7 ms·

Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa.

by kiba 6mo ago

Lapel2742 6mo ago
> Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa. Of course not. When it comes to SOTA LLMs you have the choice between two bad options. For many, choosing the Chinese option is just choosing the lesser of two evils (and it's much cheaper).
- eloisant 6mo ago
  Why people always dismiss the European option? Mistral is right here, their models are in-between the cheap to run Chinese models and top of the line performances of US frontier models.
  - 3s 6mo ago
    It’s not top of the line and mostly not open source
  - john_minsk 6mo ago
    For a lot of people in the world Europe = USA
    - benterix 6mo ago
      But this makes zero sense. Two different continents, values systems, law systems. Not to mention the current USA administration is openly hostile to Europe. So why would anyone confuse the two.
      - quantum_state 6mo ago
        Europe will not be independent as long as there are US military bases there. Saying otherwise would be kidding oneself.
        benterix 6mo ago
        You are aware that the number of American soldiers in these bases is symbolic and their presence is meant to be a deterrent for Russia?
      - coliveira 6mo ago
        Europe is at the mercy of the USA. Any difference in posture is due to local politics which can swing local elections, but European leaders are willing and eager to do what the US wants.
        benterix 6mo ago
        Sure, I'd agree with that a few years ago. Nowadays when the USA asks for something like just using their military bases for refueling, they're laughed at.
  - Lapel2742 6mo ago
    > Why people always dismiss the European option? Mistral is good for many tasks where you do not need SOTA or near SOTA performance. They cannot compete if you do.
  - roenxi 6mo ago
    People are probably assuming that the trends from the last few decades continue. The EU fumbled semiconductors, production went to Asia. The EU fumbled the software revolution, the successes mainly came from the US. They fumbled the transition to smartphones despite the Nokia advantage. They missed tablets; seemed like they just didn't have the industrial vigour to make a serious attempt. The safe money is they are going to be an also-ran for the AI revolution. They did manage to force Apple to switch from using lightening connectors to USB though so their wins can't just be laughed off. Maybe they'll surprise us but it'd be a welcome change from their usual routine.
    - sofixa 6mo ago
      > The EU fumbled semiconductors, production went to Asia Production of state of the art semiconductors, yes. NXP, STMicro, Infineon are still there and massive in automotive, industrial, card chips, etc. > The EU fumbled the software revolution, the successes mainly came from the US Worldwide massive success, mostly yes. Most European countries have their local or regional success stories though. > The safe money is they are going to be an also-ran for the AI revolution Not really. Past performances, or lack thereof, are not indicative of future ones. Mistral are pretty good and selling well in the enterprise space. Some of the best voice models are coming from France (Kyutai).
      - joe_mamba 6mo ago
        >Production of state of the art semiconductors, yes. If you fall out of the state of the art then the claim of EU fumbling semiconductors is correct. The richest block in the world should settle for no less than being state of the art. Anything less is fumbling it. >NXP, STMicro, Infineon are still there and massive in automotive, industrial, card chips, etc. The EU semi companies you listed are absent from the state of the art and only make low margin commodity parts that don't have moats. ASML exists but is not enough for claiming EU superiority since the EUV light source is still US IP designed and manufactured. And one top company is too little. >Worldwide massive success, mostly yes. Worldwide success is where the big money is, and you need a lot of money for cutting edge research and experimentation to build the future successes. Hence the claim of EU fumbling software is correct. >Most European countries have their local or regional success stories though. EU mom and pop shops aren't gonna make enough money to be able to afford risky ambitious ventures the likes of FAANGs have. Which is probably why you work for Hashicorp, a large global US company, and not some local EU company.
  - GistNoesis 6mo ago
