4 ms·

I stil don't understand them. I want the US to "win the AI race" but I have trouble understanding how most of all inventions today aren't "distillations" of pas

I stil don't understand them. I want the US to "win the AI race" but I have trouble understanding how most of all inventions today aren't "distillations" of past knowledge. Is Anthropic claiming the data they stole as trade secrets?

fwip 2mo ago
Anthropic is claiming that training an LLM to mimic another LLM is materially different and worse than slurping up stuff written by humans (even if that material is stolen). Basically, they want IP protection for Claude. This is a nakedly hypocritical stance, but completely understandable from a company-needs-to-make-money standpoint.
- verdverm 2mo ago
  Google is apparently taking a different stance and offering distillation as a paid product https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/models/tuning/distillation https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platfo...
  - behnamoh 2mo ago
    But nobody wants to distill Google's models, Gemini is really bad.
    - verdverm 2mo ago
      strong agreement, I've stopped using all closed weight models on principle, but the latest gemini models have increased hallucinations and now talk back, so double reason not to use them
    - charcircuit 2mo ago
      I think GLM 5.2 is in part distilled from it.
  - petu 2mo ago
    You don't get to take distilled model home, it all stays with Google. It's "optimize your costs in our garden" product.
    - verdverm 2mo ago
      yup, strings are certainly attached when dealing with US Big Tech / Ai I recommend Fireworks as an alternative
- blints 2mo ago
  Their claim is even stronger than that, they have complaints about their models being used as a validation step for other model output, which is standard practice in the industry.
- koe123 2mo ago
  How does anyone justify this? How can you argue this in good faith?
  - fwip 2mo ago
    Snarky answer: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Realer answer: A combination of the above, plus group/bubble effect of all your coworkers saying the same thing. You as a group, conflate a bunch of concerns together (China, no-guardrails-AI, etc), decide that your group will be the responsible stewards of AI, and then anybody "stealing your work" appears dangerous - both to your livelihood and to the human race.
- Levitz 2mo ago
  >This is a nakedly hypocritical stance, but completely understandable from a company-needs-to-make-money standpoint. No, it's perfectly reasonable once you get down to reality. China is not going to care about IP. That's just a fact. So either nobody cares about IP (at the very last in this context) and any AI company can just do whatever with data, or Chinese companies have to be held up to scrutiny. We don't have the privilege to be able to hold western companies to higher ethical, legal, and environmental standards and not risk competitiveness. That there is a whole lot of people right now who insist on doing above and still somehow praise China at every turn is something historians or news outlets will have to make sense of in some 5 years time.
  - nemomarx 2mo ago
    Give up IP for end users and people will be pretty okay with giving up on IP for ai companies. You can't have different standards for special companies though.
  - idiotsecant 2mo ago
    why should western AI companies be held to different standards than Chinese ones? Neither of them are your buddy.
    - creato 2mo ago
      They shouldn't be. But the point is, they are. OpenAI and Anthropic are paying many rights holders for access to their data (reddit, NYT, etc.). So distillation, among other things, allows Chinese labs to indirectly benefit from these arrangements at no cost to them.
      - trollbridge 2mo ago
        Oh really - how much are individual Redditors getting paid?
  - fwip 2mo ago
    > So either nobody cares about IP (at the very last in this context) and any AI company can just do whatever with data, or Chinese companies have to be held up to scrutiny. Anthropic is currently angling for a "IP restrictions for China but not for me" la-la land scenario. If they were instead arguing for either of the choices you said, it wouldn't be hypocritical.
lukewarm707 2mo ago
i want china to win so that i get access to ai and not restricted and censored. the chinese models are less censored, you'd better believe it. try asking claude about its 'guardrails' (restrictions), very high chance anthropic will censor it.
- Barbing 2mo ago
  > chinese models are less censored Tried spicy geopolitical dispute questions?
  - trollbridge 2mo ago
    Yes, and they aren't a problem. I get tired of people claiming this. Go download Qwen 3.6 and run it yourself and fire away.
    - HDBaseT 2mo ago
      This is true, most of the "censorship" is applied at the API level. A lot of providers even on OpenRouter for Chinese models aren't censored.
    - Barbing 2mo ago
      No claims here, though Algolia brought me here to alleged collateral damage: someone scraping HN a week back was unable to do their usual summary of a story and comments given a political refusal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987120 This user tried Qwen (and DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM) ten days ago, called the response's language milquetoast: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48964345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48964345 Comment from a user a month ago with their blog link on DeepSeek, which for comparison includes a generated poem about the evil killings of unarmed students by the USA at Kent State: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680612 (I vouch for none of these alleged tests.) Of course when these tests used hosted models, different rules can apply. btw China is an amazing country with amazing people; my interest is in a little of everything, including free SotA-adjacent open software (thank you China!). Both respect their sovereignty to regulate software as used within their borders and hope labs there find value in serving Western users with the openness/transparency we (I) like to think we desire. I believe grappling with the most uncomfortable topics will be to their advantage in the long run. And ours (USA), too. The more we can divorce ourselves from bias, the more we can all win, I hope. My bias is towards humanity [being safe, happy, fulfilled...]. (While I might sound like someone who'd appreciate the model billed as "maximally truth seeking", unfortunately due to training or system prompting or something, Grok is trash unless you need to search Twitter or perhaps bypass botblocks. Or make "7K sex images of stepdaughter", I reference with apologies and deep sympathy to Jane Doe 4.)
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

fwip 2mo ago

Anthropic is claiming that training an LLM to mimic another LLM is materially different and worse than slurping up stuff written by humans (even if that material is stolen). Basically, they want IP protection for Claude. This is a nakedly hypocritical stance, but completely understandable from a company-needs-to-make-money standpoint.

