4 ms·

On the flagships, maybe. But on open models (and especially the small ones), China is kicking ass.

by nunodonato 9mo ago

koakuma-chan 9mo ago
Aren't they just distills.
- mapontosevenths 9mo ago
  Does it matter what they are if they outperform?
  - koakuma-chan 9mo ago
    Do they outperform? In any case, they wouldn't exist if not for superior models they were distilled from.
    - venndeezl 9mo ago
      First does not always equal superior. We "distilled" modern cars from Model-T. You still driving the car that was "first" off an assembly line? This is normal improvement to manufacture of stuff. Your handwavy "it was first so its winner-winner chicken dinner!" is little more than your personal form of expression. Since LLMs are a distill of web content, by your poorly defined metric, you must not value LLMs and AI companies? The content already existed! They're just a new indexing tool.
      - 6510 9mo ago
        Must be strange to work hard in a competitive environment and have all customers pretend your product is always exactly the same. Each wizard school also seems to take a different approach and have different goals. Soon people will benchmark lawyers with Lego.
        venndeezl 9mo ago
        Rhetorical goals about intention do not remake physics which comes with well understood constraints. Doctors intended to use bloodletting to cure illness and killed people instead. Words are not magical spells. The machines these models run on are well known. They’re not black boxes. The results will be same-y despite the timeline, process, companies took to get there being different. UPS trucks may carry different sizes and shapes of packages day to day but their upper bounds on total weight and geometry exist too. A Honda and Ford can look different, but physical reality, whether the measure is user feedback (human biology exists is physical) or physics itself, still results in very same-y 4 wheels, etc etc. What's strange to me is all the software engineers who ignore physics. All of our applied knowledge that gives rise to software engineering also constrains the outcomes. Our ability to sit down every day and arbitrarily slice up data in various ways is very much constrained by physics like everything else. The easy money/endless hype era of ZIRP where SWEs failed up thanks to endless employment opportunities has resulted in way too many SWEs believing their efforts on some trivial shit like a JS framework, or some CSS designs is propelling humans into the future. Nah, it's just physics as usual. You alls sensory memory is just parroting the crap it memorized.
    - palmotea 9mo ago
      > In any case, they wouldn't exist if not for superior models they were distilled from. Doesn't matter: if they're good enough and cheaper, they'll sink the US model-makers eventually. The free market demands it. The US invented solar panels, and led in solar panel tech for a long time. Who leads in solar panel tech now? China has a playbook for de-industrializing its capitalist rivals. If we leave MBAs and free-marketers in power, China will "come to dominate all technologies, including A.I., and ... America [will] export little more than soybeans and corn" (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/opinion/trump-ai-chips-nvidia-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/opinion/trump-ai-chips-nv...).
      - jacquesm 9mo ago
        The rate at which the deconstruction of the United States is progressing is very scary. It seems as if they want to make the former USSR look great, and every individual and institution that could do something about it is standing by with their hands in the air saying 'it wasn't me'. Tech dominance will be the least of the problem, that assumes a large variety of good outcomes where bad outcomes are now a real possibility.
        palmotea 9mo ago
        > The rate at which the deconstruction of the United States is progressing is very scary. It seems as if they want to make the former USSR look great, and every individual and institution that could do something about it is standing by with their hands in the air saying 'it wasn't me'. This kinda sounds like you're talking about Trump, but I think the problem predates him and is far deeper. If anything, Trump is a spastic reaction to the deeper problem. He won because his rhetoric gestured in the direction of fixing the problem, but he's too incompetent to pull it off (and the bulk of the competent people don't want to fix the problem for ideological reasons).
        jacquesm 9mo ago
        Definitely not just talking about Trump. The failure is institutional, the whole thing is just incredible watching from the outside in, you've never had a more 'clear and present danger' to the USA and to the world order and all of the institutions that are supposed to protect against that are failing one after the other. This is how you go from stability to world wars. A couple of rich guys got together and decided they were going to redraw all of the maps and toss the rulebook overboard, and it is for the most part going their way. People are being executed and the useful idiots are falling over each other to defend it. If you had told me in 1999 that this would happen by 2026 I would have happily declared you mad, but here we are.
    - mapontosevenths 9mo ago
      > Do they outperform? For the size/performance yes. > In any case, they wouldn't exist if not for superior models they were distilled from. So? Those models wouldn't exist without the sum total of human knowledge. As long as a work is transformative why does it matter?
- Alifatisk 9mo ago
  Deepseek, Qwen and Moonshot have contributed with lots cool and interesting papers.
  - FergusArgyll 9mo ago
    I wish this was emphasized more. I'm American & rooting for America etc etc. but it's so fun to read high quality papers about more or less state of the art techniques and research. I get why the American labs don't publish but I really enjoy reading the Chinese papers.
- llmslave 9mo ago
  yes and its weird for people to claim otherwise

