Comment by treyd
5 days ago
> But thats also an admittance that the American labs can’t compete on merit anymore
This is exactly it.
Try to buy a BYD in the United States. You can't (without a complicated process) because they're so much better cars than our domestic brands that our domestic brands couldn't compete and lobbied to keep them out.
> should by itself also limit the viability of the idea that all those VC billions will ever make a return?
It just has to last until the next quarter / fundraising round.
I can understand (not necessarily defend) protectionism for products with nonzero manufacturing cost and some required physical size and such.
I am befuddled when the same policies are applied to products with marginally zero manufacturing cost, no real physical size, and such. Regulating ideas is hard folks.
>I am befuddled when the same policies are applied to products with marginally zero manufacturing cost, no real physical size, and such.
Because it's not about perfect obstructionism, it's about adding red tape to businesses that end up relenting and going to a frontier model. If this gets these frontier models an extra few million dollars in exchange for greasing some palms, that's a business success.
The cost of those output tokens is not zero or marginal.
You could run the inference locally using the open weight models. Then you'd still get to use the models without sending money overseas
The first token on a new AI rig costs $X (full capex cost) then every token after that costs virtually zero. Over time the cost/token trends towards zero (modulo opex). That said, AI does have higher opex than general SaaS so it can’t get as close to zero.
But that’s kind of a different question, the running of some service. The “product”, the model, is a collection of files. The “manufacturing” required to add another customer is “send them the files” and has ~zero marginal cost.
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> because they're so much better cars than our domestic brands
Is that objectively true? True after factoring in harms they do to human rights and the environment?
Nope.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/may/12/c...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
Remember, even EU despite claiming to be morally superior to the US, heavily tariffs BYD (much more than the tariffs that the globe mocks Trump for). https://thenextweb.com/news/byd-rejects-hungary-environmenta...
> Is that objectively true?
objectively true. And there's zero need to factor in things like "human rights" or "environmental protection", because these are costs that have been externalized and the consumer don't pay for it (in their lifetime anyway). That's what objectively means.
Chinese cars are unavailable in the US because US manufacturers are 100% unable to compete. Japan was in the exact same position before, but because of ally status, japanese car companies (with their gov't as the proxy) managed to negotiate and have a "voluntary import restriction" in place to protect US manufacturers. This artificial restriction created a higher price for consumers than it ordinarily would have been.
The japanese car manufacturers were also able to setup shop in the US, and instead of exporting, they manufacturered directly on US soil. They're allowed to do this sole because they're an ally, and i don't expect this same to be allowed for chinese companies.
> because US manufacturers are 100% unable to compete.
In the June just passed Tesla Model Y is the best selling EV in China.
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Are you saying USA is somehow a good example for environmental issues and human rights? Read the news in the past years?
Did you read the links I attached?
Are you saying China is better in human rights?
Read the news in the past few years?
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>after factoring in harms they do to human rights and the environment
America c. 2025 and beyond has no leg to stand on in terms of espousing care of human rights and environment.
>even EU despite claiming to be morally superior to the US, heavily tariffs BYD (much more than the tariffs that the globe mocks Trump for).
You are technically correct... because Trump did not actually Tariff BYD directly. The 100% EV tariffs was a Biden era move, made to give American manufacturers time to develop their own EV solutions for the domestic market. Separate from whatever global tariffs Trump announced.
And then trump ended EV credits, and ultimately pushed the road down to American manufacturers giving up on their EV initiatives.