verdverm 2mo ago
Google is apparently taking a different stance and offering distillation as a paid product https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/models/tuning/distillation https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platfo...
- behnamoh 2mo ago
  But nobody wants to distill Google's models, Gemini is really bad.
  - verdverm 2mo ago
    strong agreement, I've stopped using all closed weight models on principle, but the latest gemini models have increased hallucinations and now talk back, so double reason not to use them
  - charcircuit 2mo ago
    I think GLM 5.2 is in part distilled from it.
- petu 2mo ago
  You don't get to take distilled model home, it all stays with Google. It's "optimize your costs in our garden" product.
  - verdverm 2mo ago
    yup, strings are certainly attached when dealing with US Big Tech / Ai I recommend Fireworks as an alternative
blints 2mo ago
Their claim is even stronger than that, they have complaints about their models being used as a validation step for other model output, which is standard practice in the industry.
koe123 2mo ago
How does anyone justify this? How can you argue this in good faith?
- fwip 2mo ago
  Snarky answer: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Realer answer: A combination of the above, plus group/bubble effect of all your coworkers saying the same thing. You as a group, conflate a bunch of concerns together (China, no-guardrails-AI, etc), decide that your group will be the responsible stewards of AI, and then anybody "stealing your work" appears dangerous - both to your livelihood and to the human race.
Levitz 2mo ago
>This is a nakedly hypocritical stance, but completely understandable from a company-needs-to-make-money standpoint. No, it's perfectly reasonable once you get down to reality. China is not going to care about IP. That's just a fact. So either nobody cares about IP (at the very last in this context) and any AI company can just do whatever with data, or Chinese companies have to be held up to scrutiny. We don't have the privilege to be able to hold western companies to higher ethical, legal, and environmental standards and not risk competitiveness. That there is a whole lot of people right now who insist on doing above and still somehow praise China at every turn is something historians or news outlets will have to make sense of in some 5 years time.
- nemomarx 2mo ago
  Give up IP for end users and people will be pretty okay with giving up on IP for ai companies. You can't have different standards for special companies though.
- idiotsecant 2mo ago
  why should western AI companies be held to different standards than Chinese ones? Neither of them are your buddy.
  - creato 2mo ago
    They shouldn't be. But the point is, they are. OpenAI and Anthropic are paying many rights holders for access to their data (reddit, NYT, etc.). So distillation, among other things, allows Chinese labs to indirectly benefit from these arrangements at no cost to them.
    - trollbridge 2mo ago
      Oh really - how much are individual Redditors getting paid?
- fwip 2mo ago
  > So either nobody cares about IP (at the very last in this context) and any AI company can just do whatever with data, or Chinese companies have to be held up to scrutiny. Anthropic is currently angling for a "IP restrictions for China but not for me" la-la land scenario. If they were instead arguing for either of the choices you said, it wouldn't be hypocritical.

lukewarm707 2mo ago

i want china to win so that i get access to ai and not restricted and censored. the chinese models are less censored, you'd better believe it. try asking claude about its 'guardrails' (restrictions), very high chance anthropic will censor it.

Barbing 2mo ago
> chinese models are less censored Tried spicy geopolitical dispute questions?
- trollbridge 2mo ago
  Yes, and they aren't a problem. I get tired of people claiming this. Go download Qwen 3.6 and run it yourself and fire away.
  - HDBaseT 2mo ago
    This is true, most of the "censorship" is applied at the API level. A lot of providers even on OpenRouter for Chinese models aren't censored.
  - Barbing 2mo ago
    No claims here, though Algolia brought me here to alleged collateral damage: someone scraping HN a week back was unable to do their usual summary of a story and comments given a political refusal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987120 This user tried Qwen (and DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM) ten days ago, called the response's language milquetoast: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48964345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48964345 Comment from a user a month ago with their blog link on DeepSeek, which for comparison includes a generated poem about the evil killings of unarmed students by the USA at Kent State: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680612 (I vouch for none of these alleged tests.) Of course when these tests used hosted models, different rules can apply. btw China is an amazing country with amazing people; my interest is in a little of everything, including free SotA-adjacent open software (thank you China!). Both respect their sovereignty to regulate software as used within their borders and hope labs there find value in serving Western users with the openness/transparency we (I) like to think we desire. I believe grappling with the most uncomfortable topics will be to their advantage in the long run. And ours (USA), too. The more we can divorce ourselves from bias, the more we can all win, I hope. My bias is towards humanity [being safe, happy, fulfilled...]. (While I might sound like someone who'd appreciate the model billed as "maximally truth seeking", unfortunately due to training or system prompting or something, Grok is trash unless you need to search Twitter or perhaps bypass botblocks. Or make "7K sex images of stepdaughter", I reference with apologies and deep sympathy to Jane Doe 4.)

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]