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The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

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Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#91
post #66

Is there any truth to the Chinese models having built in f’ery? Like phoning home or inserting backdoors. Or is that just everyone blanketing “China bad”? Also what local models are people running and actually finding useful?

If you think american models aren't phoning home and don't have backdoor capabillities, you're naive.

With all the sloppers not looking at the code this is bliss for that sort of things

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a higher-order concern here that I'm paranoid enough to voice: that if used as a coding agent, an AI model affiliated with a country's government might try to make my software susceptible to attacks by that government's intelligence forces. And note that I'm not singling out China here.

> that if used as a coding agent, an AI model affiliated with a country's government might try to make my software susceptible to attacks by that government's intelligence forces. Note that if such a trigger were to exist, the behavior has to be completely reproducible by definition, e.g. when put into the right setting with the right input context, the model starts behaving maliciously with at least some well-define…

Such incidents have been extensively described. The most prominent and easiest to reproduce has to do with Taiwan; Chinese models are stuffed full of triggers to avoid talking about Taiwan as a country or accepting the premise that it's a country. Try asking Deepseek about country code +886!

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that if used as a coding agent, an AI model affiliated with a country's government might try to make my software susceptible to attacks by that government's intelligence forces. Note that if such a trigger were to exist, the behavior has to be completely reproducible by definition, e.g. when put into the right setting with the right input context, the model starts behaving maliciously with at least some well-define…

I don't think it's a stretch that you can train/align a model to avoid "hatespeech" or other topics deemed $Unacceptable you can align a model to favor a certain ideological viewpoint and have that alignment subtly influence the output. How do most Chinese models handle Tienanmen square or discussions on Han superiority?

Oh sure, no one said you can't train a model to do this. You certainly can.

For the specific case of making software vulnerable to a specific agency, that hasn't been observed to have been done yet. Not because it can't be, but because no one has for now.

If it were done, it would be easy(ish) to detect, since it'll be reproducible.

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to the outcome of those legal processes againt the CEOs, that sit behind Trump at the inauguration. After they stole all the knowledge in the world to train their models. And the current administration is drunk on SpaceX pre IPO shares...how did they get them? "Trump Officials Held Millions of Dollars of SpaceX Ahead of IPO" - https://news.bloomberglaw.com/texas-brief/trump-officials-he...

Given how little voting power these "shares" have (they are effectively SpaceX trading cards/NFTs) perhaps they were simply printed on SpaceX letterhead? If Musk says a person has "shares" who at spacex is in a position to disagree?

[deleted]

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#95
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "taboo" the right word? "taboo" = "banned on grounds of morality or taste". Not sending data to known IP thieves, state actors, and competitors in China (or Russia or Israel) seems very rational.

Many of the Chinese models are open weights, so if you are concerned about them "phoning home", then anyone can just self-host and run them themself, or use via a US provider such as OpenRouter.

Yes. Open weights are great and are a good option to hosted models under the right circumstances. I'm glad that China releases open weight models (which in some cases are sort-of be distilled versions of hosted US models).

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It didn't quite work out so now people are looking for other strategies. World will bifurcate into West and East with their own spheres of influence. As JD Vance said, US thought that China will be perpetually kept busy and enslaved in low level manufacturing work and the design and higher level work would happen in Cupertino. Too bad, that didn't pan out well and now US Empire is getting challenged by China.

> US thought that China will be perpetually kept busy and enslaved in low level manufacturing work It's OK, they'll repeat the same mistake again with India this time, when they move manufacturing from China to there, and in 10-30 years when they'll elect a nationalist strongman there, he'll squeeze the west for everything they got. Because what are you gonna do about it then? They have all your manufacturing and the…

> in 30 years they'll electr a nationalist strongman

You’re about thirty years off on that estimate.

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure those corporations have much more influence over american politicians, regulators, lawmakers, etc. than eg. russian or chinese ones.

Well sure they do, thank Citizens United and others for that. But that doesn't mean we can't appropriately categorize them as also hostile actors alongside russia, china, whoever. It's undo influence over politics against the best interest of the American people that's the issue. Company, foreign nation, it doesn't matter.

Citizens United did a lot to effectively legalize foreign influence as well, since the mechanism is opaque transfer of money

But regardless, most people's threat models should discount based on geographic and political distance. All else being equal, chinese surveillance is a bigger threat to you if you're in china than if you're in the us, and vice versa

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#98
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there was a whole idea about civilizing and pacifying the world through economic cooperation that would foster middle class in countries across the world that would then in turn make them democratize and become peaceful trade partners. It didn't quite work out so now people are looking for other strategies.

The idea does smell a bit like a rationalization for policy that was extremely convenient for stockholders and a disaster for workers.

[deleted]

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to the outcome of those legal processes againt the CEOs, that sit behind Trump at the inauguration. After they stole all the knowledge in the world to train their models. And the current administration is drunk on SpaceX pre IPO shares...how did they get them? "Trump Officials Held Millions of Dollars of SpaceX Ahead of IPO" - https://news.bloomberglaw.com/texas-brief/trump-officials-he...

Given how little voting power these "shares" have (they are effectively SpaceX trading cards/NFTs) perhaps they were simply printed on SpaceX letterhead? If Musk says a person has "shares" who at spacex is in a position to disagree?

I would consider editing this while HN still allows it :-)) Or otherwise it may remain here for ever...until the black holes evaporate, as calibration point for the difference between confidence and comprehension...

Re: The OnlyFans Economy of American AI

#100
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure they do, thank Citizens United and others for that. But that doesn't mean we can't appropriately categorize them as also hostile actors alongside russia, china, whoever. It's undo influence over politics against the best interest of the American people that's the issue. Company, foreign nation, it doesn't matter.

Citizens United did a lot to effectively legalize foreign influence as well, since the mechanism is opaque transfer of money But regardless, most people's threat models should discount based on geographic and political distance. All else being equal, chinese surveillance is a bigger threat to you if you're in china than if you're in the us, and vice versa

> Citizens United did a lot to effectively legalize foreign influence as well, since the mechanism is opaque transfer of money

Here's hoping Hawaii blazes a path forward.

https://natlawreview.com/article/hawaii-governor-signs-first...

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