[ericd]

One big difference is that the US doesn't have much public record of using state espionage resources to steal industrial secrets to give domestic industry a leg up in the market, whereas CCP very much does.

And while I use and love the open weight models, it seems likely to be pretty hard to prove conclusively that they have no reinforcement-learning-trained proclivity towards curling specific URLs if the topic happens to be some very specific thing that the government is interested in, when used to drive agents.

So it depends who you are. If you're a company, you might have something to fear. If you're a private citizen, maybe not so much.

[aeve890]

>One big difference is that the US doesn't have much public record of using state espionage resources to steal industrial secrets to give domestic industry a leg up in the market, whereas CCP very much does.

From Wikipedia

> British journalist Duncan Campbell and New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager said in the 1990s that the United States was exploiting ECHELON traffic for industrial espionage, rather than military and diplomatic purposes. Examples alleged by the journalists include the gear-less wind turbine technology designed by the German firm Enercon and the speech technology developed by the Belgian firm Lernout & Hauspie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

[ericd]

Ah good counter, hadn’t seen that. Proven?

[rescbr]

Happy to disagree with you. There are many examples of the US using the state espionage machinery for private purposes. The extent of "private" is debatable given the US as a nation behaves more like a big corp.

https://www.reuters.com/article/business/nsa-spying-on-petro...

[ericd]

Did they give those secrets to US private industry?

[rescbr]

I imagine they're not spying for fun...

[ericd]

Well, there are generally strategic government uses.

[_puk]

The American industrial revolution is often cited as one such example.

The patent act of 1793 is still relevant today [0] and was established to protect Americans stealing British and European industrial trade secrets.

https://mysteriesofmankind.com/industrial-espionage-the-spie...

[ericd]

Right, talking about behavior in living memory.

[pydry]

>One big difference is that the US doesn't have much public record of using state espionage resources to steal industrial secrets to give domestic industry a leg up in the market, whereas CCP very much does.

Until very recently there would have been little point. What could China do that the US couldnt?

I'm sure the US will start to do it in the not too distant future though. China is slowly leapfrogging the US on several key technologies - e.g. robotics and drones.

The idea that the US's conscience might prevent it from engaging in state directed industrial espionage is comical.

[ericd]

I wasn’t talking about spying on Chinese firms, I was talking about firms worldwide. And I said nothing about conscience.

[koolba]

I don’t think US companies could ever fully trust models sponsored by foreign adversaries. How would you ever verify they are safe?

Provenance of training set is going to be critical. It’s largely ignored now, but the first time a malicious exfiltration occurs it will go off as if a bomb was detonated.

[dmarcos]

Only way would be an actual open source model: code + training data