    Europe is always 10 years ahead in all theoretical aspects. Then they need money. So most of the talent flee or get bought, typical example in machine learning space is huggingface or fchollet. Then European government plays catch-up and offer subventions, but at the same time makes rules to make sure companies don't threaten US dominance, or Asian manufacturing. Mistral is typically playing catch the subsidy game. Europe is constructed so that it can't win, but can "pick" the winner between scylla and charybdis, pest and cholera.
    - joe_mamba 6mo ago
      >Europe is constructed so that it can't win, but can "pick" the winner between scylla and charybdis, pest and cholera. Because they have no spine and no leverage/muscle on the international stage to throw their weight around and make sure they get what's best for themselves at the expense of everyone else the same way US, China, etc do. They play the international nice guy that just ends up being the doormat everyone takes advantage of, being at the mercy of Russian and Azeri gas, at the mercy of US tech, energy and defence, and at the mercy of Chinese manufacturing after dismantling their own manufacturing, at the mercy of Turkey for migration enforcement, etc so they can't do anything radical that upsets their "partners", or that makes their virtue signaling policies look bad, or risk massive repercussions they aren't prepared for, so they just turtle, bury their head in the sand and pretend everything is going fine while falling further into obscurity. EU flaunts its "moral values" as its strength, but their geopolitical adversaries have no such values and are dominating over them in the process exploiting their morals against them as their weakness. There's nothing virtuous in being/acting weak and letting others dominate you.
      - GistNoesis 6mo ago
        European Union construction happened after the second world war in the context of the Marshall Plan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan ) to help rebuild Europe that had been destroyed. By design European laws are superior to national laws. Leaving the union is also instant bankruptcy because all countries have very high level of debt which are only guaranteed because they are in the union. European population is getting old and replaced by a migration coming mainly from previous African colonies. Future paying for the past.
  - f6v 6mo ago
    Europe in general is a wide term. Like, UK is in Europe and is a surveillance state.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
razodactyl 6mo ago
I think a lot of us are blinded by our own propaganda. I would expect many Chinese geeks to have the same values as us for the greater good of humanity.
- dnautics 6mo ago
  > I would expect many Chinese geeks to have the same values as us for the greater good of humanity. Yes, they just can't talk about some of those values publically.
  - andersonpico 6mo ago
    They certainly can.
    - dnautics 6mo ago
      please provide a link to a chinese geek publically posting in china that Xi Jinping needs to be replaced. Equivalent, here look, us state-funded news agency posting discussions about how trump needs to be replaced: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-grow-bolder-on-talk-about-removing-trump-from-office-after-his-iran-threats https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-grow-bolder-...
cpursley 6mo ago
Yeah, idk this looks pretty good and they ain't bombing anyone nor trying to spread global communism USSRs style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7W20hdgWXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7W20hdgWXY I think I'll take the open AI models, innovative high quality EVs and cheap solar panels, please.
LinXitoW 6mo ago
Of course not, but that's never how Americans act. The commenter didn't say "I don't like that the only two serious competitors are from the USA and China", they ONLY called out China. It's a small difference, but important. Especially because that person is far more likely to be responsible (voting) for and profiting from USAs bad stuff.
- hirako2000 6mo ago
  In fact, unless the comment is from someone living in China: understands the politics, it would only be fair to critique the authoritarian aspects of the government they actually know. The issue is propagandists are typically brainwashed already.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
    Do you believe only Americans should be allowed to critique the American government? I'm an American and I don't believe that.
    - hirako2000 6mo ago
