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> I think the Chinese government either already has, or will soon, grasp that if they train the models that people use they dictate what people believe (at leas

by tw1984 4mo ago

> I think the Chinese government either already has, or will soon, grasp that if they train the models that people use they dictate what people believe (at least around the margins where that's malleable), and they will happily throw resources at that. that doesn't require the model to be SOTA, it can be just a compact model capable of running on some inexpensive hardware. that is vastly different from SOTA models like Mythos which can potentially disrupt lots of things.

strangegecko 4mo ago
Of course it requires SOTA, people will always choose better models over some compact thing that is obviously more limited. You can't control the truth with models nobody wants to use.
- columnarx3 4mo ago
  People choose SOTA right now because of the heavily subsidised model subscriptions. People aren't going to pay 20x the price for a model that's maybe 10% better.
  - ezst 4mo ago
    And the fact that "better" is highly subjective and domain/task/vibe-specific
- adrianN 4mo ago
  Why do I want the model I use for coding to know Shakespeare or vice versa?
  - Jare 4mo ago
    Because you communicate with it using natural language and real-world references and descriptions of what you want, you use emotion and emphasis (especially when re-prompting), you use examples and illustrative stories and common expressions. Understanding and interpreting all of that and replying in kind, to some degree, requires a large body of non-computation, cultural knowledge, or else the prompts are just meaningless words, and the replies will look like compiler output.
    - adrianN 4mo ago
      That sounds intuitively true, but I’m not convinced that it is actually the case. I don’t think we know enough about neural network training to say what training and how many parameters are necessary for what kind of performance on which tasks. To me it looks like we currently guess that more is better and try to throw as much compute and data at the problem as is economically feasible. There is little incentive for companies to invest into small model research since their moat is huge models that require special hardware to run.
  - Der_Einzige 4mo ago
    This is why: https://www.emergent-misalignment.com/ https://www.emergent-misalignment.com/
- rjzzleep 4mo ago
  Small models are the future.

by tw1984 4mo ago

strangegecko 4mo ago

Of course it requires SOTA, people will always choose better models over some compact thing that is obviously more limited. You can't control the truth with models nobody wants to use.

columnarx3 4mo ago
People choose SOTA right now because of the heavily subsidised model subscriptions. People aren't going to pay 20x the price for a model that's maybe 10% better.
- ezst 4mo ago
  And the fact that "better" is highly subjective and domain/task/vibe-specific
adrianN 4mo ago
Why do I want the model I use for coding to know Shakespeare or vice versa?
- Jare 4mo ago
  Because you communicate with it using natural language and real-world references and descriptions of what you want, you use emotion and emphasis (especially when re-prompting), you use examples and illustrative stories and common expressions. Understanding and interpreting all of that and replying in kind, to some degree, requires a large body of non-computation, cultural knowledge, or else the prompts are just meaningless words, and the replies will look like compiler output.
  - adrianN 4mo ago
    That sounds intuitively true, but I’m not convinced that it is actually the case. I don’t think we know enough about neural network training to say what training and how many parameters are necessary for what kind of performance on which tasks. To me it looks like we currently guess that more is better and try to throw as much compute and data at the problem as is economically feasible. There is little incentive for companies to invest into small model research since their moat is huge models that require special hardware to run.
- Der_Einzige 4mo ago
  This is why: https://www.emergent-misalignment.com/ https://www.emergent-misalignment.com/
rjzzleep 4mo ago
Small models are the future.