8 ms·

I am still trying to figure out the business model of open weights. Like... it's wonderful that there are open LLMs, super happy about it, good for everyone, bu

I am still trying to figure out the business model of open weights. Like... it's wonderful that there are open LLMs, super happy about it, good for everyone, but why are there these? What is the advantage to their companies to release them?

noosphr 6mo ago
The majority are released by socialists, and by socialist I mean the People's Republic of China. Which everyone seems to forget is a socialist country working towards world communism. They are a prestige propaganda tool on par with the space race. On top of that they insert a subtle pro-socialist bias in everything they touch. Ask deepseek about the US economic system for a blatant example. Now think what something as innocent seeming as the qwen retrieval models are doing in the background of every request.
- Melatonic 6mo ago
  Is China even really communist? If anything they seem to be fairly on the Capitalist side but just a bit opposite on the spectrum of the US. And much more authoritarian
  - nemomarx 6mo ago
    The usual thing to say is state capitalist but honestly they do keep a market around too. A little hybrid of everything, I guess? Just with the state ready to jump in and intervene if anything happens they don't like.
    - dwd 6mo ago
      Can we just call it what it is? Fascism (in the Mussolini model) in everything but name. - Hyper-Nationalism & Rejuvenation - State-Controlled Capitalism (Corporatism) - Authoritarian & Cult of Personality - Militarism & Irredentism And they have technology to maintain control rather than needing the Black-shirts. There are differences obviously to fit Chinese culture, but there are many parallels.
  - wyre 6mo ago
    From what I understand their one hundred year plan is right on schedule.
  - thrawa8387336 6mo ago
    Just nationalist with focus on community?
- mikestorrent 6mo ago
  You're talking to a Canadian, and I'm not scared of the "red menace". You should be more scared - those guys can build bullet trains while you Yanks are finding it hard to even keep the old ones you have running. The solution here isn't going to be some kind of ideological force that protects people from different ideas, and that's an unAmerican way to fix things anyway. Embrace other ideas; central planning doesn't have to be evil, you just have to find a way to stop putting evil people in charge.
  - noosphr 6mo ago
    >you just have to find a way to stop putting evil people in charge. Of course, why did no one think of that?
  - bloppe 6mo ago
    Xi is an obviously more capable and effective leader than Trump, but the US actually does have ways to boot people out of office when they do a bad job, and clear methods to choose successors, and China has neither. That matters more than who happens to be in charge right now.
  - sho_hn 6mo ago
    > those guys can build bullet trains while you Yanks are finding it hard to even keep the old ones you have running This is an argument in the lane of "at least he built the Autobahn". Speaking as a German.
    - nelox 6mo ago
      He was a foreigner too ;)
  - brightball 6mo ago
    The US can’t build bullet trains because property rights and local regulations make it prohibitively expensive. Not due to capability.
    - vrganj 6mo ago
- bloppe 6mo ago
  > Which everyone seems to forget is a socialist country working towards world communism. It's easy to forget because they actually built an incredibly vibrant capitalist economy.
  - noosphr 6mo ago
    They build an incredibly vibrant _market_ economy with no property rights and very little due process. Imagine if Musk was disappeared during the Biden presidency into a diversity camp and came out looking like Dr. Frank-N-Furter and instituted mandatory LGBT struggle sessions at twitter. This is what they did to Jack Ma: https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2021/06/24/what-really-happened-to-jack-ma/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2021/06/24/what-r...
    - vrganj 6mo ago
      You sure have a way of making the Chinese system sound even more appealing.
      - Sabinus 6mo ago
        It's all fun and games when the oppression is against your enemies. The problem is, if the system is set up like that eventually it'll be your turn.
        vrganj 6mo ago
        It is my turn right now. The working class is being oppressed as we speak. That's why the system needs to be dismantled so we can strike back.
    - javascriptfan69 6mo ago
      do you ever get tired of making up scenarios to be scared about lgbt people?
      - noosphr 6mo ago
pzo 6mo ago
IMHO this is only temporary, china buying themselves some time and want to make sure none of US models get entrenched in their position in the next few years (also putting pressure on US AI companies bleeding them) The same way like Windows got entrenched everywhere even though linux desktop is pretty good even for non-tech savvy people and free.
- Chaosvex 6mo ago
  [dead]
  - nullsanity 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - usef- 6mo ago
    A stock Fedora install has more UI consistency and cleanliness than Windows these days. Non-technical people are easier to please in this regard than moderate-technical people: a good browser and safe, gui "app store" are enough.
  - snypher 6mo ago
    My grandma just clicks on the red fox and does whatever online. A lot of people don't use any software outside of the browser, so it's pretty good-enough I guess.
    - kridsdale1 6mo ago
      The business case for ChromeOS (Linux)
  - blakewatson 6mo ago
    Seems like people don't like this comment, but I chuckled. Nice one.
    - Chaosvex 6mo ago
      I was completely (well, mostly) serious, too. I think technical people tend to downplay friction because it doesn't really register to them, or they have too much faith in the average person's computer skills. The average non-technical person is going to be stumped by the first "lock file found, cannot upgrade" error.
bloppe 6mo ago
It's analogous to open-source software, which never had an obvious economic incentive either, although training an LLM necessary costs money whereas developing an OSS project might only cost time, which people are probably more likely to give up.
- mikestorrent 6mo ago
  Yeah, but open-source software could have been me in the garage banging away on some program I submit to Debian or whatever... it didn't require millions of dollars to train, a lot of it was just side hobbies for a long time. Corporations sponsor it and contribute work because they need it to do more than what it does for free, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
davidguetta 6mo ago
People use their model otherwise they would not.
iterateoften 6mo ago
Cultural influence is another benefit. China is securing its sphere of influence as well as keeping us ai in check.
renjimen 6mo ago
Downward pressure on proprietary model pricing until a lab can catch up. Also good for hiring talent (who love OSS).
stephc_int13 6mo ago
Big AI labs are losing money. Open Models is making the pricing equation a lot trickier for them.
margorczynski 6mo ago
There are some short term ones but I doubt this will continue, especially for the more powerful models.
dyauspitr 6mo ago
Right now it’s so the Chinese can undermine the frontier models in the US. In areas they’re doing well like video generation (ie seedance) they won’t open source anything.
FuckButtons 6mo ago
I mean, this is straight out of chinas playbook, it should not be surprising that China is making an inferior derivative product at an artificially lower price point: state subsidies to massively drive up internal scale and supply chains leading to artificially lower priced goods which then suffocate the competition has lead to *gestures vaguely at everything* being made in china.
rglullis 6mo ago
They are making the hardware and commoditizing the complement.
subhobroto 6mo ago
> What is the advantage to their companies to release them? It's a distribution strategy. It costs something to serve the models - let's say $5/1M tokens. If Qwen required $5 from anyone who was curious so you could even begin to test it out, a lot of people just wouldn't. Now Qwen could offer a "free" tier, but it's infinitely cheaper to provide the weights and let people run it themselves including opening up the ability for anyone else on the planet to test it against other (open weight) models. The costs to build the open weight models are sunk, but the costs to serve them, get them tested are not. It's also precisely why the .NET SDK is free or the ESP32 SDK is free - they sell more Microsoft or ESP32 products.
kobieps 6mo ago
Balaji's "AI OVERPRODUCTION" post is the most compelling thesis that I've come across
bkjlblh 6mo ago
https://try.works/why-chinese-ai-labs-went-open-and-will-remain-open https://try.works/why-chinese-ai-labs-went-open-and-will-rem...