      No I don't mean one needs to be American. The reciprocal isn't valid. I talked about China. Given the misinformation the "western emisphere" has been subject to, I would find it dubious to get the echoes of what mainstream media portrays it as, even though there are elements of truth in what most people believe. The U.S politics are easier to understand from the outside. For one it's a democracy, a more transparent process despite a lot is happening behind curtains. I have no idea what North Koreans are able to make of the U.S scene, I know for sure people in U.S and Europe are hardly able to comment on N.K. tldr: I'm with you non Americans (and Americans) are perfectly able to critique the U.S with some valuable accuracy.
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
        Why do you assume that the information non-Americans believe about the US is accurate? It seems to me that there is a fair amount of misinformation which gets spread about the US. For example, many non-Americans seem to believe that school shootings are a significant cause of death here. Furthermore, your proposed scheme creates an incentive to be non-transparent and thus not vulnerable to critique. By closing off information about your country, you can say to any critic: "Your critique is incorrect, because you lack information." Thus creating a reputational advantage for countries which successfully clamp down on the flow of information. Is that your desired outcome? You want a world where criticizing the US can no longer be done as soon as Trump kicks out all of the foreign journalists and stops the information flow?
flossly 6mo ago
> Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa. When someone points out hypocrisy, this is "the answer", it seems. But it is just a statement, not a rebuttal of the hypocrisy that was pointed out. Hypocrisy is still hypocrisy. And bad things are bad things. Yet no amount of propaganda (red scare, "eew dictatorship", Uyger-genocide, Taiwan threat) can convince me that the China is as evil (or more evil) than the US-Israel alliance of the the last 50 years.
- strangegecko 6mo ago
  Hypocrisy would be if the person only points out Chinese authoritarianism without acknowledging problems e.g. in US policy. Not mentioning US problems every time they criticize CCP problems is not automatically hypocrisy, and this idea basically means you cannot criticize anything without criticizing everything someone considers just as bad or worse at the same time. Calling a discussion on China hypocritical because it doesn't say "but US worse" is essentially trying to build in whataboutism into every discussion. It's a symptom of increasing polarization and part of the problem.
  - flossly 6mo ago
    There's US AI and China AI. Those are the two contenders. We are discussing the problems of using the Chinese AI because of the "evil" govt there. The evil at this point clearly is less evil than that of the US govt. That's the hypocrisy: not seeing the block of wood in the eye of one while complaining about the speck of wood in the eye of the other. By trying to be less hypocritical we create a more level playing field based on facts, instead of gut-feeling based hatred. Whatabboutism is, IMHO, used a lot as a way to circumvent having to address the glaring hypocrisy: i see it's used to shut up those to point out hypocrisy.
    - strangegecko 6mo ago
      There is also European AI and probably other places. You may think only those two are relevant, and so every discussion of one party requires discussion of the other. I disagree with that fundamentally. I'll be honest, I also disagree that one side is "clearly less evil than the other". For me, living in Taiwan and caring about democracy, the risk of Chinese authoritarian expansion and invasion is not a "speck of wood in the eye", frankly I find that framing disrespectful. But that discussion is entirely beyond the question of hypocrisy. Again, the guy people accuse of hypocrisy said nothing of the sort that indicates that he doesn't see the problems of the US government. He merely didn't talk about them. This isn't "shutting down talk about hypocrisy".
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
zaphirplane 6mo ago
I think people worry about monopolies, be it financial or otherwise
Matl 6mo ago
Yes, but the framing when America does bad is that they mostly do good. When China does good, it's always that they do mostly bad. With China it's always pointed out how much power the state has over corporations there, but in the US out of control lobying is supposed to be 'concerned citizens expressing their opinions' or some shit. We're still supposed to take for granted that it is a representative democracy, if a flawed one.
segmondy 6mo ago
Pick people at random from countries around the world. Ask them what bad things have happened to them or their country because of China or USA. What do you think the result is going to be?

Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa.

by kiba 6mo ago

Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa.

> Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa. Of course not. When it comes to SOTA LLMs you have the choice between two bad options. For many, choosing the Chinese option is just choosing the lesser of two evils (and it's much cheaper).

eloisant 6mo ago
Why people always dismiss the European option? Mistral is right here, their models are in-between the cheap to run Chinese models and top of the line performances of US frontier models.
- 3s 6mo ago
  It’s not top of the line and mostly not open source
- john_minsk 6mo ago
  For a lot of people in the world Europe = USA
  - benterix 6mo ago
    But this makes zero sense. Two different continents, values systems, law systems. Not to mention the current USA administration is openly hostile to Europe. So why would anyone confuse the two.
    - quantum_state 6mo ago
      Europe will not be independent as long as there are US military bases there. Saying otherwise would be kidding oneself.
      - benterix 6mo ago
        You are aware that the number of American soldiers in these bases is symbolic and their presence is meant to be a deterrent for Russia?
    - coliveira 6mo ago
      Europe is at the mercy of the USA. Any difference in posture is due to local politics which can swing local elections, but European leaders are willing and eager to do what the US wants.
      - benterix 6mo ago
        Sure, I'd agree with that a few years ago. Nowadays when the USA asks for something like just using their military bases for refueling, they're laughed at.
- Lapel2742 6mo ago
  > Why people always dismiss the European option? Mistral is good for many tasks where you do not need SOTA or near SOTA performance. They cannot compete if you do.
- roenxi 6mo ago
  People are probably assuming that the trends from the last few decades continue. The EU fumbled semiconductors, production went to Asia. The EU fumbled the software revolution, the successes mainly came from the US. They fumbled the transition to smartphones despite the Nokia advantage. They missed tablets; seemed like they just didn't have the industrial vigour to make a serious attempt. The safe money is they are going to be an also-ran for the AI revolution. They did manage to force Apple to switch from using lightening connectors to USB though so their wins can't just be laughed off. Maybe they'll surprise us but it'd be a welcome change from their usual routine.
  - sofixa 6mo ago
    > The EU fumbled semiconductors, production went to Asia Production of state of the art semiconductors, yes. NXP, STMicro, Infineon are still there and massive in automotive, industrial, card chips, etc. > The EU fumbled the software revolution, the successes mainly came from the US Worldwide massive success, mostly yes. Most European countries have their local or regional success stories though. > The safe money is they are going to be an also-ran for the AI revolution Not really. Past performances, or lack thereof, are not indicative of future ones. Mistral are pretty good and selling well in the enterprise space. Some of the best voice models are coming from France (Kyutai).
    - joe_mamba 6mo ago
      >Production of state of the art semiconductors, yes. If you fall out of the state of the art then the claim of EU fumbling semiconductors is correct. The richest block in the world should settle for no less than being state of the art. Anything less is fumbling it. >NXP, STMicro, Infineon are still there and massive in automotive, industrial, card chips, etc. The EU semi companies you listed are absent from the state of the art and only make low margin commodity parts that don't have moats. ASML exists but is not enough for claiming EU superiority since the EUV light source is still US IP designed and manufactured. And one top company is too little. >Worldwide massive success, mostly yes. Worldwide success is where the big money is, and you need a lot of money for cutting edge research and experimentation to build the future successes. Hence the claim of EU fumbling software is correct. >Most European countries have their local or regional success stories though. EU mom and pop shops aren't gonna make enough money to be able to afford risky ambitious ventures the likes of FAANGs have. Which is probably why you work for Hashicorp, a large global US company, and not some local EU company.
- GistNoesis 6mo ago
  Europe is always 10 years ahead in all theoretical aspects. Then they need money. So most of the talent flee or get bought, typical example in machine learning space is huggingface or fchollet. Then European government plays catch-up and offer subventions, but at the same time makes rules to make sure companies don't threaten US dominance, or Asian manufacturing. Mistral is typically playing catch the subsidy game. Europe is constructed so that it can't win, but can "pick" the winner between scylla and charybdis, pest and cholera.
  - joe_mamba 6mo ago
    >Europe is constructed so that it can't win, but can "pick" the winner between scylla and charybdis, pest and cholera. Because they have no spine and no leverage/muscle on the international stage to throw their weight around and make sure they get what's best for themselves at the expense of everyone else the same way US, China, etc do. They play the international nice guy that just ends up being the doormat everyone takes advantage of, being at the mercy of Russian and Azeri gas, at the mercy of US tech, energy and defence, and at the mercy of Chinese manufacturing after dismantling their own manufacturing, at the mercy of Turkey for migration enforcement, etc so they can't do anything radical that upsets their "partners", or that makes their virtue signaling policies look bad, or risk massive repercussions they aren't prepared for, so they just turtle, bury their head in the sand and pretend everything is going fine while falling further into obscurity. EU flaunts its "moral values" as its strength, but their geopolitical adversaries have no such values and are dominating over them in the process exploiting their morals against them as their weakness. There's nothing virtuous in being/acting weak and letting others dominate you.
    - GistNoesis 6mo ago
      European Union construction happened after the second world war in the context of the Marshall Plan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan ) to help rebuild Europe that had been destroyed. By design European laws are superior to national laws. Leaving the union is also instant bankruptcy because all countries have very high level of debt which are only guaranteed because they are in the union. European population is getting old and replaced by a migration coming mainly from previous African colonies. Future paying for the past.
- f6v 6mo ago
  Europe in general is a wide term. Like, UK is in Europe and is a surveillance state.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

razodactyl 6mo ago

I think a lot of us are blinded by our own propaganda. I would expect many Chinese geeks to have the same values as us for the greater good of humanity.

dnautics 6mo ago
> I would expect many Chinese geeks to have the same values as us for the greater good of humanity. Yes, they just can't talk about some of those values publically.
- andersonpico 6mo ago
  They certainly can.
  - dnautics 6mo ago
    please provide a link to a chinese geek publically posting in china that Xi Jinping needs to be replaced. Equivalent, here look, us state-funded news agency posting discussions about how trump needs to be replaced: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-grow-bolder-on-talk-about-removing-trump-from-office-after-his-iran-threats https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-grow-bolder-...

cpursley 6mo ago

Yeah, idk this looks pretty good and they ain't bombing anyone nor trying to spread global communism USSRs style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7W20hdgWXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7W20hdgWXY I think I'll take the open AI models, innovative high quality EVs and cheap solar panels, please.

