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Who's afraid of Chinese models?

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Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#521

Post by inigyou »

est wrote: post #266
ballon_monkey wrote: post #233

The 2 things people need to remember: 1) China can (and does) use the models to influence the west. They train in false information about Taiwan and Hong Kong. Or pretend like history is in favor of China. 2) Ignoring the models containing false information, they are incredible. But you should be scared of running inference via the model creators directly. If you think your data is safe compared to running it via mod…

> China can (and does) use the models to influence the west OK now that's false information. You can uncensor, tweak or fine-tune open-weight models, but not so easy on a proprietary model from some cloud provider.

It's probably true (why wouldn't it be?) but the missing context is that the US does it even more.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#522

Post by inigyou »

Jackpillar wrote: post #458
ballon_monkey wrote: post #233

The 2 things people need to remember: 1) China can (and does) use the models to influence the west. They train in false information about Taiwan and Hong Kong. Or pretend like history is in favor of China. 2) Ignoring the models containing false information, they are incredible. But you should be scared of running inference via the model creators directly. If you think your data is safe compared to running it via mod…

"Or pretend like history is in favor of China." What does this even mean?

Like it will tell you the PRC (current China) was right to go to civil war with ROC (former China, current Taiwan)

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#523

Post by 999900000999 »

ballon_monkey wrote: post #233

The 2 things people need to remember: 1) China can (and does) use the models to influence the west. They train in false information about Taiwan and Hong Kong. Or pretend like history is in favor of China. 2) Ignoring the models containing false information, they are incredible. But you should be scared of running inference via the model creators directly. If you think your data is safe compared to running it via mod…

Regarding 1.

We’re literally tearing down monuments to slavery and civil rights.

Religion is now determining law in much of the nation. Having a miscarriage? Good luck since politicians have decided their God doesn’t want you to have access to basic healthcare.

The government has defacto control over domestic LLMs.

Let’s worry about our own historical record.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#524

Post by traceroute66 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #495
sajithdilshan wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hasn’t it been the same with US since the WWII? US has influenced the world through various ways sometimes even weaponising human rights to spread American superiority and its narrative?

While true, you neglect the fact that US corporations have some autonomy from the government. I doubt that any of the current American AI corporations get regular dossiers of desirable responses to sensitive political topics from Washington and implement them. That would be a reason for a major lawsuit and a major scandal. In China, the image of the country and the preferred narrative is under much tighter control of…

> you neglect the fact that US corporations have some autonomy from the government

In theory.

In practice, Trump picks up the phone and say "jump" and the CEO on the other end says "how high ?".

And if you say no, well, we saw what happened when Anthropic said no.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#525

Post by amiraliakbari »

throwaw12 wrote: post #486

Lets do "who's afraid of US models" version: * Me, as an individual, because I might not be able to pay price hikes, because my revenue (salary) is much lower than what they want and I can't support my expenses via huge bank loans. * Again, me as a new entrant to the industry, LLMs are basically pay-to-play games, again related to price hikes, new entrants might not be able to afford paying those prices 24/7 - which…

Also me, as someone who is living in a place that US may drop bombs on because the models may think it is a military target, or even a higher priority target like a girls school.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#526

Post by inigyou »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #432
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already do not have that unfettered right in the USA.

Yes, sorry I didn't mean to imply that I didn't want to do business with minorities or protected classes.

Sam and Dario keep saying intelligence will be like water or electricity. If that's the case then it should be illegal to deny to anyone. In most parts of the world the power company can't shut off your power for an unpaid bill - they have to get a court order to allow it, which gives you a chance to defend yourself or make a payment plan.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#527

Post by inigyou »

chuckadams wrote: post #78
grim_io wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forbidding distillation is like forbidding using a compiler to make another(perhaps better, more efficient) compiler.

Lots of software licenses have “non-compete” clauses that forbid you from using it to develop a competing product. Wouldn’t surprise me if there was a compiler or two out there with that restriction, most likely niche languages.

Oracle database has a clause forbidding anyone to publish benchmarks of it.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#528

Post by inigyou »

ultrablack wrote: post #61
llm_nerd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distillation explanation is classic American exceptionalism: No one could possibly do anything unless they were copying American leaders (where "American" means a bunch of Chinese, Canadian, Europeans and Indians working in the US). It's also a bit of securities defensiveness. Pretending that you really do have a super moat, people just keep swimming in it so you just need to add more alligators. It's farcical. A…

Which Chinese model was it that identified itself as Claude 15% of the time?

Claude Opus identifies itself as Qwen if you ask the question in Chinese. So who's really distilling who?

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#529

Post by Wilsoniumite »

I like this article. Rings very true.

I like Anthropic, I don't think all their talk of safety is bluff and bluster, or at least, I want to believe that the people who left OpenAI because it had lost its focus of helping humanity still want that to be their main goal. However, yes, it seems that business fears are once again causing those in charge to turn "we want to help humanity" into "we are the only ones who can help humanity, and therefore we need to be the most profitable, and the only survivors".

If you want the former ideal to survive, at Anthropic and outside of it, you need to be willing to collaborate beyond profit incentives and recouping capex. Show other labs a commitment to research and community and they will follow. Better to bring teams together rather than implicitly say you distrust them, pushing them that way instead.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#530

Post by pydry »

inglor_cz wrote: post #495
sajithdilshan wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hasn’t it been the same with US since the WWII? US has influenced the world through various ways sometimes even weaponising human rights to spread American superiority and its narrative?

While true, you neglect the fact that US corporations have some autonomy from the government. I doubt that any of the current American AI corporations get regular dossiers of desirable responses to sensitive political topics from Washington and implement them. That would be a reason for a major lawsuit and a major scandal. In China, the image of the country and the preferred narrative is under much tighter control of…

In China the state rules the corporations and in the US the corporations rule the state.

Neither is a system worth fighting for. Swiss style democracy maybe but not autocracy and not oligarchy.

>OTOH in Europe, US human rights policy was probably relevant in saving some dissenters in the former Eastern Bloc from torture or execution.

Yeah, a bit like how Russia saved Edward Snowden.

The US will use human rights as a club to beat its imperial rivals with but when it has deemed torture and arbitrary execution in the interests of its imperial power it has adopted them enthusiastically.

When US allies use these tools and worse they are excused.

There is basically nothing which US rivals do which the US wouldn't also do under similar circumstances.

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