5 ms·

This is where government funding can play a role. Sometimes there are things where the public good is best served with public expenditure.

by dleslie 5mo ago

CamperBob2 5mo ago
"Government funding" these days would mean that Trump pays Elon Musk (or more likely vice versa) to make Grok 4.20 the only legal LLM for use by Americans.
- dleslie 5mo ago
  Outside of the USA it would not look like a wealth transfer to an oligarch. Not every country is in a crypto-libertarian race to hoard power and wealth.
  - CamperBob2 5mo ago
    Not every country is in a crypto-libertarian race to hoard power and wealth. Meanwhile, in the EU, the model would be collectively financed, trained by a competent, neutral agency... and then completely lobotomized in the name of "the children," "safety," "IP rights," "correct speech," dozens of individual countries' legal and regulatory requirements, and any number of additional vocal, noncontributing NGOs. So no one would get rich off of the public model, but no one would get much of anything else out of it, either. As another reply suggests, there's a reason why things happen in the USA first. Even when they don't, the prime movers move here as soon as they can. Or at least they used to.
    - dleslie 5mo ago
      European models are competitive, despite the concerns you raise. I don't need a model that can easily produce CSAM or reproduce copyrighted works verbatim in order to be productive.
      - CamperBob2 5mo ago
        EU models are not, in fact, competitive with US or Chinese models. And that's not how these things work. If you censor the model for one purpose, you will degrade it for others. We both know that the bureaucrats won't stop at either of those purposes. It's not in a censor's nature to walk away satisfied.
        dleslie 5mo ago
        Mistral is competitive and useful. And Anthropic is famous for putting guardrails on their models, and yet continue to lead. We don't have to, and shouldn't have to, tolerate tools that easily produce csam or similarly undesirable output.

This is where government funding can play a role. Sometimes there are things where the public good is best served with public expenditure.

by dleslie 5mo ago

This is where government funding can play a role. Sometimes there are things where the public good is best served with public expenditure.

CamperBob2 5mo ago

"Government funding" these days would mean that Trump pays Elon Musk (or more likely vice versa) to make Grok 4.20 the only legal LLM for use by Americans.

dleslie 5mo ago
Outside of the USA it would not look like a wealth transfer to an oligarch. Not every country is in a crypto-libertarian race to hoard power and wealth.
- CamperBob2 5mo ago
  Not every country is in a crypto-libertarian race to hoard power and wealth. Meanwhile, in the EU, the model would be collectively financed, trained by a competent, neutral agency... and then completely lobotomized in the name of "the children," "safety," "IP rights," "correct speech," dozens of individual countries' legal and regulatory requirements, and any number of additional vocal, noncontributing NGOs. So no one would get rich off of the public model, but no one would get much of anything else out of it, either. As another reply suggests, there's a reason why things happen in the USA first. Even when they don't, the prime movers move here as soon as they can. Or at least they used to.
  - dleslie 5mo ago
    European models are competitive, despite the concerns you raise. I don't need a model that can easily produce CSAM or reproduce copyrighted works verbatim in order to be productive.
    - CamperBob2 5mo ago
      EU models are not, in fact, competitive with US or Chinese models. And that's not how these things work. If you censor the model for one purpose, you will degrade it for others. We both know that the bureaucrats won't stop at either of those purposes. It's not in a censor's nature to walk away satisfied.
      - dleslie 5mo ago
        Mistral is competitive and useful. And Anthropic is famous for putting guardrails on their models, and yet continue to lead. We don't have to, and shouldn't have to, tolerate tools that easily produce csam or similarly undesirable output.