10 ms·

Impressive, honestly. They're trying to become a mecca for innovation and research, trying to lead rather than follow, build a culture where innovation can spar

Impressive, honestly. They're trying to become a mecca for innovation and research, trying to lead rather than follow, build a culture where innovation can spark future economic advantages, whereas OpenAI seem to more about monetisation currently, many of their researchers and scientists now departed. Under the aegis of a dictatorship they may be, but this encourages me more than anything OpenAI have said in a while.

dralley 2y ago
Well, it's certainly a strategic victory play. I'm not sure how much I buy the charitable aspects of this though.
- layer8 2y ago
  I don’t get the impression that it’s intended as a charity. Also from the interview: “Our principle is that we don’t subsidize nor make exorbitant profits. This price point gives us just a small profit margin above costs.”
- MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
  Everything done in China, furthering any intellectual goal, is automatically going to be seen by most of us as a turn played in the game to become the world's #1 superpower. It's not unnatural for them to do this; I assume any nation would push for it if given the chance. The reason this causes so much suspicion is because we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world. So, sadly, even something that seems noble and refreshing like open-sourcing their AI advancements will be treated with suspicion.
  - dluan 2y ago
    Not suspicion, just propaganda and veiled racism.
    - tatrajim 2y ago
      Is it "veiled racism" to point out how China continues to wield the great firewall that effectively blocks most internet users from outside news and entertainment while Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan et al. do not? The basic world view in China of 天下 -- the universal dominion of China. Hence the general unpopularity of China in Vietnam, South Korea, and japan.
      - Vegenoid 2y ago
        I don't think it's veiled at all, to bring up these things every time there is a success in China. I agree that the CCP's view of the world and population control is negative. But don't let that poison your opinion of all Chinese people. We're all people on Earth, and we need to be forging bonds with our intelligent and good-hearted international kin that break down the walls that those in power create to keep themselves there.
        tatrajim 2y ago
        I've lived and roamed across much of China, studied in Taiwan and South Korea, and know Japan and Hong Kong well. Many Chinese are indeed great, but in the end the Chinese tendency to game every possible system, make clever use of naive 老外 to advance themselves, and just shamelessly appropriate IP ("hey, they did it too in the 18th century, and remember the Opium War!") has massively turned me off China generally. Not to mention the 50,000 RMB bounty now offered in China for reporting a "foreign spy". The recent TV drama 赤热 (English title: Silicon Wave, available with subtitles on youtube) shows the whole China nationalist tech narrative in vivid relief, including "veiled racism" against Americans, e.g. the depiction of the Chinese protagonist's American mentor at UC Berkeley. And just look at the history and career of Li Kaifu and the cavalier way he has treated all the benefits he received in the US turned into promoting the glorious 祖国. Foolish 老外 indeed.
        momo_hn2025 2y ago
        [flagged]
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >is automatically going to be seen by most of us as a turn played in the game to become the world's #1 superpower. What gets me is when people present it like it's bad to play that game. Like "it's ok when we do it".
    - FpUser 2y ago
      And the minute you mention it, it is "whataboutism". And it is of course very very bad and is the opposite of their noble hypocrisy.
    - MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
