3 ms·

It 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 everyon

It 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 ago
The "why" always matters in everything in life.
- rescbr 4mo ago
  The 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Um, 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 ago
        IP 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 4mo ago
        Maybe 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.
- civet_java 4mo ago
  Can you please tell my, as someone who is neither Chinese nor American, "why" I should care if a Chinese company stole from another American company (that in turn stole from everyone) to give me a cheaper service that fits my use case?
  - w0m 4mo ago
    > to give me a cheaper service that fits my use case? Because they aren't giving you a cheaper service that fits your use case. Best Case scenario, it's a trillion-dollar behemoth stealing from a billion-dollar behemoth so they can add their own explicit restrictions/weights on top to influence the masses. There is no 'robin hood' here, any perceived value you get is clearly and explicitly tainted. "I don't care if it doesn't show me non-party-line results - It makes me a cheap UI !". Ethics/morals be damned.
    - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
      > There is no 'robin hood' here, any perceived value you get is clearly and explicitly tainted. "I don't care if it doesn't show me non-party-line results - It makes me a cheap UI !". Ethics/morals be damned. I can't tell if you are talking about Anthropic or Alibaba here.
      - w0m 4mo ago
        and honestly that's my entire point. There is no Good Guy here.
        civet_java 4mo ago
        In a world which already has the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI, having Chinese labs be a counter balance is decidedly better than the hypothetical where American companies had a global monopoly on LLMs. If your argument is that all present LLM offerings are unethical then that is something I am sypmathetic to. That said, I am also unable to offer a conceivable roadmap to undoing the opening of the LLM Pandora's box so I tend not ground my arguments in anti-LLM advocacy; that would be very 2023 of me.
- butlike 4mo ago
  I don't think that's true. Sometimes the 'why' is lost in time as no one's around to tell it, so we end up with a "if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?" scenario. It doesn't really matter. The thing now exists without a 'why.'
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 ago
  Is 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 ago
    I 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 ago
  What 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 ago
    I 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.

reaperducer 4mo ago

The "why" always matters in everything in life.

rescbr 4mo ago
The 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Um, 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 ago
      IP 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 4mo ago
        Maybe 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.
civet_java 4mo ago
Can you please tell my, as someone who is neither Chinese nor American, "why" I should care if a Chinese company stole from another American company (that in turn stole from everyone) to give me a cheaper service that fits my use case?
- w0m 4mo ago
  > to give me a cheaper service that fits my use case? Because they aren't giving you a cheaper service that fits your use case. Best Case scenario, it's a trillion-dollar behemoth stealing from a billion-dollar behemoth so they can add their own explicit restrictions/weights on top to influence the masses. There is no 'robin hood' here, any perceived value you get is clearly and explicitly tainted. "I don't care if it doesn't show me non-party-line results - It makes me a cheap UI !". Ethics/morals be damned.
  - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
    > There is no 'robin hood' here, any perceived value you get is clearly and explicitly tainted. "I don't care if it doesn't show me non-party-line results - It makes me a cheap UI !". Ethics/morals be damned. I can't tell if you are talking about Anthropic or Alibaba here.
    - w0m 4mo ago
      and honestly that's my entire point. There is no Good Guy here.
      - civet_java 4mo ago
        In a world which already has the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI, having Chinese labs be a counter balance is decidedly better than the hypothetical where American companies had a global monopoly on LLMs. If your argument is that all present LLM offerings are unethical then that is something I am sypmathetic to. That said, I am also unable to offer a conceivable roadmap to undoing the opening of the LLM Pandora's box so I tend not ground my arguments in anti-LLM advocacy; that would be very 2023 of me.
butlike 4mo ago
I don't think that's true. Sometimes the 'why' is lost in time as no one's around to tell it, so we end up with a "if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?" scenario. It doesn't really matter. The thing now exists without a 'why.'

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 ago
Is 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 ago
  I 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 ago
What 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 ago
  I 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.