noosphr 6mo ago

The majority are released by socialists, and by socialist I mean the People's Republic of China. Which everyone seems to forget is a socialist country working towards world communism. They are a prestige propaganda tool on par with the space race. On top of that they insert a subtle pro-socialist bias in everything they touch. Ask deepseek about the US economic system for a blatant example. Now think what something as innocent seeming as the qwen retrieval models are doing in the background of every request.

Melatonic 6mo ago
Is China even really communist? If anything they seem to be fairly on the Capitalist side but just a bit opposite on the spectrum of the US. And much more authoritarian
- nemomarx 6mo ago
  The usual thing to say is state capitalist but honestly they do keep a market around too. A little hybrid of everything, I guess? Just with the state ready to jump in and intervene if anything happens they don't like.
  - dwd 6mo ago
    Can we just call it what it is? Fascism (in the Mussolini model) in everything but name. - Hyper-Nationalism & Rejuvenation - State-Controlled Capitalism (Corporatism) - Authoritarian & Cult of Personality - Militarism & Irredentism And they have technology to maintain control rather than needing the Black-shirts. There are differences obviously to fit Chinese culture, but there are many parallels.
- wyre 6mo ago
  From what I understand their one hundred year plan is right on schedule.
- thrawa8387336 6mo ago
  Just nationalist with focus on community?
mikestorrent 6mo ago
You're talking to a Canadian, and I'm not scared of the "red menace". You should be more scared - those guys can build bullet trains while you Yanks are finding it hard to even keep the old ones you have running. The solution here isn't going to be some kind of ideological force that protects people from different ideas, and that's an unAmerican way to fix things anyway. Embrace other ideas; central planning doesn't have to be evil, you just have to find a way to stop putting evil people in charge.
- noosphr 6mo ago
  >you just have to find a way to stop putting evil people in charge. Of course, why did no one think of that?
- bloppe 6mo ago
  Xi is an obviously more capable and effective leader than Trump, but the US actually does have ways to boot people out of office when they do a bad job, and clear methods to choose successors, and China has neither. That matters more than who happens to be in charge right now.
- sho_hn 6mo ago
  > those guys can build bullet trains while you Yanks are finding it hard to even keep the old ones you have running This is an argument in the lane of "at least he built the Autobahn". Speaking as a German.
  - nelox 6mo ago
    He was a foreigner too ;)
- brightball 6mo ago
  The US can’t build bullet trains because property rights and local regulations make it prohibitively expensive. Not due to capability.
  - vrganj 6mo ago
bloppe 6mo ago
> Which everyone seems to forget is a socialist country working towards world communism. It's easy to forget because they actually built an incredibly vibrant capitalist economy.
- noosphr 6mo ago
  They build an incredibly vibrant _market_ economy with no property rights and very little due process. Imagine if Musk was disappeared during the Biden presidency into a diversity camp and came out looking like Dr. Frank-N-Furter and instituted mandatory LGBT struggle sessions at twitter. This is what they did to Jack Ma: https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2021/06/24/what-really-happened-to-jack-ma/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2021/06/24/what-r...
  - vrganj 6mo ago
    You sure have a way of making the Chinese system sound even more appealing.
    - Sabinus 6mo ago
      It's all fun and games when the oppression is against your enemies. The problem is, if the system is set up like that eventually it'll be your turn.
      - vrganj 6mo ago
        It is my turn right now. The working class is being oppressed as we speak. That's why the system needs to be dismantled so we can strike back.
  - javascriptfan69 6mo ago
    do you ever get tired of making up scenarios to be scared about lgbt people?
    - noosphr 6mo ago

