Wall St and Big VC owned software companies seem to forget how much of the long term brand value and durable market share of your company, IE making it a multi decade permanent fixture of the business instead of just a fad, actually comes from the community you build around your product.
You need a community version for people to learn on, lots of open source integration libraries for connecting it with your other systems inside the client company buying the product, a way for people to be able to debug it and contribute back fixes when something doesn't work, etc.
Otherwise it just turns into another mammoth stuck in the La Brea tarpits. Fossilized, ossified, hidebound, sclerotic, and condemned to software archaeology and paleontology and eventually replaced with something else.
It's sad to see the US has forgotten this by going overboard on unchecked guardrail free misinterpretations of our economic system and now China is picking up the slack when we did most of the work to kick start it.
But I am glad China is doing more to embrace transparency and the outside academic world. Xi Jinping can be pretty backwards in comparison to some of their previous leaders but they're doing amazing work in opening up AI for the masses, no question.
They are pushing out open models at or near the best in class in many areas at something like 1/10th to 1/5th of the R&D costs of the US sector equivalents.
Hot take. China is doing its usual tactic, flood the market with high quality cheap products to destroy competition. China will be the last one left standing and end up controlling the entire market.
My opinion is that China is obviously not doing this to make money, they're doing it for a strategic ad advantage in AI.
Where the US tries to slow down Chinese AI through sanctions and restriction of technology ..China tries to kill western AI by removing all financial incentive to play in this field (by flooding the market with a free alternative).
The interesting thing in this case is that the usual tactic you're referring to previously generally always involved corner cutting and a race to the bottom.
Whereas their AI stuff is good enough on its own merits to be best in class or within spitting distance of many best in class tools.
Meanwhile credible third party analyses have shown that even independent of potential state subsidies their R&D costs are tremendously lower for surprisingly good results.
R&D cost include labor right? That doesn't surprise me that Chinese labor in China is pennies on the dollar compared to the eye watering cost of labor in the bay area.
I think that's part of it. They have some advantages in a better energy grid because we let ours get stale. But they also figured out some fundamental technical wins like making nearly top class results with much cheaper and less fancy GPUs.
And they have a really massive educated technical workforce and, for one of the first times in the history of tech in China, a whole shit ton of innovative startups passing ideas back and forth through research and the open source community like wildfire.
They've got DeepSeek, Z.ai, MiniMax, StepFun, Moonshot, ... Way beyond just Qwen from Alibaba Cloud.
You have no idea how much people in the Chinese AI/IT industry get paid. It’s less than in the US in absolute $ amount, but it’s not pennies—it's roughly one-third of what we get paid here in the Bay Area (based on direct comparisons like TikTok Shanghai vs. TikTok Bay Area, or Google Shanghai vs. Google MTV). However, the cost of living in China is pennies compared to the Bay Area (except house purchasing). The purchasing power paid in China is slightly higher compared to the Bay Area.
China is doing its usual tactic, flood the market with high quality cheap products to destroy competition
the US also does this but to lesser extent in the international markets. overseas, the US uses political subterfuge and military force to manipulate markets (e.g. military blockade of venezuela and trying to install puppet leader and overthrow president maduro for his petroleum)
another facet is that china cares about win-win cooperation more than the US. if china's open source AI takes off then it will benefit china and it doesn't mind if it also benefits the rest of the world to a lesser degree. in contrast, the US wants pure domination and push down others - as reflected in biden's 3 tier chip export controls.
Eh, you're a lot more generous to China than I am. I'm convinced Chinas tactic is to get the world to rely on their free models.
This means the world is less likely to be hostile towards China since it provides free models.
It also means the rest of the world now lacks the expertise to develop their own AI and their competence in AI is at the whim of China. It's not a good position to be in.
that is what china wants. it's no different from why the US wants to something similar to the world being completely reliant on US companies for their operating systems (e.g. microsoft windows, apple OS, android).
the US also wants this for chip architecture and AI development. straight from jensen huang emphasizing how important it is to make nvidia the chip center of the world to establish US dominance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0lVKwulOdM. later on trump tried to use chip export restrictions against china and now china is building a alternative to share it to the rest of the world.
They want the same kind of soft power that the US has. Don't like us? You will be sanctioned, denied access to the world financial markets, or overthrown by protestors who are definitely not funded by the CIA. Except with China it will be denial of access of strategic imports of various kinds or losing access to their market.
