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> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better mode

> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better models, and a crackdown on model distillation. You have to be the embodiment of hubris to believe the only reason a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people with several AI labs and government support can make competitive models is because they all distill yours.

bpodgursky 12d ago
Nobody thinks a distillation crackdown is a long term plan, but it does delay Chinese labs for the couple years while they are compute-starved. Of course they could make competitive models if they were drowning in NVIDIA chips but they aren't, and the native ones aren't at scale production for at least a year.
- benxh 12d ago
  At the current pace of iteration from Deepseek I think this is a moot point, they'll keep building their own RL environments, and just keep RL on top of whatever flavor of model they can train/host on their Huawei SuperPods
- toasty228 12d ago
  If anything it'll speed up their progress by forcing local solutions. https://www.heise.de/en/news/DeepSeek-orders-160-000-Huawei-AI-chips-for-new-data-center-11443963.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/DeepSeek-orders-160-000-Huawei-...
  - bpodgursky 12d ago
    > According to Bloomberg, supply bottlenecks for high-end memory and other key components could limit chip production this year. Since Huawei also has to serve other customers, DeepSeek might have to wait over a year for the full delivery, estimates Bloomberg. Like I said, it will delay the Chinese labs for a couple years. These are not even top-line chips. Frankly, China was not going to allow them to depend on NVIDIA forever, I don't think this motivates domestic production that much over the counterfactual. If NVIDIA didn't have export controls, China was going to set up formal import controls. They want to own their entire supply chain.
    - lightedman 12d ago
      "Like I said, it will delay the Chinese labs for a couple years." Not even that long. China can simply order its industries to stop supplying externally and go full-domestic. It has happened before in others parts of Chinese industry; it will happen again. As it stands China can easily build computational nodes at scale, and their LineShine supercomputer holds top place in the Supercomputer Top 500 at almost 2.2 exaflops. They have zero issues building performant hardware. Couple of years? Their current technology level can make that less than a month.
    - toasty228 12d ago
      They'll build five data centers by the time that 1m wide pot hole on your local highway ramp gets a (half assed) fix.
      - bpodgursky 12d ago
        They will build data centers but not have the chips to put in them until 2028. I don't know why you're arguing about things I'm not saying.
- giantrobot 12d ago
  But they're not compute starved. NVidia's kit is convenient for compute but not absolutely necessary. Chinese labs have been training with Huawei chips already. They also have a huge supply of existing Nvidia gear to use. Just because it's not the absolute latest generation isn't really important. Also as we have seen, the Chinese labs will just buy their kit through cut outs or do training in locations where there's no embargo.
toasty228 12d ago
They have such a weird and outdated view of China, it's almost comical. It's like America's answer to everything bad coming to them is protectionism. They still think China is a third world country with a bunch of factories and polluting industries not able to do anything else other than manufacturing products for foreign companies
- scottLobster 12d ago
  The alternative to protectionism is Chinese-style industrial policy. Which necessitates Chinese-style "we don't care if you're a billionaire, you will do as we say or men with guns will make you" levels of governmental control. Which I'm not sure any of us really want, as satisfying as it would to watch these CEOs get publicly re-educated. They aren't patriotic and they don't really care about competing with China, they fancy themselves princes and are playing on the silents/boomers in charge being irreparably stuck in the Cold War.
- rglover 12d ago
  China played the smart long game and took advantage of America's ignorance and short-sighted thinking. They already "won" in the sense that they outmaneuvered the U.S. because they relied on flaws in human nature (specifically, greed). Their moves around AI are just more of the same clever behavior. I don't agree with all of their means for getting here, but to accomplish what they have in ~30 or so years [1] should blow minds far more than it does in the West. And they did it by convincing us to give them control of our manufacturing and selling us (literal) boatloads of cheap junk. Historians will look back on this era as one of the greatest demonstrations of "winning without firing a single shot." This whole insular POV is tired, ignorant, and frankly just another indicator that America has lost the plot, shit-faced on its own arrogance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China
  - altcognito 12d ago
    China deliberately adopted western style market institutions. They joined the WTO. No, they aren't a fully westernized market, but they are closer to a competitive marketplace than the state dictating all of what will or will not be built. I'm confused, what has America and the west lost the plot on? You would have preferred the west to exploit China more? This framing of a zero sum game is counterproductive.
amluto 12d ago
It’s not only hubris — I think it’s actively counterproductive. The US could choose to: (a) Sell many billions of dollars of fancy chips to China, thus bringing in billions of dollars of money and billions of dollars of trade balance improvement. And let China continue to build models quickly when they seem oddly happy to export the trained weights for free. Or (b) Decline to do so, thus reducing exports and very very strongly encouraging China to do everything in their power to avoid needing to depend on our chips. In exchange for (b), what do we gain? A temporary advantage in model training and availability?
- superxpro12 12d ago
  This admin is super in favor of isolationist policies right now. Whatever can bring in the most bribes. To the detriment of 99% of the public.
- ygjb 11d ago
  Don't forget that when they increase export restrictions under the current US regime they signal further that economic ties are on their terms not fair terms. The rest of the world will continue to steer towards alternatives to US tech.
sschueller 12d ago
Also, distillation means paying US AI firms api fees. Do they want to loose that source of income as well?
rayiner 12d ago
Underestimating China's capability to make homegrown technology is a mistake I could understand 20 years ago. Now it's just a sign of poor judgment.
dfxm12 12d ago
I don't think Amodei is dumb. He just doesn't want to compete for the chips. Sinophobia sells right now, so this is the angle he's going with.
LiquidSky 12d ago
It's funny because this is EXACTLY how it played out with Japan in the mid-20th century. "Japan can only make cheap copies of our stuff!" They even joke about it in Back to the Future.
- lioeters 12d ago
  People joke how we live in Idiocracy now, but Back to the Future really nailed it with the dystopian world ruled by Biff the billionaire bully with no class or taste.

