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Is it a coincidence that both MiniMax and Z.ai are releasing frontier open weights models right as the USG is trying to impose a cap on model capability offered

by ls612 4mo ago

Is it a coincidence that both MiniMax and Z.ai are releasing frontier open weights models right as the USG is trying to impose a cap on model capability offered to the public?

lubujackson 4mo ago
I would say yes. You think they were sitting on a release waiting for the right marketing moment?
- enraged_camel 4mo ago
  I think it's a possibility, because labs trying to one-up each other is a fairly common phenomenon at this point. Previous Opus releases were immediately followed by GPT releases, for example. At some point the timing stops being a mere coincidence.
- bel8 4mo ago
  Yes? I have seen enough OpenAI and Anthropic carefuly timed marketing plays to expect it. I would never announce GLM 5.2 in the same day as Fable or Apple's WWDC, for example.
thefounder 4mo ago
No, Dario became too tiresome and annoying that someone had to do something. Personally I hope they ban Opus too. It will only provide more support for open models development. Compare Dario horror posts with this from GLM release: “ Intelligence should be open, accessible, and ready to build with, empowering every developer, everywhere.”
- polski-g 4mo ago
  Dario is the most retarded CEO I've seen. CEO job is to negotiate complexity, and he's failed every step of the way.
  - TurdF3rguson 4mo ago
    I thought it was to make a fuckload of money for shareholders.
- mrandish 4mo ago
  I'm hardly a fanboy of Anthropic or any of the AI companies, but Ant aren't objectively in a different league of tech bro "tiresome and annoying" than OAI, Google, FB, MSFT, etc. Yet they are being targeted just because of the TOU / EULA they set on usage of their product restricting use for lethal combat planning and mass surveillance. Set aside whether you agree with that TOU / EULA. We can all decide whether the price and terms any product is available for are acceptable to us. When you create a product, you get to decide the price and terms you want to offer it under. The right to be secure in your person and property is part of the constitution. And Anthropic's models are their property. But the US Government is now extorting a private corporation to force them to let the DoW use the product for lethal combat planning and mass surveillance - against their wishes. That's wrong. In this case, I don't fully agree with the policies of the company or care for some of the management, but that doesn't change that this is bullshit and unconstitutional.
  - thefounder 4mo ago
    You can’t ignore their continuous PR on banning open models and regulating everything AI. With Fable we also see how they want it to work: store the data indefinitely (30 days or more) and put restrictions on everything “dangerous” (I.e AI, IT security, biology physics ). I am pretty sure they would want to give specific access on different companies/entities and on differential pricing(I.e use regulatory to inflate their prices) We’ve also seen how bad that works in practice(I.e making the AI useless for a lot of stuff including programming and Sysadmin ). It would be okay if they just do their own thing but this Dario guy wants to enforce that enshitification of the whole industry. And that’s not OK because they have money now, power and influence. I hope the gov will put breaks on Anthropic and regulate them just the way they wanted. The next best thing would be to ask them put restrictions on Opus as they did on Fable
bontaq 4mo ago
I think Z.ai rushed a bit for release, for example GLM 5.2 is only available under the coding plan right now and they didn't do a big write up. Not even some charts and graphs about its performance! This is around when people were predicting a new GLM to come out, so a couple corners clipped in order to catch the moment. I'm using it right now and it seems decent, but I haven't done heavy work with it yet. The expanded context window is great.
- wolttam 4mo ago
  This is typical for GLM releases.
halJordan 4mo ago
No, not really. This has been telegraphed for a long time by everyone involved. HN denizens have been unashamedly anti-ai for years now, so what makes sense is the not knowing part of this audience. Chinese models are also not frontier models.
- toraway 4mo ago
  I still find it baffling how the idea that HN is "unashamedly anti-ai" gets repeated. Every single model release gets submitted within minutes of an announcement and frequently break 1000+ points within an hour or two. Blog posts about vibe coding or the current flavor of harness/workflow/tool are constantly making the front page. Karpathy's latest writing/presentations or "Learn how LLMs work using X" are perennial front page content. There were moments in 2023/2024 where all but a handful of posts on the front page were about AI (and not the Reddit r/popular "residents worried about infrasound and EM radiation near new datacenter" variety). For example, the responses to this very recent post were overwhelmingly praising Gen AI's capabilities: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406174 Or this post which rocketed to 2000+ points a year ago without bothering to steel man opposing arguments: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44163063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44163063 There are counter examples of course but just because HN isn't exclusively AI hype at all times doesn't mean it's "unashamedly anti-AI". I honestly can't think of any single topic other than the Snowden leaks in 2013/2014 that even comes close to dominating HN discussion like LLMs/GenAI from 2022 to present.
  - polski-g 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - tancop 4mo ago
      data centers with evap cooling use a lot of water and in some places its taking away from residents. thats a fact not a conspiracy. closed loop systems exist and its possible to make them mandatory by law or city ordinance, but if they did that the company running the data center would make a little less money so they act like pumping out water is the only way. its the same with carbon emissions and making them build solar panels.
SilverElfin 4mo ago
I don’t think we will know. On the one hand, labs hold back until they have something competitive enough to release. So if Fable isn’t around, it removes that pressure. On the other hand, the Chinese labs have been moving fast anyways and are obviously behind, so it’s not any more of a problem to release a model that isn’t the very best.

