[yogthos]

This is precisely why I expect that Chinese open models are going to win in the long run. The capability difference isn't dramatic in the grand scheme of things, but the fact that you can run your own is a huge selling point. Even if you rent an open model from a Chinese company, you can switch to on prem if they decided to yank access or change terms in the way you don't like. It might be a pain, but it wouldn't be existential. On the other hand, if you become dependent on a closed model and it gets yanked then you're in a world of hurt.

And infrastructure dominance is really the big picture here. Chinese models are going to become the standard setters because they're going to be what people are using. That means more research, more tooling, and a whole ecosystem developing around them.

And that was already starting to happen even before this fiasco with Chinese models now being the most used ones globally. https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/technology/features/story/clau...

[UncleOxidant]

After this action, I have no doubt that this administration will try to ban Chinese models. Of course, doing so will be futile, we'll figure out ways to get around it, but now I'm pretty sure they're going to try.

[yogthos]

I'm waiting for that to happen as well since the price difference makes it very difficult for companies like Anthropic and OpenAI to compete. And we already have precedent for this with stuff like EVs, phones, and so on. As soon as Chinese companies start making a product that's more popular, they get banned on some national security pretext.

The tricky part with banning Chinese models is that they're open. It'll be easy to ban access to service providers, but preventing people from running these models on prem is going to be really tough. Like are they going to go after Cursor for example given that their model is based on Kimi?

I very much agree it's going to be a futile endeavour in the end. It kind of reminds me of the time Microsoft tried to get Linux and open source banned when Linux started encroaching on Windows server market. This is going to end the same way.

[UncleOxidant]

I'm going to guess they'll go after sites like Huggingface that host downloads. I suspect we'll be torrenting Chinese models in the not-too-distant future. Or we'll have to geo-spoof with VPN to download from other countries.

[angry_octet]

It is almost certain that the CCP will impose constraints on access to their models at some point too. But Trump is doing it to extort cash from Anthropic, and China will be doing it to leverage political and economic concessions.

Remember that there are degrees of banning. Slower tokens, dumber models, token caps, KYC for each model consumer, hurting specific companies that are not capitulating in a deal with a Chinese company, etc.

[yogthos]

A big difference with open models is that anybody can run and tune them any way they like. The real difference in philosophy is that Americans companies treat the model as the product, while Chinese companies see models at infrastructure you build products on top of. You amortize the cost of deploying it at scale by sharing knowledge and iterating quickly to bring the cost down.

I see absolutely no reason why CPC would choose to kneecap themselves the way the USG just did. Keeping open access to the models means that the whole world will be using Chinese based AI stack going forward. Only a government run by absolute imbeciles would do what the US did.

[foo12bar]

Even if everyone uses Chinese open weight models at somw point, how do you make money creating them?

This is just typical Chinese behavior. Flood the market with cheap or free stuff and wait for your competitors to die off. Then you have a monopoly. (Maybe you were implying that would happen, dunno)

[yogthos]

I mean you could ask the exact same question about other foundational tech like Linux. And the real question here is what stops Americans companies from producing things cheaply and at scale the way Chinese companies do. You frame it as some nefarious tactic, but the reality is that they're just more efficient and American companies are unable to compete with that.

[foo12bar]

The Chinese government grossly subsidized many industries to undercut their competitors and form monopolies, such as solar panels, electric cars, battery cells, and steel and aluminum manufacturing, not to mention rare earths. Yes, they are more efficient, I don't disagree with you there.

But they aren't making any money releasing open weight models, and no, I don't believe they are like Linus Torvalds with some grand vision of free as is freedom AI models, but rather doing more of the same.