pzo 6mo ago

IMHO this is only temporary, china buying themselves some time and want to make sure none of US models get entrenched in their position in the next few years (also putting pressure on US AI companies bleeding them) The same way like Windows got entrenched everywhere even though linux desktop is pretty good even for non-tech savvy people and free.

Chaosvex 6mo ago
[dead]
- nullsanity 6mo ago
  [dead]
- usef- 6mo ago
  A stock Fedora install has more UI consistency and cleanliness than Windows these days. Non-technical people are easier to please in this regard than moderate-technical people: a good browser and safe, gui "app store" are enough.
- snypher 6mo ago
  My grandma just clicks on the red fox and does whatever online. A lot of people don't use any software outside of the browser, so it's pretty good-enough I guess.
  - kridsdale1 6mo ago
    The business case for ChromeOS (Linux)
- blakewatson 6mo ago
  Seems like people don't like this comment, but I chuckled. Nice one.
  - Chaosvex 6mo ago
    I was completely (well, mostly) serious, too. I think technical people tend to downplay friction because it doesn't really register to them, or they have too much faith in the average person's computer skills. The average non-technical person is going to be stumped by the first "lock file found, cannot upgrade" error.

bloppe 6mo ago

It's analogous to open-source software, which never had an obvious economic incentive either, although training an LLM necessary costs money whereas developing an OSS project might only cost time, which people are probably more likely to give up.

mikestorrent 6mo ago
Yeah, but open-source software could have been me in the garage banging away on some program I submit to Debian or whatever... it didn't require millions of dollars to train, a lot of it was just side hobbies for a long time. Corporations sponsor it and contribute work because they need it to do more than what it does for free, not out of the goodness of their hearts.

davidguetta 6mo ago

People use their model otherwise they would not.

iterateoften 6mo ago

Cultural influence is another benefit. China is securing its sphere of influence as well as keeping us ai in check.

renjimen 6mo ago

Downward pressure on proprietary model pricing until a lab can catch up. Also good for hiring talent (who love OSS).

stephc_int13 6mo ago

Big AI labs are losing money. Open Models is making the pricing equation a lot trickier for them.

margorczynski 6mo ago

There are some short term ones but I doubt this will continue, especially for the more powerful models.

dyauspitr 6mo ago

Right now it’s so the Chinese can undermine the frontier models in the US. In areas they’re doing well like video generation (ie seedance) they won’t open source anything.

FuckButtons 6mo ago

I mean, this is straight out of chinas playbook, it should not be surprising that China is making an inferior derivative product at an artificially lower price point: state subsidies to massively drive up internal scale and supply chains leading to artificially lower priced goods which then suffocate the competition has lead to *gestures vaguely at everything* being made in china.

rglullis 6mo ago

They are making the hardware and commoditizing the complement.

subhobroto 6mo ago

> What is the advantage to their companies to release them? It's a distribution strategy. It costs something to serve the models - let's say $5/1M tokens. If Qwen required $5 from anyone who was curious so you could even begin to test it out, a lot of people just wouldn't. Now Qwen could offer a "free" tier, but it's infinitely cheaper to provide the weights and let people run it themselves including opening up the ability for anyone else on the planet to test it against other (open weight) models. The costs to build the open weight models are sunk, but the costs to serve them, get them tested are not. It's also precisely why the .NET SDK is free or the ESP32 SDK is free - they sell more Microsoft or ESP32 products.

kobieps 6mo ago

Balaji's "AI OVERPRODUCTION" post is the most compelling thesis that I've come across

bkjlblh 6mo ago

https://try.works/why-chinese-ai-labs-went-open-and-will-remain-open https://try.works/why-chinese-ai-labs-went-open-and-will-rem...