bpodgursky 12d ago

Nobody thinks a distillation crackdown is a long term plan, but it does delay Chinese labs for the couple years while they are compute-starved. Of course they could make competitive models if they were drowning in NVIDIA chips but they aren't, and the native ones aren't at scale production for at least a year.

benxh 12d ago
At the current pace of iteration from Deepseek I think this is a moot point, they'll keep building their own RL environments, and just keep RL on top of whatever flavor of model they can train/host on their Huawei SuperPods
toasty228 12d ago
If anything it'll speed up their progress by forcing local solutions. https://www.heise.de/en/news/DeepSeek-orders-160-000-Huawei-AI-chips-for-new-data-center-11443963.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/DeepSeek-orders-160-000-Huawei-...
- bpodgursky 12d ago
  > According to Bloomberg, supply bottlenecks for high-end memory and other key components could limit chip production this year. Since Huawei also has to serve other customers, DeepSeek might have to wait over a year for the full delivery, estimates Bloomberg. Like I said, it will delay the Chinese labs for a couple years. These are not even top-line chips. Frankly, China was not going to allow them to depend on NVIDIA forever, I don't think this motivates domestic production that much over the counterfactual. If NVIDIA didn't have export controls, China was going to set up formal import controls. They want to own their entire supply chain.
  - lightedman 12d ago
    "Like I said, it will delay the Chinese labs for a couple years." Not even that long. China can simply order its industries to stop supplying externally and go full-domestic. It has happened before in others parts of Chinese industry; it will happen again. As it stands China can easily build computational nodes at scale, and their LineShine supercomputer holds top place in the Supercomputer Top 500 at almost 2.2 exaflops. They have zero issues building performant hardware. Couple of years? Their current technology level can make that less than a month.
  - toasty228 12d ago
    They'll build five data centers by the time that 1m wide pot hole on your local highway ramp gets a (half assed) fix.
    - bpodgursky 12d ago
      They will build data centers but not have the chips to put in them until 2028. I don't know why you're arguing about things I'm not saying.
giantrobot 12d ago
But they're not compute starved. NVidia's kit is convenient for compute but not absolutely necessary. Chinese labs have been training with Huawei chips already. They also have a huge supply of existing Nvidia gear to use. Just because it's not the absolute latest generation isn't really important. Also as we have seen, the Chinese labs will just buy their kit through cut outs or do training in locations where there's no embargo.

