They even had the GPUs.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#347

Post by karagenit »

apparent wrote: post #163
tyleo wrote: post #6

I’m suspicious of some quotes here, “80% of startups using Chinese models,” doesn’t seem quite right to me. I just interviewed at several startups and they were all using the US models. Maybe they have some minor use of Chinese models but the bread-and-butter of most of these businesses model use is the Claude and Codex subscriptions.

The full quote: > When entrepreneurs walk into the offices of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a big American venture-capital firm, the odds these days are that their startups are using AI models made in China. “I’d say 80% chance [they are] using a Chinese open-source model,” says Martin Casado, a partner at a16z. This is very different from what the author portrays. It may be the case that many pre-funded startups are u…

Yep, and following that with

> and Chinese models are poised to take the lead.

makes it sound like the second part is a continuation of the first quote from the same source, but actually the second link is just some random person’s substack post from almost a year ago.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#348

Post by remus »

elictronic wrote: post #288
kube-system wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sort of baffled by what the entities that train the open-weights models get out of it though. Is it just a direct play to undercut the US providers because they view them as a threat? I just don't really understand the business model behind it. In China, it's because they are being heavily subsidized to do the research activity. It's not really complicated -- if you allocate public money for people do to a thin…

China wants the US economy to flounder. Building our entire growth model on software that can be copied and taken by a small group of people will have no possible consequences.

I don't think it is true that they necessarily want the US to struggle, I suspect it's more self interest. LLMs seem to be one of the biggest innovations of the last few decades, China probably just wants to make sure it's not being left behind and/or made hugely reliant on the US for what seems to be turning into a piece of critical infrastructure.

China has an effective strangle hold on some key sectors (solar, rare earths) and I am sure they relish this position and the leverage it gives them. You'd be careful not to give away that same leverage to a competing power if you can invest a few billion now and cover your bases.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#349

Post by andsoitis »

Avicebron wrote: post #294
bluGill wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it weaken the US though? It weakens the big providers but most of the economy is in companies buying and this helps them save money.

Isn't most of the economy riding on the stock of these handful of companies though?

> Isn't most of the economy riding on the stock of these handful of companies though?

No.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#350

Post by AtNightWeCode »

China is not winning if there even is a winning outside of politics. China is still clearly copying stuff as always. The mote will never be about doing simple things. It is about swimming at the deep end of the pool. The simple stuff will be running on any device in future. Complicated stuff will be using more tokens than one can imagine today.
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