Item — HN Reader

Well that's a bad example because a UI isn't a model.

But if you hold that it's true that returns compound and that they do so for intelligence/performance for AI models, then having the lead matters quite a bit and eventually you'll just get into an iPhone vs Android Dollar General situation where sure they do the same thing and one is even substantially cheaper but all the profits go to the iPhone.

If you hold that the lead doesn't matter, then the buildout of data centers and compute capacity which is also what the Chinese are doing will just go to make money for American companies serving whatever open-source models come into being for the rest of however long the world itself lasts. Then China can take the lead and spend a trillion dollars, we'll copy their models (which according to you is a great strategy), and release them open source.

You can't have it both ways.

1 comments

I am not sure what you mean by this `Well that's a bad example because a UI isn't a model.`. OpenAI and Anthropic simply refuse to work on signup/login applications, tell you more about cancer or other "biology" or AI stuff. That makes them just a crappy product.

I think China's strategy is to sell you products with AI embedded (i.e. robots, washing machines etc) not chat subscriptions like OpenAI and Anthropic. China sees AI as infrastructure (i.e. internet bandwidth speed) not necessary a product.

Being the best matters but what you fail to see is that the open models are just sooo close and on some tasks (i.e cyber) they are better. And if you like analogies you should compare VHS vs Betamax. VHS won due the porn stuff...The history is full with example where OPEN and convenience wins over the closed stuff.

That aside I wouldn't be surprised if china releases a better open model than OpenAI and Anthropic. I would very much like to see that after (if) OpenAI and Anthropic IPO...

> I am not sure what you mean by this `Well that's a bad example because a UI isn't a model.`.

Sorry I thought you were talking about the actual UIs of the model providers (desktop apps for example), not whether or not they will build out login processes.

> I think China's strategy is to sell you products with AI embedded (i.e. robots, washing machines etc) not chat subscriptions like OpenAI and Anthropic. China sees AI as infrastructure (i.e. internet bandwidth speed) not necessary a product.

If that's the best thing we'll just do it too and we'll ban Chinese machines in the US at least and eventually most of the entire west.

> Being the best matters but what you fail to see is that the open models are just sooo close and on some tasks (i.e cyber) they are better. And if you like analogies you should compare VHS vs Betamax. VHS won due the porn stuff...The history is full with example where OPEN and convenience wins over the closed stuff.

Ok and then we'll just release open-weight models while Chinese models are slightly ahead if being ahead doesn't matter much and gain whatever benefits the Chinese have by doing the same.

I think the better comparison would be iPhone versus the Android field.

> I would very much like to see that after (if) OpenAI and Anthropic IPO...

You seem to be cheering for the destruction of western companies and democratic strength. Not a great look.

>> You seem to be cheering for the destruction of western companies and democratic strength. Not a great look.

I am cheering for destruction of monopolies and anti-consumer corporations.

It’s quite something to see how both OpenAI and Anthropic didn’t even IPO and already play the regulatory capture card trying to decide for every democratic and sovereign country and every human being what kind of access they should have to public knowledge and IP work they stole. Of course they also charge a handsome amount for that stolen and regurgitated IP.

Not to mention their abhorrent behaviour:” we give you Fable on subscription, no we don’t , now we do again. We don’t store your data, now we store it for 30 days or forever…(in the meantime people get angry) nevermind we promise we don’t store…”. I would very much enjoy to see Anthropic in particular getting bankrupted and Dario homeless(I know the second part won’t happen). They suffer from too much entitlement.

Something else to keep in mind: Google used to be somewhere on 3rd place. Now it is behind Kimi K3(an open model). So we are on the right track.