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Eaaaaasy now, the Chinese labs aren't freedom fighters on behalf the common man. They're not non-profits, they're not neutral transnational organizations only d
by mrngld 4mo ago
Eaaaaasy now, the Chinese labs aren't freedom fighters on behalf the common man. They're not non-profits, they're not neutral transnational organizations only dedicated to open source efforts.
They're Chinese companies offering open source models now as loss leaders to keep themselves in the game because they know virtually nobody, especially in the corporate world, would contract with them and give them access to their data. They might as well just send a Dropbox link of all their sensitive data directly to their Chinese competitors, same end effect.
They're also doing it as the digital equivalent of what they've done in other industrial sectors for decades. Undercut and flood the market and once you've killed or severely hindered your competition, then you have the market cornered. The moment they can afford to these open source releases will stop.
Then the world will be stuck, just the way the world is largely stuck on rare earths. Instead of being able to regulate the leading companies from DC and Brussels, they'll be stuck watching Beijing call the shots.
That world would likely always have guys like Mistral and Trinity, but it's an open question if they'll ever catch up to the frontier.
And then Beijing will enjoy access to the data (ask any multinational operating in China for more than 2 seconds how useful contracts and Chinas legal system is for protecting IP), and these companies will roll in the money, and the Chinese supply chain will grow up behind the labs.
So, let's not pretend they've got the moral high ground. No. That boot just isn't on your neck yet. They're playing the long game -- and they're good at it.
- idiotsecant 4mo agoIt doesn't matter why Chinese firms are stealing models and open sourcing them. The fact that they are doing it is a very, very good thing for basically everyone other than the people who paid to build the original models, but I've got no sympathy for them considering they stole all the content to train them in the first place. This is some kind of beautiful irony.
- reaperducer 4mo agoThe "why" always matters in everything in life.
- rescbr 4mo agoThe whole AI industry was built upon stealing IP. The extreme of this is to make IP laws irrelevant and that everything should be in the public domain. Which maybe is not a bad outcome for humanity as a collective after all.
- Saline9515 4mo agoThe main problem is how they accessed the IP, but then using it to train a model is fair use. But yeah, IP theft doesn't exist because nothing is stolen really: Hollywood studios still have their movies.
- sdellis 4mo agoUm, yeah. They stole the IP and then they stored the pirated IP. It was literally stolen and stored on their servers. That proves that IP theft exists. It's not complicated.
- Saline9515 4mo agoIP theft doesn't exist, if I copy a Disney movie, Disney still has their movies. If I steal someone's bike, they can't use their bike. You deprive Disney of nothing by "stealing" their movies since it is just a copy.
- sdellis 3mo agoMaybe you are correct that there is no such thing. But that is a different argument. In the U.S., from a practical and business standpoint, IP theft does exist because there are laws that are passed to prevent it and enforce consequences. Disney is not just selling tickets to movies to make their money. They are selling licenses that provide the rights to watch, store, and use those movies (or aspects of them) in certain ways. One thing that that Anthropic didn't do is pay the publishers and authors for the right to train their models on the intellectual property. And that's why they have no place pointing fingers at Alibaba saying that they stole their IP.
- philipallstar 4mo ago> it is a very, very good thing for basically everyone other than the people who paid to build the original models It's not a good thing if you think there's more discovery and progress to be made, rather than cannibalising a fully mature field with cheaper alternatives. Drowning R&D early is not good for everyone.
- how_gauche 4mo agoIs leveraging an enormous capital advantage to strip-mine the Internet and sell it back to us cannibalism or not? Confused on this point. I think they are exploiting a loophole in copyright law (and kind of redefining the meaning of "derivative work" in my opinion, but hey I'm not a lawyer) that collectively we tolerate because the end result is so useful
- philipallstar 4mo agoI think that's a slightly different topic, but: a) strip-mining the internet is definitely the most misleading way to think about it. Strip mining means aggressively removing something to the area's detriment, and nothing has been removed. If all AI is turned off today the internet has not lost all of its natural resources, and silly phrases like that fuel inappropriate emotions and consequent conclusions and b) the internet is not being sold back to us - that is also a highly misleading phrase, if not an outright lie. The internet is still there and we can use it. No one is selling back to us what we already had. AI is not the internet cordoned off and resold.
- svachalek 4mo agoWhat does further progress get us? Mass unemployment? Extinction? Pick your dark future science fiction? The happy ending where we're all living in a garden of eden cared for by benevolent AI is hardly worth considering when you look at the cast of characters who are in charge of the world right now.
- philipallstar 4mo agoI don't think those are the only two options. The most likely option is: AI does what self-driving cars have done, which is to say, get so far and no further.
- HarHarVeryFunny 4mo agoThe Chinese companies don't have to be open weights, and it's not all about competing with the west. For example, most of Ziphu's (GLM) business in China is supporting private on-prem instances rather than selling API access. They make money by selling support services - much like RedHat's busines model.
- binary0010 4mo agoI think most of us know why they're doing it. We are just very pleased with it regardless. 1. I get great products for nearly free 2. Anthropic/openai/etc will hopefully be destroyed since they stole everyone's work and are trying to capitalize on pure theft. Win-win. The why of it is not really that relevant.
- w0m 4mo ago>We are just very pleased with it regardless You don't trust the multi-billion dollar behemoth, but you trust the militarized multi-trillion dollar behemoth to play 'robin hood'? i can't get my brain around the mental loops here.
- binary0010 4mo agoI don't get it? I use the open weights deepseek on opencode Go hosted in the us/etc. What are the mental loops here? I would genuinely like to know if I'm missing something.
- svachalek 4mo agoIf you don't think Anthropic and OpenAI are multi-trillion dollar militarized behemoths you need to catch up on some news. Both are planning $trillion+ IPOs this year. OpenAI is collaborating with the Department of War, and Anthropic is under intense pressure to do the same and their top model is being held hostage right now. This week, the Department of War wrote a statement that xAI should not be held accountable for environmental laws because Grok is a vital weapon system of the US and was used to fire over 2000 missiles at Iran. The pentagon's statement mentions there are 3-4 such models so you may be able to guess which they are.
- Daishiman 4mo ago> You don't trust the multi-billion dollar behemoth, but you trust the militarized multi-trillion dollar behemoth to play 'robin hood'? Nobody's trusting anyone, we're just enjoying the benefits of true competition much like the working middle class gained benefits between the ideological competition of the Cold War.
- zobzu 4mo agoyou dont get it - usa is the goliath in all scenarios online. these are us based companies. most of the world would like to see them and the us fail.