I've been pointing out since DeepSeek that, setting aside any questions about whether LLMs are useful, the fact that there is no moat means that the valuations are total nonsense. The only way, e.g., OpenAI or Anthropic can produce an adequate return is if users just fail to adopt cheaper options.
The extent to which tech plays have, since Uber, actually been branding plays should have scared more people.
Open source is behind most of the internet economy as we know it. I suspect AI model would become just another commodity, maybe not now but eventually, then just like internet economy, application owners (like google or facebook of previous era) would be the main force for both making money and driving tech forward as opposed to companies doing more foundational stuff.
Most MLEs and AI researchers are Chinese, Russian, or Jewish. With some rare diversity in ethnicity beyond these three groups. So it’s not surprising that Chinese developed AI is “catching up”, a good portion of the people developing AI in the U.S. are from China.
The most interesting aspect though, is that American AI foundational models are predominantly from the largest and most well funded companies. The leading Chinese models are from lesser known small companies, with the exception of alibaba
Building American tech using Chinese tools is one of the most foolish and short-sighted things anybody in the industry could do. It’s insane that SV decision makers are going with Chinese tech. The Trojan horse is looking at us from the annals of history and thinking “wow, it’s that easy?”
American tech is willfully exposing itself to insane amounts of vulnerability by using Chinese tech. Any security expert worth their salt will tell you to stay the fuck away from using any Chinese product.
Mark my words. There’s a reason the US government blanket outlawed using Chinese software and hardware across the board. Short-term profits in exchange for destroying your OPSEC will go down in history, but not in the way you want.
Regardless of specifics, it feels foolish to think building our platforms with something china is presenting on a silver platter doesn’t come with some sort of catch. Like, granted I’m maybe just being paranoid, but as a programmer and an avid consumer of history this feels like a terrible idea. I don’t think this is the free lunch it’s being presented as.
Wall St and Big VC owned software companies seem to forget how much of the long term brand value and durable market share of your company, IE making it a multi decade permanent fixture of the business instead of just a fad, actually comes from the community you build around your product.
You need a community version for people to learn on, lots of open source integration libraries for connecting it with your other systems inside the client company buying the product, a way for people to be able to debug it and contribute back fixes when something doesn't work, etc.
Otherwise it just turns into another mammoth stuck in the La Brea tarpits. Fossilized, ossified, hidebound, sclerotic, and condemned to software archaeology and paleontology and eventually replaced with something else.
It's sad to see the US has forgotten this by going overboard on unchecked guardrail free misinterpretations of our economic system and now China is picking up the slack when we did most of the work to kick start it.
But I am glad China is doing more to embrace transparency and the outside academic world. Xi Jinping can be pretty backwards in comparison to some of their previous leaders but they're doing amazing work in opening up AI for the masses, no question.
They are pushing out open models at or near the best in class in many areas at something like 1/10th to 1/5th of the R&D costs of the US sector equivalents.
Forgot? Wallstreet only lives a quarter mile at a time bro XD
Yes. But they didn't always do that.
The amount of time companies stay in the S&P 500 has declined over time.
I think the excessive amount of nitro and inadequate gasoline they put in their tanks is a big reason for the higher volatility.
Hot take. China is doing its usual tactic, flood the market with high quality cheap products to destroy competition. China will be the last one left standing and end up controlling the entire market.
My opinion is that China is obviously not doing this to make money, they're doing it for a strategic ad advantage in AI.
Where the US tries to slow down Chinese AI through sanctions and restriction of technology ..China tries to kill western AI by removing all financial incentive to play in this field (by flooding the market with a free alternative).
The interesting thing in this case is that the usual tactic you're referring to previously generally always involved corner cutting and a race to the bottom. Whereas their AI stuff is good enough on its own merits to be best in class or within spitting distance of many best in class tools.
Meanwhile credible third party analyses have shown that even independent of potential state subsidies their R&D costs are tremendously lower for surprisingly good results.
R&D cost include labor right? That doesn't surprise me that Chinese labor in China is pennies on the dollar compared to the eye watering cost of labor in the bay area.
I think that's part of it. They have some advantages in a better energy grid because we let ours get stale. But they also figured out some fundamental technical wins like making nearly top class results with much cheaper and less fancy GPUs.
And they have a really massive educated technical workforce and, for one of the first times in the history of tech in China, a whole shit ton of innovative startups passing ideas back and forth through research and the open source community like wildfire.
They've got DeepSeek, Z.ai, MiniMax, StepFun, Moonshot, ... Way beyond just Qwen from Alibaba Cloud.