      > What gets me is when people present it like it's bad to play that game. It's not bad. But the western superpowers, however flawed, are at least familiar. For the past 75 years we've avoided world war under this power balance. A new power balance could turn out better in that regard, but that doesn't mean it won't be scary, especially for those who value individual liberty.
      - alexashka 2y ago
        Your strongest argument is 'change is scary'?
  - Mayzie 2y ago
    > The reason this causes so much suspicion is because we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world. It would mean having to eschew the neoliberal ideals that impede research and development in favour of the old that made America and to some extent the rest of the West the dominant superpower in R&D for many decades. We should be familiar with it, even if we have lived all or most of ours lives in the former. Or it would be hard to convert back and we'd have a war first.
  - FpUser 2y ago
    >"we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world." I suspect "we westerners" think of "we westerners" and do not give a flying fuck about "the rest of the world". Well, as long as they keep trading exclusively in our currency etc. etc.
madeofpalk 2y ago
Isn't it easy to read this very cynically, as an offensive move intended to devalue and hurt US AI companies?
- piva00 2y ago
  What exactly is the problem of showing that other AI companies are trying to create advantages where they don't exist? That they can do it and not price gouge nor try to create moats, and instead push forward the innovation without becoming a greedy fuck like Sam Altman? I actually praise that offensive move, if AI companies can lost so much value from DeepSeek's open research then it's well deserved, they shouldn't be valued as much.
  - hahamaster 2y ago
    It's a problem because it's done by a Chinese company and not an American company.
- watwut 2y ago
  Well, that is how US tech companies themselves regularly operate, so it should be withing the game? Selling at loss or giving out for free, until you kill the companies that are actually operating a business is something US tech is normally proud about doing.
  - piva00 2y ago
    I always called it VC-backed price dumping, many American tech companies got successful by taking enormous amounts of VC capital to simply price dump competition. I get side eyes from Americans when I bring this up as a key factor when they try to shit on Europe for "lack of innovation", it's more a lack of bottomless stacks of cash enabling undercutting competition on price until they fold, then jacking up prices for VC ROI.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    But this time the technology is open sourced, it's not like Uber operating at a loss to make other startup fail. It might however become like that when there is no more competition. However, at least for now it's not like that
dyauspitr 2y ago
It’s just a power play while giving themselves backhanded compliments.
raxxor 2y ago
Or any leading CEO in recent times. Could of course be the usual deceit, but at least in this case he already delivered. All I heard from OpenAI was that we need regulation which maybe happen to fit their business interest.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
They're in a perfect position for this, too, and has been noted many times over the past 10+ years, they've already started doing it wrt. electronics manufacturing in general. The West spent the last 50+ years outsourcing its technological expertise to factories in China; as a result, they now have the factories, and two generations of people who know how to work in them, how to turn designs into working products - which necessitates some understanding of the designs themselves - and how to tinker with hardware in general. Now, innovation involves experimentation, so if you're an innovator, it's kind of helpful to have the actual means of production at hand, so you can experiment directly, for cheap, with rapid turnaround. If that's a problem for the West now, it's a problem of our own creation.
agumonkey 2y ago
I've read a few times that sharing knowledge is also deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. Which led to the copycat nature of their past (~violating western practices in the process) according to some.