by ls612 4mo ago

Is it a coincidence that both MiniMax and Z.ai are releasing frontier open weights models right as the USG is trying to impose a cap on model capability offered to the public?

lubujackson 4mo ago

I would say yes. You think they were sitting on a release waiting for the right marketing moment?

enraged_camel 4mo ago
I think it's a possibility, because labs trying to one-up each other is a fairly common phenomenon at this point. Previous Opus releases were immediately followed by GPT releases, for example. At some point the timing stops being a mere coincidence.
bel8 4mo ago
Yes? I have seen enough OpenAI and Anthropic carefuly timed marketing plays to expect it. I would never announce GLM 5.2 in the same day as Fable or Apple's WWDC, for example.

thefounder 4mo ago

No, Dario became too tiresome and annoying that someone had to do something. Personally I hope they ban Opus too. It will only provide more support for open models development. Compare Dario horror posts with this from GLM release: “ Intelligence should be open, accessible, and ready to build with, empowering every developer, everywhere.”

polski-g 4mo ago
Dario is the most retarded CEO I've seen. CEO job is to negotiate complexity, and he's failed every step of the way.
- TurdF3rguson 4mo ago
  I thought it was to make a fuckload of money for shareholders.
mrandish 4mo ago
I'm hardly a fanboy of Anthropic or any of the AI companies, but Ant aren't objectively in a different league of tech bro "tiresome and annoying" than OAI, Google, FB, MSFT, etc. Yet they are being targeted just because of the TOU / EULA they set on usage of their product restricting use for lethal combat planning and mass surveillance. Set aside whether you agree with that TOU / EULA. We can all decide whether the price and terms any product is available for are acceptable to us. When you create a product, you get to decide the price and terms you want to offer it under. The right to be secure in your person and property is part of the constitution. And Anthropic's models are their property. But the US Government is now extorting a private corporation to force them to let the DoW use the product for lethal combat planning and mass surveillance - against their wishes. That's wrong. In this case, I don't fully agree with the policies of the company or care for some of the management, but that doesn't change that this is bullshit and unconstitutional.
- thefounder 4mo ago
  You can’t ignore their continuous PR on banning open models and regulating everything AI. With Fable we also see how they want it to work: store the data indefinitely (30 days or more) and put restrictions on everything “dangerous” (I.e AI, IT security, biology physics ). I am pretty sure they would want to give specific access on different companies/entities and on differential pricing(I.e use regulatory to inflate their prices) We’ve also seen how bad that works in practice(I.e making the AI useless for a lot of stuff including programming and Sysadmin ). It would be okay if they just do their own thing but this Dario guy wants to enforce that enshitification of the whole industry. And that’s not OK because they have money now, power and influence. I hope the gov will put breaks on Anthropic and regulate them just the way they wanted. The next best thing would be to ask them put restrictions on Opus as they did on Fable

bontaq 4mo ago

I think Z.ai rushed a bit for release, for example GLM 5.2 is only available under the coding plan right now and they didn't do a big write up. Not even some charts and graphs about its performance! This is around when people were predicting a new GLM to come out, so a couple corners clipped in order to catch the moment. I'm using it right now and it seems decent, but I haven't done heavy work with it yet. The expanded context window is great.

wolttam 4mo ago
This is typical for GLM releases.

halJordan 4mo ago

No, not really. This has been telegraphed for a long time by everyone involved. HN denizens have been unashamedly anti-ai for years now, so what makes sense is the not knowing part of this audience. Chinese models are also not frontier models.

toraway 4mo ago
I still find it baffling how the idea that HN is "unashamedly anti-ai" gets repeated. Every single model release gets submitted within minutes of an announcement and frequently break 1000+ points within an hour or two. Blog posts about vibe coding or the current flavor of harness/workflow/tool are constantly making the front page. Karpathy's latest writing/presentations or "Learn how LLMs work using X" are perennial front page content. There were moments in 2023/2024 where all but a handful of posts on the front page were about AI (and not the Reddit r/popular "residents worried about infrasound and EM radiation near new datacenter" variety). For example, the responses to this very recent post were overwhelmingly praising Gen AI's capabilities: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406174 Or this post which rocketed to 2000+ points a year ago without bothering to steel man opposing arguments: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44163063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44163063 There are counter examples of course but just because HN isn't exclusively AI hype at all times doesn't mean it's "unashamedly anti-AI". I honestly can't think of any single topic other than the Snowden leaks in 2013/2014 that even comes close to dominating HN discussion like LLMs/GenAI from 2022 to present.
- polski-g 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tancop 4mo ago
    data centers with evap cooling use a lot of water and in some places its taking away from residents. thats a fact not a conspiracy. closed loop systems exist and its possible to make them mandatory by law or city ordinance, but if they did that the company running the data center would make a little less money so they act like pumping out water is the only way. its the same with carbon emissions and making them build solar panels.

SilverElfin 4mo ago

I don’t think we will know. On the one hand, labs hold back until they have something competitive enough to release. So if Fable isn’t around, it removes that pressure. On the other hand, the Chinese labs have been moving fast anyways and are obviously behind, so it’s not any more of a problem to release a model that isn’t the very best.