LinXitoW 6mo ago

Of course not, but that's never how Americans act. The commenter didn't say "I don't like that the only two serious competitors are from the USA and China", they ONLY called out China. It's a small difference, but important. Especially because that person is far more likely to be responsible (voting) for and profiting from USAs bad stuff.

hirako2000 6mo ago
In fact, unless the comment is from someone living in China: understands the politics, it would only be fair to critique the authoritarian aspects of the government they actually know. The issue is propagandists are typically brainwashed already.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
  Do you believe only Americans should be allowed to critique the American government? I'm an American and I don't believe that.
  - hirako2000 6mo ago
    No I don't mean one needs to be American. The reciprocal isn't valid. I talked about China. Given the misinformation the "western emisphere" has been subject to, I would find it dubious to get the echoes of what mainstream media portrays it as, even though there are elements of truth in what most people believe. The U.S politics are easier to understand from the outside. For one it's a democracy, a more transparent process despite a lot is happening behind curtains. I have no idea what North Koreans are able to make of the U.S scene, I know for sure people in U.S and Europe are hardly able to comment on N.K. tldr: I'm with you non Americans (and Americans) are perfectly able to critique the U.S with some valuable accuracy.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
      Why do you assume that the information non-Americans believe about the US is accurate? It seems to me that there is a fair amount of misinformation which gets spread about the US. For example, many non-Americans seem to believe that school shootings are a significant cause of death here. Furthermore, your proposed scheme creates an incentive to be non-transparent and thus not vulnerable to critique. By closing off information about your country, you can say to any critic: "Your critique is incorrect, because you lack information." Thus creating a reputational advantage for countries which successfully clamp down on the flow of information. Is that your desired outcome? You want a world where criticizing the US can no longer be done as soon as Trump kicks out all of the foreign journalists and stops the information flow?

flossly 6mo ago

> Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa. When someone points out hypocrisy, this is "the answer", it seems. But it is just a statement, not a rebuttal of the hypocrisy that was pointed out. Hypocrisy is still hypocrisy. And bad things are bad things. Yet no amount of propaganda (red scare, "eew dictatorship", Uyger-genocide, Taiwan threat) can convince me that the China is as evil (or more evil) than the US-Israel alliance of the the last 50 years.

strangegecko 6mo ago
Hypocrisy would be if the person only points out Chinese authoritarianism without acknowledging problems e.g. in US policy. Not mentioning US problems every time they criticize CCP problems is not automatically hypocrisy, and this idea basically means you cannot criticize anything without criticizing everything someone considers just as bad or worse at the same time. Calling a discussion on China hypocritical because it doesn't say "but US worse" is essentially trying to build in whataboutism into every discussion. It's a symptom of increasing polarization and part of the problem.
- flossly 6mo ago
  There's US AI and China AI. Those are the two contenders. We are discussing the problems of using the Chinese AI because of the "evil" govt there. The evil at this point clearly is less evil than that of the US govt. That's the hypocrisy: not seeing the block of wood in the eye of one while complaining about the speck of wood in the eye of the other. By trying to be less hypocritical we create a more level playing field based on facts, instead of gut-feeling based hatred. Whatabboutism is, IMHO, used a lot as a way to circumvent having to address the glaring hypocrisy: i see it's used to shut up those to point out hypocrisy.
  - strangegecko 6mo ago
    There is also European AI and probably other places. You may think only those two are relevant, and so every discussion of one party requires discussion of the other. I disagree with that fundamentally. I'll be honest, I also disagree that one side is "clearly less evil than the other". For me, living in Taiwan and caring about democracy, the risk of Chinese authoritarian expansion and invasion is not a "speck of wood in the eye", frankly I find that framing disrespectful. But that discussion is entirely beyond the question of hypocrisy. Again, the guy people accuse of hypocrisy said nothing of the sort that indicates that he doesn't see the problems of the US government. He merely didn't talk about them. This isn't "shutting down talk about hypocrisy".

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

zaphirplane 6mo ago

I think people worry about monopolies, be it financial or otherwise

Matl 6mo ago

Yes, but the framing when America does bad is that they mostly do good. When China does good, it's always that they do mostly bad. With China it's always pointed out how much power the state has over corporations there, but in the US out of control lobying is supposed to be 'concerned citizens expressing their opinions' or some shit. We're still supposed to take for granted that it is a representative democracy, if a flawed one.

segmondy 6mo ago

Pick people at random from countries around the world. Ask them what bad things have happened to them or their country because of China or USA. What do you think the result is going to be?