[jvanderbot]

That's inevitable, but also, it's probably the point. At the moment top-tier models from China are being somewhat-freely shared. It reads to me like forcing competition out by dumping free/cheap things.

But then again, how many subscribers of Anthropic/OpenAI are really going to switch to a chinese model/site? I suspect few.

[_aavaa_]

Dumping is such a loaded term. This is investor-backed scaling to capture market share, standard VC playbook.

[chermi]

There's a difference between state sponsored and private dumping.

[_aavaa_]

Give me a break.

Yeah, in this case it's the USA side that's on the losing end. Just because the US government wants small government and no intervention (expect when it comes to the donor class, or their voting base, or their own financial interests) doesn't make it a universal truth.

We're happy to prop up companies that should have failed after they get big an dominant, but having an industrial policy to invest in a field as a whole is somehow a big problem.

You see this crying and threatening to take their toys and go home on every issue as soon as someone else is in the lead. Just look at TVs and solar panels; China invested in growing that sector since they saw it was important for the future; the USA does their best to deny climate change and demonize anything not running on fossil fuel. And now that nobody wants to buy American's overpriced and uncompetitive cars, it's the fault of other companies for planning ahead. But the same politicians complaining about it are very happy to set up their own protectionist tariffs and eventually bail out the laggards, again; all while touting the "free market"

[chermi]

weird, I'm pretty sure there was some american that made electric cars a thing. I'm not a fan of state sponsorship or bailouts. but if you're trying to equivocate, it's just not really true. also anti-tarriff. I guess I don't know who you're arguing with.

edit-- and re industrial policy, I'm ok with demand side stuff like government contracts in the early chip days. Less so but kind of ok with some supply stuff like EV credit, but of course in that case would've preferred the politically impossible carbon tax.

[_aavaa_]

There was, and to a large degree Tesla had to do a lot by themselves since the US government picks winners and saves losers rather. The Chinese government prioritized EV and battery productions through onshoring, industrial policy, and blanket incentives (bypassing license plate lottery for EVs), rather than favoring a specific company.

Why does the US have 1 successful EV company while China has a dozen? Because on government cares about it and the other doesn’t. And now that they’re losing a race they couldn’t be bother to compete it they complain.

Same complaining about AI, now that the two chosen champions are facing actual competition, there’s complaints that it’s unfair. we were supposed to win, it’s unfair that they’re beating us at our own crooked game.

[chermi]

How did they pick winners and losers early days of Tesla? It demand side subsidy. No one else could meet it. It worked.

[mrngld]

It's state-backed, or at least state-directed, scaling to capture market share, standard CCP playbook since the 80s.

Whether dumping is a loaded term of not is irrelevant; it's a specific term of art in economics and policy, it fits with the context of past national actions there, and fits what's currently happening here perfectly. They put money into these models, then give them away for nothing (below cost).

[Gormo]

How does releasing open weight models to FOSS communities help capture market share for subscription-based cloud services?

[dgellow]

The US AI vendors are also baked and controlled by the state, as we’ve seen over the past half year. AI is pretty much everywhere baked by state actors

[amarcheschi]

I think the comment above you is saying that it is called dumping when done by state but not when done by vcs

[ToucanLoucan]

It will never stop being funny to me that China does the exact same shit American corps have been doing since the 70's but because it's scary China it's suddenly a problem.

American startups flood markets with below-cost loss-leader products explicitly to kill competition and create network effects, and then jack the prices just as high, if not higher, for the service in question after the fact, oftentimes while making it so those providing the service earn even less money than they did before. Commentators: "Free market great"

China does the exact same thing: "Communists wanna kill the West"

[jvanderbot]

If you believe in some kind of competition-free objective set of market morals, then yes, this is a strange contradiction.

If you believe that humans are locked in a productive struggle against each other at the organizational level, and that the knife-edge balance is a feature, not a bug, then it's not so weird to think about.

It is simultaneously true that it is in my best interest for prices to sink (as a consumer), for US companies to succeed (as a US citizen), and for my company to win over competitors regardless of whether those competitors are from US, EU, China, or Antarctica.

[ToucanLoucan]

Oh I don't think it's either of those things, I think it's good old fashioned Racism/Xenophobia. We did the same shit to Japan and Korea when they were coming up out of their respective post-war periods, and we still do, to a degree. With China's ruling party also being "communist" (in massive, massive air-quotes) it also lets political actors dust off the McCarthyism to boot.

This is, to be clear, not meant as a ringing endorsement of China, China's policies, or to absolve China of it's wrongdoings, of which there are MANY. It's just to say that it's remarkable to watch the pearl clutching of the privateer capitalist class as state-sponsored capitalism levels their own game up against them and starts taking them to the cleaners instead.

A real Godzilla "let them fight" situation as far as I'm concerned.

[jvanderbot]

So, there's no functional competition or great power struggle or corporate race here? Just racism against chinese people for being chinese? That is your claim specifically?

[ToucanLoucan]

Oh there most certainly is a power struggle/corporate race, for sure. AND I don't think it's pure economics at all, when so much of the rhetoric around that struggle is framed so often with this "America has to defend itself," "China will kill us," "shoot all the communists," ooh-rah United States chest-pounding, etc., it's simply impossible to have that discussion be anything close to good-faith.

If you want my honest take, I think we're well into the beginnings of the downfall of America as the center of world economics, largely and wildly by it's own unnecessary actions, and soon, she will have to learn to be "just another country" as opposed to the central unified "norm" that pervades the world markets, and I'm not sure the U.S. is prepared for that. And I bring that up because I don't think American firms have ever had to contend with other nations being on a footing to, if push comes to shove, tell them to fuck off.

[Paradigma11]

China lost tons of goodwill through its https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_warrior_diplomacy

[drstewart]

It will never stop being funny to me that China does the exact same shit American corps have been doing since the 70's but because it's glorious China it's suddenly not a problem.

I thought it was evil late-stage capitalism? Suddenly it's a friendly panda bear that just wants to spread love and technology?