Item — HN Reader

> Especially outside the US customers are going to be very hesitant to keep adopting LLMs from US companies.

Not really. There aren't any other choices, and the PRC also heavily utilizes export controls [0].

This is why sovereign AI has become important, as can be seen with EU NatSec uses cases tending to use Mistral [1] and Indian governments starting to use Sarvam [2].

That said, for most commercial usecases, older generations of Opus as well as enterprise grade GPT and Gemini are fairly good.

The distilled OSS models are alright for hobbyists but if you have actually used unrestricted and enterprise grade versions of Claude, Mythos, GPT, and Gemini (most hobbyists don't get access to these) you see how far behind the open weight models are.

Even in China, traditionally open minded models teams like Alibaba's Qwen are looking to become more restricted given the org changes [3].

Also, Corporate RFCs now demand final say on model used and depending on the geo, this can be a dealbreaker (eg. An American financial institution will absolutely blacklist a vendor if they use a Chinese model and same in reverse and European defense vendors mandate sovereign EU models depending on the opportunity).

[0] - https://www.allbrightlaw.com/EN/10475/f9d4055e47e81afb.aspx

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/mistral-defen...

[2] - https://www.sarvam.ai/blogs/partnerships-with-indian-states

[3] - https://www.ft.com/content/b39da303-3188-447b-8b65-3dd8dad8b...

3 comments

> The PRC also heavily utilizes export controls

Matters not for open weight models, no?

> if you have actually used unrestricted and enterprise grade versions of Claude, Mythos, GPT, and Gemini you see how far behind the open weight models are.

I really do feel like DeepSeek V4 Pro is often better than current Sonnet is, in the general case.

Opus 4.7 is a solid step above Sonnet, and Fable was a solid step above Opus 4.7. I've only had Fable for a few days, obviously, but I was decently impressed after Opus 4.8 being a downright disappointment for me (it's just too buggy; I had it go out of control 3 separate times on things Opus 4.7 never had any trouble with.) I still ran into limitations. It's not world-endingly great.

So, based on that, I think DeepSeek V4 Pro is, ignoring multi-modal capabilities, about a couple solid steps behind. Assuming model iteration will continue to decelerate, especially as Anthropic heads into IPO, I'm guessing that DeepSeek will probably be able to strike back with something further along. Of course we'll see how able and willing they are to stay open weight, but they've done well so far so, no reason to doubt them at the moment.

(There are some models that claim to be ahead of DeepSeek V4 Pro. I've tried some of them and really not been that impressed. Maybe it's a me issue.)

Now I reckon that most people just simply don't really need Mythos/Fable for most of what they do and using Mythos/Fable tokens in place of Sonnet-tier models would not make any sense. At my job we already mostly just use Sonnet as it is. I'm sure there is some cutting-edge research where you want the absolute best model available and sure, in that case, you're stuck with Anthropic for the moment.

But is that really everyone? After all, while Mythos was dominating the hype cycles, quite a lot of impressive LLM-assisted CVEs dropped that were not linked to Mythos.

> There aren't any other choices

This might be the trigger for creating other choices. Not within a month, but things can change quickly.

I randomly received an email from chatgpt saying my account was suspended. I appealed it and got it back - I hadn't used it in months.

But this has left a sour taste in my mouth. What if I relied on it for mission critical business processes?

This is potentially far worse than say a gmail account going down. It's the stuff of nightmare fuel.

Not having an alternative is a massive risk for any business.

The issue is compute is constraint and export controlled, as is even knowhow in model training.

Edit: Can't reply

> Time to build fabs back in the states

We are and did. The Intel and TSMC fabs have already started 2nm fabrication.

Compute was constrained. There is a lot happening, especially with chinese chips which currently points to a massive upcoming increase in non-US capacity.

ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ekndZwyOzo

They are export controlled in most cases as well.

Also, the EU, Japan, SK, ASEAN, and India are not supportive of using Chinese tech after China export controlled rare earth exports last years [0].

Software supply chain regulations also make utilizing Chinese software risky for ExChina players and make using ExChina tech risky for Chinese players.

Expect to see RFCs now demanding visibility into what models are used and right of refusal - this is already the norm in F1000s. Similar ones are likely to arise in the EU as well with some of the upcoming industrial policy changes being proposed.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-is-making-it-harde...

> as is even knowhow in model training

you think its that hard to get trade secrets from some openai or anthropic engineer if you promise them anonymity and a new better paid position? hell they might even give it away for free if they think what their company is doing is morally wrong. know how is not source code, you cant catch it with dlp or online leak scanners. you would need 24/7 combined human and electronic surveillance and thats something even the cia reserves for top level targets, it takes too much manpower to use it on everyone.

SMIC hired hundreds of TSMC employees and now its a couple years away from 3nm equivalent chips in full production. export controls only work against poor countries with less advanced industry like russia. china has the resources and export controls give the motivation. and if the eu/us relations get even worse i wouldnt be surprised if the dutch government let asml start selling euv machines to everyone just to get back at trump.

If you’re talking about TSMC Arizona they aren’t fabricating at N3 until end of next year at the earliest, N2 isn’t slated until “end of decade”. I think they’re manufacturing Blackwell there which is N4 / 4nm

Source: https://www.tsmc.com/static/abouttsmcaz/index.htm

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/nv...

Not sure if this is true - I’ve been using mimo and it’s great