toasty228 12d ago

They have such a weird and outdated view of China, it's almost comical. It's like America's answer to everything bad coming to them is protectionism. They still think China is a third world country with a bunch of factories and polluting industries not able to do anything else other than manufacturing products for foreign companies

scottLobster 12d ago
The alternative to protectionism is Chinese-style industrial policy. Which necessitates Chinese-style "we don't care if you're a billionaire, you will do as we say or men with guns will make you" levels of governmental control. Which I'm not sure any of us really want, as satisfying as it would to watch these CEOs get publicly re-educated. They aren't patriotic and they don't really care about competing with China, they fancy themselves princes and are playing on the silents/boomers in charge being irreparably stuck in the Cold War.
rglover 12d ago
China played the smart long game and took advantage of America's ignorance and short-sighted thinking. They already "won" in the sense that they outmaneuvered the U.S. because they relied on flaws in human nature (specifically, greed). Their moves around AI are just more of the same clever behavior. I don't agree with all of their means for getting here, but to accomplish what they have in ~30 or so years [1] should blow minds far more than it does in the West. And they did it by convincing us to give them control of our manufacturing and selling us (literal) boatloads of cheap junk. Historians will look back on this era as one of the greatest demonstrations of "winning without firing a single shot." This whole insular POV is tired, ignorant, and frankly just another indicator that America has lost the plot, shit-faced on its own arrogance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China
- altcognito 12d ago
  China deliberately adopted western style market institutions. They joined the WTO. No, they aren't a fully westernized market, but they are closer to a competitive marketplace than the state dictating all of what will or will not be built. I'm confused, what has America and the west lost the plot on? You would have preferred the west to exploit China more? This framing of a zero sum game is counterproductive.

amluto 12d ago

It’s not only hubris — I think it’s actively counterproductive. The US could choose to: (a) Sell many billions of dollars of fancy chips to China, thus bringing in billions of dollars of money and billions of dollars of trade balance improvement. And let China continue to build models quickly when they seem oddly happy to export the trained weights for free. Or (b) Decline to do so, thus reducing exports and very very strongly encouraging China to do everything in their power to avoid needing to depend on our chips. In exchange for (b), what do we gain? A temporary advantage in model training and availability?

superxpro12 12d ago
This admin is super in favor of isolationist policies right now. Whatever can bring in the most bribes. To the detriment of 99% of the public.
ygjb 11d ago
Don't forget that when they increase export restrictions under the current US regime they signal further that economic ties are on their terms not fair terms. The rest of the world will continue to steer towards alternatives to US tech.

sschueller 12d ago

Also, distillation means paying US AI firms api fees. Do they want to loose that source of income as well?

rayiner 12d ago

Underestimating China's capability to make homegrown technology is a mistake I could understand 20 years ago. Now it's just a sign of poor judgment.

dfxm12 12d ago

I don't think Amodei is dumb. He just doesn't want to compete for the chips. Sinophobia sells right now, so this is the angle he's going with.

LiquidSky 12d ago

It's funny because this is EXACTLY how it played out with Japan in the mid-20th century. "Japan can only make cheap copies of our stuff!" They even joke about it in Back to the Future.

lioeters 12d ago
People joke how we live in Idiocracy now, but Back to the Future really nailed it with the dystopian world ruled by Biff the billionaire bully with no class or taste.