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Comment by azinman2

1 month ago

Unless you’re from mainland China, you should.

Why? Should we be held hostage to the whims of these companies and all the investors in the throes of AI psychosis, and let them do whatever the fuck they want, because if we don't then the economy will crash?

No you should not care unless you are a shareholder in one of these Ai ponzi companies. For the rest of the world Chinese companies matching and open sourcing llm's will keep 100 or so tech oligarchs taking over all the world economic output for themselves as all the idiot politician are unwilling to tax wealth.

  • Everyone is technically (directly or indirectly) a shareholder of one of these AI or AI affiliated companies.

    • We're also shareholders in all other publicly traded stocks (assuming you're referring to pension schemes etc), which means competition in the AI model market is better than a few winners making everyone paying through their nose for access. Even better, open weights models which cannot be disabled on a whim means the entire world economy can benefit.

    • The majority being indirect and having no input to how these companies run if we can't get some strong regulation going.

Why?

Serious question.

I'm from the US, and I think it's hilarious.

  • For a number of reasons.

    First, whether we like it or not (generally not), a fuck ton of money has been invested in US AI companies, data centers, RLHF datasets amongst other datasets, etc. If that were to go to 0 that’d be quite disastrous. Alternatively, if it goes well, it’s great for the US (and to a lesser extent allies) economy and global standing.

    Relatedly, tech has been a huge power house for the US economy for decades now. If the main driver of growth goes to China, what replaces it? Along with all the potential tax money, foreign investment, etc?

    Next, patriotism / nationalism. This is very much a zero-sum game that defines who owns the future. Would you rather your country win or lose this? Lose this and you start losing talent, money, global standing, etc. That furthers a cascading effect that’s very negative. It also will likely create social strife with the knock on effects leading to even more bad populist ideas that just further diminish the country and tear society’s fabric apart.

    None of this is hilarious.

    • > This is very much a zero-sum game that defines who owns the future. Would you rather your country win or lose this? Lose this and you start losing talent, money, global standing, etc. That furthers a cascading effect that’s very negative.

      This process is already well underway. The current massive over investment into the AI hype bubble is the final death throes of a failed economy trying to keep its head above water.

  • One example is that a totalitarian government known for erasing historical record of its crimes will control an arbitrator of truth.

Why so? If I'm from Europe or South America, should I hope Anthropic/Openai win?

  • The better question is why would any rational consumer would want anyone to “win”? Disappearance of competition is the worst outcome for them (I guess being squeezed by a monopolistic company from your pwn country is slightly nicer)

  • I think it is only rational to want them to fail & to fail hard, to make an example.

    To avoid future situations where money is invested on hype only with no regards to what societal disruption it causes.

  • Answered in a sister thread.

    Are you from Europe or South America? Or just asking on their behalf?

    They are allies of the US, which includes economic spheres of influence. The premise of the petrodollar is that allies do better by being a part of it than not, which has been true for many, many decades now. China’s rise is providing an alternative for the first time in 70+ years, but so far it’s very unclear if these benefits will truly extend to allies of China or not. For example, China sends their own laborers when building infrastructure in Africa. Sure there’s new infrastructure but also debt to CCP without any benefits of knowledge transfer or local employment.

  • Yes. They’re flawed, but you don’t want a global police state administered by the PRC.

    • No matter your perception of PRC, I don't see how competition around open-weight models has much to do with a "global police state".

    • Who said so? I don't want the current global police state administered by the US government and oligarchies