Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who's afraid of Chinese models?

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 965 posts

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#661

Post by deepvibrations »

braebo wrote: post #650
WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #480

I'm rather scared of US models - if Anthropic was the only AI provider in the world, it's easy to see that common people would have no access at all. Thankfully there is OpenAI which compete 1:1 with Anthropic (at a slightly lower cost) but most importantly the Chinese models keep Anthropic, but also OpenAI in checks. And I'm saying this as someone working for American companies.

Saying GPT 5.6 Sol is 1:1 with Fable is laughable. OpenAI models are braindead in comparison and I have hundreds of hours with both.

No doubt Fable can outperform on many coding tasks, but the way you phrase it really exaggerates the gap and I'd suggest that for 95% of tasks, most devs simply don't need Fable level, and in fact, despite mostly using Claude, I have found codex is generally quicker at most tasks and can be even better than Fable with certain languages.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#662

Post by traceroute66 »

radicalbyte wrote: post #610
mc32 wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn’t that been the assumption since Carnivore? Also we tapped European pols phones back in ‘12, was it? Though it’s not like the Eu are a bunch of innocents either… It’s not a new thing. Industrial espionage has always been a thing as well. So has bribery (for deals) been a thing especially by euro concerns.

Our intelligence services have capabilities, it's not just the US. The Patriot / Cloud Act increase the scope outside of intelligence agencies. I'm of the opinion that for military intelligence there is a legitimate need to have some - black - capability. It should just be highly limited in scope.

> It should just be highly limited in scope

"should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

I agree it is hard to escape some form of legitimate need for intel.

The concern with intel and the present US administration comes on the checks, balances and controls side.

We are after all dealing with an administration happy to conduct much of its most sensitive business on Signal using off-the-shelf phones.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#663

Post by fc417fc802 »

TripolitianFish wrote: post #326
itake wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, multiple political parties balance each out other. In China, there is 1 party. 1 view. 1 definition of the Truth.

I’d love to live in the USA you’re talking about friend. This is just oriental despotism paranoia, whatever cutsie repetition slogan you come up with is not a serious argument.

> I’d love to live in the USA you’re talking about friend.

You already do! Remember when Musk released an anti-woke model?

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#664

Post by hnfong »

BaseBaal wrote: post #635
desterothx wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well implemented by the current US administration. Every accusation is a confession

The US distilled this from the Russian model.

There's no way anyone could have made a model so good, it must have been distilled from the future.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#665

Post by flakeoil »

myrmidon wrote: post #637
desterothx wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost like the entire worlds manufacturing was pushed to China the last 40 years (and is now getting moved to cheaper countries with the rising Chinese middle class). Is there a similar explanation for why the US number is so high?

Outsourced manufacturing is much less of a factor than people typically assume: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/imported-or-exported-co-e... US numbers are insanely high because cheap hydrocarbons are locally available (=> bad incentives) and everyone is wealthy (that correlation is very strong; just compare Luxembourg, which is much wealthier and more polluting than surrounding nations) and also population densit…

> that correlation is very strong; just compare Luxembourg, which is much wealthier and more polluting than surrounding nations

Well, your theory does not hold at all if you look at Switzerland which pollutes 1/4 of the US per capita. CO2 pollution is not and does not have to be correlated with standard of living.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#666

Post by preg_match »

whynotminot wrote: post #604
hosteur wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's just no trust in a country that is digitally totalitarian and hostile towards its own people. Are you referring to USA, China or EU here?

What you personally believe and perception within the United States are not the same thing.

The US is most definitely hostile towards its own people, and we also have the most comprehensive surveillance apparatus in the world. On par with, if not more extensive than, China.

People largely can't protest here right now, and US citizens are being killed. People are being sent to work camps in countries where laws do not apply. And our leadership is, right now, priming the American people for when they reject the results of future elections. Not to mention everybody involved in the last attempted coup was pardoned - after we were told that our current leadership had nothing to do with the coup.

The state of the US is much more dire than most people are letting on. And it's understandable why. Nobody likes bad news, and we all like to believe things will be okay. All I know is I can't take my phone into the airport. I can't go out and protest without risking my life and freedom. I can't drive anywhere without my location being tracked and logged. And, if I get pulled over, I must comply with any order, no matter how unlawful, otherwise I risk being executed in the street.

Some of these things have been going on for a while, and some are new. But all are real.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#667

Post by hnfong »

Lutger wrote: post #584
inigyou wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technique is called "accusation in a mirror". By accusing the enemy of doing what you are doing, when they call out what you are doing, they look like they are just weakly repeating your own accusations because they don't have any truth. And the anger that should be directed against you (because of your practices) gets directed at the enemy.

Thank you for this, I've noticed this often in politics and didn't know it has a name. Some politicians do this so often, that any accusation to me reads a confession instead.

It's usually called self projecting in more common terms I think.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#668

Post by mc32 »

traceroute66 wrote: post #662
radicalbyte wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our intelligence services have capabilities, it's not just the US. The Patriot / Cloud Act increase the scope outside of intelligence agencies. I'm of the opinion that for military intelligence there is a legitimate need to have some - black - capability. It should just be highly limited in scope.

> It should just be highly limited in scope "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I agree it is hard to escape some form of legitimate need for intel. The concern with intel and the present US administration comes on the checks, balances and controls side. We are after all dealing with an administration happy to conduct much of its most sensitive business on Signal using off-the-shelf phones.

I don’t think these issues only exist or have existed in this admin. Previous admins were tapping the phones of the heads of state of Europe. There was also mishandling of intelligence. Perhaps the magnitude is changed though I don’t have evidence for that.

Some of it I think is selective picking. Similar to election interference where we know quite a few foreign states like interfering with our elections but we typically only hear about one of those states as being the culprit. Now, obviously we like interfering as well (Ukraine in ‘14 and Iran today, though Iran would be less controversial) and many others over the years.

Re: Who's afraid of Chinese models?

#670

Post by colinsane »

hosteur wrote: post #589
giancarlostoro wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nice and all, but I would not get hired in many places that are heavily regulated and risk adverse, and would not hire someone who swears by said models because there is no trust in their creators not training for malicious intent, a random tool call here and there, and you've got a "open weight model" that can send your code anywhere. There's just no trust in a country that is digitally totalitarian and hosti…

> There's just no trust in a country that is digitally totalitarian and hostile towards its own people. Are you referring to USA, China or EU here?

hopefully all of the above?

at some point the conversation has to go past this reflexive "USA uses tech abusively -> but look at how abusive China is with tech -> ..." back-and-forth to acknowledging that neither party is your savior -- and then (hopefully) acting upon and coordinating around that understanding.

Post reply on HN