dralley 2y ago

Well, it's certainly a strategic victory play. I'm not sure how much I buy the charitable aspects of this though.

layer8 2y ago
I don’t get the impression that it’s intended as a charity. Also from the interview: “Our principle is that we don’t subsidize nor make exorbitant profits. This price point gives us just a small profit margin above costs.”
MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
Everything done in China, furthering any intellectual goal, is automatically going to be seen by most of us as a turn played in the game to become the world's #1 superpower. It's not unnatural for them to do this; I assume any nation would push for it if given the chance. The reason this causes so much suspicion is because we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world. So, sadly, even something that seems noble and refreshing like open-sourcing their AI advancements will be treated with suspicion.
- dluan 2y ago
  Not suspicion, just propaganda and veiled racism.
  - tatrajim 2y ago
    Is it "veiled racism" to point out how China continues to wield the great firewall that effectively blocks most internet users from outside news and entertainment while Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan et al. do not? The basic world view in China of 天下 -- the universal dominion of China. Hence the general unpopularity of China in Vietnam, South Korea, and japan.
    - Vegenoid 2y ago
      I don't think it's veiled at all, to bring up these things every time there is a success in China. I agree that the CCP's view of the world and population control is negative. But don't let that poison your opinion of all Chinese people. We're all people on Earth, and we need to be forging bonds with our intelligent and good-hearted international kin that break down the walls that those in power create to keep themselves there.
      - tatrajim 2y ago
        I've lived and roamed across much of China, studied in Taiwan and South Korea, and know Japan and Hong Kong well. Many Chinese are indeed great, but in the end the Chinese tendency to game every possible system, make clever use of naive 老外 to advance themselves, and just shamelessly appropriate IP ("hey, they did it too in the 18th century, and remember the Opium War!") has massively turned me off China generally. Not to mention the 50,000 RMB bounty now offered in China for reporting a "foreign spy". The recent TV drama 赤热 (English title: Silicon Wave, available with subtitles on youtube) shows the whole China nationalist tech narrative in vivid relief, including "veiled racism" against Americans, e.g. the depiction of the Chinese protagonist's American mentor at UC Berkeley. And just look at the history and career of Li Kaifu and the cavalier way he has treated all the benefits he received in the US turned into promoting the glorious 祖国. Foolish 老外 indeed.
        momo_hn2025 2y ago
        [flagged]
- coldtea 2y ago
  >is automatically going to be seen by most of us as a turn played in the game to become the world's #1 superpower. What gets me is when people present it like it's bad to play that game. Like "it's ok when we do it".
  - FpUser 2y ago
    And the minute you mention it, it is "whataboutism". And it is of course very very bad and is the opposite of their noble hypocrisy.
  - MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
    > What gets me is when people present it like it's bad to play that game. It's not bad. But the western superpowers, however flawed, are at least familiar. For the past 75 years we've avoided world war under this power balance. A new power balance could turn out better in that regard, but that doesn't mean it won't be scary, especially for those who value individual liberty.
    - alexashka 2y ago
      Your strongest argument is 'change is scary'?
- Mayzie 2y ago
  > The reason this causes so much suspicion is because we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world. It would mean having to eschew the neoliberal ideals that impede research and development in favour of the old that made America and to some extent the rest of the West the dominant superpower in R&D for many decades. We should be familiar with it, even if we have lived all or most of ours lives in the former. Or it would be hard to convert back and we'd have a war first.
- FpUser 2y ago
  >"we westerners are terrified of what that would mean for the rest of the world." I suspect "we westerners" think of "we westerners" and do not give a flying fuck about "the rest of the world". Well, as long as they keep trading exclusively in our currency etc. etc.

madeofpalk 2y ago

Isn't it easy to read this very cynically, as an offensive move intended to devalue and hurt US AI companies?

piva00 2y ago
What exactly is the problem of showing that other AI companies are trying to create advantages where they don't exist? That they can do it and not price gouge nor try to create moats, and instead push forward the innovation without becoming a greedy fuck like Sam Altman? I actually praise that offensive move, if AI companies can lost so much value from DeepSeek's open research then it's well deserved, they shouldn't be valued as much.
- hahamaster 2y ago
  It's a problem because it's done by a Chinese company and not an American company.
watwut 2y ago
Well, that is how US tech companies themselves regularly operate, so it should be withing the game? Selling at loss or giving out for free, until you kill the companies that are actually operating a business is something US tech is normally proud about doing.
- piva00 2y ago
  I always called it VC-backed price dumping, many American tech companies got successful by taking enormous amounts of VC capital to simply price dump competition. I get side eyes from Americans when I bring this up as a key factor when they try to shit on Europe for "lack of innovation", it's more a lack of bottomless stacks of cash enabling undercutting competition on price until they fold, then jacking up prices for VC ROI.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  But this time the technology is open sourced, it's not like Uber operating at a loss to make other startup fail. It might however become like that when there is no more competition. However, at least for now it's not like that

dyauspitr 2y ago

It’s just a power play while giving themselves backhanded compliments.

raxxor 2y ago

Or any leading CEO in recent times. Could of course be the usual deceit, but at least in this case he already delivered. All I heard from OpenAI was that we need regulation which maybe happen to fit their business interest.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

They're in a perfect position for this, too, and has been noted many times over the past 10+ years, they've already started doing it wrt. electronics manufacturing in general. The West spent the last 50+ years outsourcing its technological expertise to factories in China; as a result, they now have the factories, and two generations of people who know how to work in them, how to turn designs into working products - which necessitates some understanding of the designs themselves - and how to tinker with hardware in general. Now, innovation involves experimentation, so if you're an innovator, it's kind of helpful to have the actual means of production at hand, so you can experiment directly, for cheap, with rapid turnaround. If that's a problem for the West now, it's a problem of our own creation.

agumonkey 2y ago

I've read a few times that sharing knowledge is also deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. Which led to the copycat nature of their past (~violating western practices in the process) according to some.