You have no idea how much people in the Chinese AI/IT industry get paid. It’s less than in the US in absolute $ amount, but it’s not pennies—it's roughly one-third of what we get paid here in the Bay Area (based on direct comparisons like TikTok Shanghai vs. TikTok Bay Area, or Google Shanghai vs. Google MTV). However, the cost of living in China is pennies compared to the Bay Area (except house purchasing). The purchasing power paid in China is slightly higher compared to the Bay Area.
the US also does this but to lesser extent in the international markets. overseas, the US uses political subterfuge and military force to manipulate markets (e.g. military blockade of venezuela and trying to install puppet leader and overthrow president maduro for his petroleum)
another facet is that china cares about win-win cooperation more than the US. if china's open source AI takes off then it will benefit china and it doesn't mind if it also benefits the rest of the world to a lesser degree. in contrast, the US wants pure domination and push down others - as reflected in biden's 3 tier chip export controls.
Eh, you're a lot more generous to China than I am. I'm convinced Chinas tactic is to get the world to rely on their free models. This means the world is less likely to be hostile towards China since it provides free models.
It also means the rest of the world now lacks the expertise to develop their own AI and their competence in AI is at the whim of China. It's not a good position to be in.
We saw this in solar panels, EVs and now AI.
that is what china wants. it's no different from why the US wants to something similar to the world being completely reliant on US companies for their operating systems (e.g. microsoft windows, apple OS, android).
the US also wants this for chip architecture and AI development. straight from jensen huang emphasizing how important it is to make nvidia the chip center of the world to establish US dominance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0lVKwulOdM. later on trump tried to use chip export restrictions against china and now china is building a alternative to share it to the rest of the world.
They want the same kind of soft power that the US has. Don't like us? You will be sanctioned, denied access to the world financial markets, or overthrown by protestors who are definitely not funded by the CIA. Except with China it will be denial of access of strategic imports of various kinds or losing access to their market.
I've been pointing out since DeepSeek that, setting aside any questions about whether LLMs are useful, the fact that there is no moat means that the valuations are total nonsense. The only way, e.g., OpenAI or Anthropic can produce an adequate return is if users just fail to adopt cheaper options.
The extent to which tech plays have, since Uber, actually been branding plays should have scared more people.
That's pretty interesting that the Chinese model offers more privacy and security since it can be run locally
If you’ve ever run a quantized model locally you’d know the quality drop off makes it unimplementable.
Open source is behind most of the internet economy as we know it. I suspect AI model would become just another commodity, maybe not now but eventually, then just like internet economy, application owners (like google or facebook of previous era) would be the main force for both making money and driving tech forward as opposed to companies doing more foundational stuff.
I have full faith in the open source community on finding and fixing vulnerabilities.
Hahaha! Pot calling the kettle black
Which was in turn built on free American AI
Most MLEs and AI researchers are Chinese, Russian, or Jewish. With some rare diversity in ethnicity beyond these three groups. So it’s not surprising that Chinese developed AI is “catching up”, a good portion of the people developing AI in the U.S. are from China.
The most interesting aspect though, is that American AI foundational models are predominantly from the largest and most well funded companies. The leading Chinese models are from lesser known small companies, with the exception of alibaba
Building American tech using Chinese tools is one of the most foolish and short-sighted things anybody in the industry could do. It’s insane that SV decision makers are going with Chinese tech. The Trojan horse is looking at us from the annals of history and thinking “wow, it’s that easy?”
American tech is willfully exposing itself to insane amounts of vulnerability by using Chinese tech. Any security expert worth their salt will tell you to stay the fuck away from using any Chinese product.
Mark my words. There’s a reason the US government blanket outlawed using Chinese software and hardware across the board. Short-term profits in exchange for destroying your OPSEC will go down in history, but not in the way you want.
It’s open source. You don’t need to run it on Chinese servers and can see the code.
Simply being open-source doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any problems or vulnerabilities.
I’m not smart enough to point out the exact place in the code where the problem is. There have been some issues loosely highlighted already:
https://www.techradar.com/vpn/experts-warn-deepseek-is-11-times-more-dangerous-than-other-ai-chatbots
Regardless of specifics, it feels foolish to think building our platforms with something china is presenting on a silver platter doesn’t come with some sort of catch. Like, granted I’m maybe just being paranoid, but as a programmer and an avid consumer of history this feels like a terrible idea. I don’t think this is the free lunch it’s being presented as.