Comment by ItsBob
1 day ago
It's not losing yet but I think it will.
I use Gemini Pro (got it with my 5TB of Google storage) and for a while it seemed if Google had pulled the rug as I was running out of quota after only a few hours. That seems to have been dialled back a bit lately...
I also use Chatbot with Deepseek V4 Pro and GLM 5.2. However, GLM 5.2 seems to eat tokens like crazy as the context increases. Anyway, there isn't a meaningful enough difference between the two to be honest and Deepseek is pretty magical imo.
The point I want to make is that to me it seems clear that China is totally undermining the West with AI. I'm fine with it tbh. As long as more and more AI is released into the wild, rather than locked behind massive token farms like OpenAI then I'll be happy. Don't get me wrong, I can't run Deepseek on my computer at home but someone can!
The US (and the west) has invested trillions at this point into datacenters, chips, bribery/lobbying but it doesn't look like China has dropped the same levels of cash as the west (that's the way it looks to me, at least!) so they can just roll out new models every so often that are more than good enough.
This level of cash burn in means the west has no choice but for this to succeed or every pension fund and stock will tank! And China knows this, hence the push to release more and more really good models.
Anyway, just my $0.02
Deepseek has always been better than people gave it credit for.
You have to be careful with the inference provider though, Chinese providers are subject to laws that mandate data sharing with their government.
I would argue your logic is exactly backwards. For most Americans, sharing data with the Chinese government is irrelevant. The CCP cannot put you in jail.
However, American providers are going to be subject to secret national security letters, FISA court warrants, and regular court orders.
I stick with OpenCode Zen (only US providers) and Together.ai (hosting themselves). As interesting as new Chinese models are when they're first released, I wait til they are open source and on US providers.
Honestly, at this point I don't care about that. I don't use it for medical stuff or anything like that.
However, my real worry is that governments will make these models illegal in the west. They'll cite national security or some other bullshit.
I genuinely believe that will happen and soon!
People talk about a lack of moat with AI companies... that's their moat: Government intervention!
> People talk about a lack of moat with AI companies... that's their moat: Government intervention!
This puts American Businesses and American Developers at a massive disadvantage.
The rest of the world can choose the best model by value for the task on hand.
Americans would be stuck using only 2-3 big frontier labs and paying a huge premium for using American models.
I don't see why hundreds of thousands of American Businesses will agree to that only for the benefit of a few tech companies.
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