Comment by cat-snatcher
15 hours ago
You're kidding yourself if you think the moment they get an upper hand or better models they won't close everything down
15 hours ago
You're kidding yourself if you think the moment they get an upper hand or better models they won't close everything down
It’s really hard to vilify the Chinese now on this and make it stick! So far, they seem to be championing openness and freedom on this front, which considering the nature of the technology, is a huge deal!
If they change their stance later, we’ll criticize them the same.
Its not about bad/good. It's about self-serving interests. Currently, it serves China's interests to open source the models. If they had capabilities beyond those available in the US, I expect that would no longer be the case. Especially given the military/cyber implications. You don't expect them to open source their J-35 blueprints, so why would they behave differently here?
The reason this matters is, if along the way, they destroy all economic incentives for US labs, you may find yourself in a world, where you have no alternatives to closed Chinese models.
Look no further than what happened to mineral processing. Notice they are not open sourcing their mineral processing and magnet-manufacturing technologies.
You seem to be under the impression that somehow only US has the capability to advance this tech. Aren’t these AI mega corporations constantly trying to scare us that if they stop pushing AI, China will get ahead? Which narrative should we believe?
> if along the way, they destroy all economic incentives for US labs
Nah, they should be able to compete! To be honest, I find it hard to sympathize with trillion dollar ungodly rich corps.
2 replies →
You could say that about anything
I find it hard to imagine that it would be possible to be less ethical than the US labs.
This fear mongering doesn’t scare me
Many of the open source models are now only open weight though. Where is your criticism?
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It’s possible they don’t if they fundamentally believe the AI market is going to end up being an exercise in just mass manufacturing tokens, which China is going to easily win because they can generate way more electricity than any country and manufacture almost everything they need to do it domestically.
The models are just a distribution mechanism in that case, and it’s in their interest to get that into as many hands as possible.
If the Chinese government has anything to say about it, which in China they typically do, they won't be able to close everything down since the official stance is to be more open than closed.
Not really. The official stance is likely to be the dominant supplier of hardware and models to run on it. And the models will need to be refreshed every so often as world evolves, especially if it evolves quicker. Global south will be buying Ascends soon. And EU will eventually follow as well or bleed money to US. Selling hardware to run freely available models in itself is sufficient and way easier to enforce than that someone won't pirate the model. Can't pirate the GPU.
Please do some cursory research before guessing.
https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202607/17/content_WS6a59a5be...
(This is also widely reported in mainstream western media.)
I'm sure there will be a shift in tone/direction if/when Chinese models gain a substantial lead over the US models, but at least for now, this is the official stance.