On the flagships, maybe. But on open models (and especially the small ones), China is kicking ass.

koakuma-chan 9mo ago

Aren't they just distills.

mapontosevenths 9mo ago
Does it matter what they are if they outperform?
- koakuma-chan 9mo ago
  Do they outperform? In any case, they wouldn't exist if not for superior models they were distilled from.
  - venndeezl 9mo ago
    First does not always equal superior. We "distilled" modern cars from Model-T. You still driving the car that was "first" off an assembly line? This is normal improvement to manufacture of stuff. Your handwavy "it was first so its winner-winner chicken dinner!" is little more than your personal form of expression. Since LLMs are a distill of web content, by your poorly defined metric, you must not value LLMs and AI companies? The content already existed! They're just a new indexing tool.
    - 6510 9mo ago
      Must be strange to work hard in a competitive environment and have all customers pretend your product is always exactly the same. Each wizard school also seems to take a different approach and have different goals. Soon people will benchmark lawyers with Lego.
      - venndeezl 9mo ago
        Rhetorical goals about intention do not remake physics which comes with well understood constraints. Doctors intended to use bloodletting to cure illness and killed people instead. Words are not magical spells. The machines these models run on are well known. They’re not black boxes. The results will be same-y despite the timeline, process, companies took to get there being different. UPS trucks may carry different sizes and shapes of packages day to day but their upper bounds on total weight and geometry exist too. A Honda and Ford can look different, but physical reality, whether the measure is user feedback (human biology exists is physical) or physics itself, still results in very same-y 4 wheels, etc etc. What's strange to me is all the software engineers who ignore physics. All of our applied knowledge that gives rise to software engineering also constrains the outcomes. Our ability to sit down every day and arbitrarily slice up data in various ways is very much constrained by physics like everything else. The easy money/endless hype era of ZIRP where SWEs failed up thanks to endless employment opportunities has resulted in way too many SWEs believing their efforts on some trivial shit like a JS framework, or some CSS designs is propelling humans into the future. Nah, it's just physics as usual. You alls sensory memory is just parroting the crap it memorized.
  - palmotea 9mo ago
    > In any case, they wouldn't exist if not for superior models they were distilled from. Doesn't matter: if they're good enough and cheaper, they'll sink the US model-makers eventually. The free market demands it. The US invented solar panels, and led in solar panel tech for a long time. Who leads in solar panel tech now? China has a playbook for de-industrializing its capitalist rivals. If we leave MBAs and free-marketers in power, China will "come to dominate all technologies, including A.I., and ... America [will] export little more than soybeans and corn" (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/opinion/trump-ai-chips-nvidia-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/opinion/trump-ai-chips-nv...).
    - jacquesm 9mo ago
      The rate at which the deconstruction of the United States is progressing is very scary. It seems as if they want to make the former USSR look great, and every individual and institution that could do something about it is standing by with their hands in the air saying 'it wasn't me'. Tech dominance will be the least of the problem, that assumes a large variety of good outcomes where bad outcomes are now a real possibility.
      - palmotea 9mo ago
        > The rate at which the deconstruction of the United States is progressing is very scary. It seems as if they want to make the former USSR look great, and every individual and institution that could do something about it is standing by with their hands in the air saying 'it wasn't me'. This kinda sounds like you're talking about Trump, but I think the problem predates him and is far deeper. If anything, Trump is a spastic reaction to the deeper problem. He won because his rhetoric gestured in the direction of fixing the problem, but he's too incompetent to pull it off (and the bulk of the competent people don't want to fix the problem for ideological reasons).
        jacquesm 9mo ago
        Definitely not just talking about Trump. The failure is institutional, the whole thing is just incredible watching from the outside in, you've never had a more 'clear and present danger' to the USA and to the world order and all of the institutions that are supposed to protect against that are failing one after the other. This is how you go from stability to world wars. A couple of rich guys got together and decided they were going to redraw all of the maps and toss the rulebook overboard, and it is for the most part going their way. People are being executed and the useful idiots are falling over each other to defend it. If you had told me in 1999 that this would happen by 2026 I would have happily declared you mad, but here we are.
  - mapontosevenths 9mo ago
    > Do they outperform? For the size/performance yes. > In any case, they wouldn't exist if not for superior models they were distilled from. So? Those models wouldn't exist without the sum total of human knowledge. As long as a work is transformative why does it matter?
Alifatisk 9mo ago
Deepseek, Qwen and Moonshot have contributed with lots cool and interesting papers.
- FergusArgyll 9mo ago
  I wish this was emphasized more. I'm American & rooting for America etc etc. but it's so fun to read high quality papers about more or less state of the art techniques and research. I get why the American labs don't publish but I really enjoy reading the Chinese papers.
llmslave 9mo ago
yes and its weird for people to claim otherwise