An authoritarian regime is not your friend and will pullback the moment their own models become highly capable.
Models aren’t software. Software has a learning curve and costs of adoption. Models and inference are completely fungible.
For example, Chinese models can spread the CCP propaganda and censor the results. You can't change it and may not even notice.
> Models aren’t software.
Models are software. They run on computers, require development, can have bugs etc. They can be downloaded or provided as SaaS.
> Models and inference are completely fungible.
Until the next version of DeepSeek becomes closed and you will only have the access to the last good open-weight model.
Lock-in means you can’t switch to a different model or a different provider because the cost (in time or money) of switching is high. Censorship and propaganda have nothing to do with it. You can switch to DeepSeek in an instant. You can switch away from it in an instant. The switching cost is zero.
And no, models are data files. The inference engines are software. Models run on many engines and most engines support many models. Another example of how there’s no lock-in: you can switch both models and engines at no cost. If you’re using an inference provider, they probably offer many models you can switch between, and you can switch to a different provider with no effort.
If the next version of DeepSeek becomes closed then you can switch to GLM or Kimi or MiniMax or whatever else in two seconds, or keep on using the last open version of DeepSeek. Zero lock-in.
Is it going to shut the laptop's lid when i'm not looking and pinch my fingers?
China has zero independent media and has the largest and most sophisticated censorship and surveillance state in the world.
Trump would love to have the absolute power that Xi has, but thankfully doesn’t.
Tired of this lazy whataboutism.
Trump kicked and banned major news orgs from the White House just now. You’d have to be will fully ignorant or really naive to believe we have fair and just media.
That’s what I thought. There is a reason independent journalists on YT are having great success right now because legacy media is trash, bought and paid for.
Why do you think journalists are creating shows like “Mehdi Hasan unfiltered”?
You can’t in goodwill with a straight face say American media is just. Western media overall is bought and paid for.
>That’s what I thought.
Wow, you got me with your nonsequitur strawman argument that you answered yourself and isn't even true. It's easy to identify sophists with how quickly the bring up Israel out of nowhere.
Love the arguments btw. Your position is so cut and dry that you can’t even support it with evidence.
Third world societies are not "brainwashed" one way or another with respect to that.
We just see those governments throwing shade at each other. And bullying us ina similar way.
You said "for me they are the same". Not in reply to someone saying "to me they're different", but to someone saying they're very different in nature, which they are. That's not a perspective, that's changing the subject and making it about you.
> They are not what they are to you, they are not just whatever you care about, they are what they actually are.
You wrote that. It's a useless comment, adds nothing to the discussion and reads like you are trying to be clever and failing at it. Learn to articulate.
You are arguing with another user; it was I who said it.
They have some differences, yet they are the same in a lot of ways. Some people cannot see it because they have been educated a certain way. Lots of people in China really believe they are right and the US is wrong. Same in Korea, Same in Rusia. Similary, a lot of people in the US are educated to believe the US is "the best country in the world", "the good guys", "always right"; they are not.
I can agree to to it with the qualifier "in a lot of ways", just not without. We learn about a lot of US crimes by the reporting of US citizens and journalists, a lot of which is available to buy and re-print within the US. Meanwhile, people in China still cannot simply remember Tiananmen, much less publish books about it.
Also at the end of the day what matters is whether the government serves the people and the peoples quality of life.
Quality of life for the Chinese people has steadily increased. Quality of life for the American people has steadily decreased.
The whole point of AI is to get rid of you so rich people can play with the planet like it's minecraft. Software engineers just think they're special because they're the ones building it like they'll get a pat on the head for being good little servants to the investor class. Or worse, that their portfolios will let them be the gods who rule over ashes.
https://www.anthropic.com/research/glm-5-3-and-the-spread-of...
It's VERY clear that the US companies are trying to push for regulation to kill open models and open weights. I see this as much more hostile and authoritarian response than what we're seeing come out of China right now.
So is China going to always publish in the open? No clue. But right now they're modeling much better behavior.
They don't have to be our friends to act in our interest.
The point is get what you can from both to develop open models, data and tools.
Or did they not pull back when their models allegedly became highly capable, with the whole mythos debacle ?
Absolutely. In fact, the authoritarian regime already did try to force export controls on major frontier labs not long go so this isn't a theoretical.