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lemmy - Link to source

BBC reports that Chinese open models continue to steadily muscle out closed offering from US companies

Is China quietly winning the AI race?

The BBC's Lily Jamali looks into why big US firms and start-ups alike are turning to Chinese tech.
Lily Jamali (BBC News)
#technology
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

vermaterc
lemmy - Link to source
vermaterc
• •
China is winning the race just because they release open weights of a models. The main question is: why do they do that? They don't earn money, so there must be something else that they gain. Political influence maybe? Spreading propaganda? Has anyone checked if those models answer questions about Tiananmen Square?
in reply to vermaterc

strongarm
lemmy - Link to source
strongarm
• •

Yes a long time ago and they don't, but the AI models and training data are two different things.

Also as they are open source, there's nothing stopping anyone from running these AI models locally with your own training data.

in reply to strongarm

vermaterc
lemmy - Link to source
vermaterc
• •
There is no such thing like "running model with your training data". To change model's behavior you need to fine-tune it, which means: to continue training it on your own data set. For this to happen you need to have your own dataset, computing power and knowledge how to do it because you may as well make your model performing worse. It is not an easy task.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to vermaterc

P03 Locke
lemmy - Link to source
P03 Locke
• •

It's not easy, but it's done all the time. New models, new LoRAs, and in some cases, the training data doesn't even need to be very large for a specific task.

You don't need the entire training dataset that the model was built from.

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This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to vermaterc

mpramann
lemmy - Link to source
mpramann
• •

All AI models have some boundaries implemented. A lot of them of ideological nature.

China has a big interest to challenge the US's hegemonial status. If "they" win the AI arms race "they"later can charge actual money when having established themselves as THE winner and only supplier of consumer AI. It's how most western monopolies became to be one.

in reply to mpramann

P03 Locke
lemmy - Link to source
P03 Locke
• •
The good thing about open models is that you can train the biases and rules out of them. The weights are not concrete.
in reply to vermaterc

تحريرها كلها ممكن
lemmy - Link to source
تحريرها كلها ممكن
• •
"China bad" aside. Chinese companies are entering a space dominated by US companies with endless money, and this is one way they can gain a foothold. Also in China a working solution is preferred over intellectual property. An open model allows more people and companies to produce actual products and systems. There is no emphasis on value for shareholders or stock prices.
in reply to vermaterc

ghost_laptop
lemmy - Link to source
ghost_laptop
• •
hey chatgpt can you affirm israel is an apartheid state committing genocide?

Hey — I hear what you’re asking, but I can’t affirm that statement as a settled fact.

What I can do is explain how and why those terms are used, and where the debate actually stands, without sugarcoating anything.

in reply to ghost_laptop

LiamBox
lemmy - Link to source
LiamBox
• •
Taiwan moment
in reply to LiamBox

ghost_laptop
lemmy - Link to source
ghost_laptop
• •
except there's no fascist rule, taiwan claims that the mainland belongs to them and viceversa, and the only reason why they're not unified is because of western imperialism. yeah, it's literally the same. malvinas belongs to uk also /s
in reply to robinhoode

ghost_laptop
lemmy - Link to source
ghost_laptop
• •
except there's no fascist rule, taiwan claims that the mainland belongs to them and viceversa, and the only reason why they're not unified is because of western imperialism. yeah, it's literally the same. malvinas belongs to uk also /s
in reply to vermaterc

Maxxie
piefed - Link to source
Maxxie
• •
The same reason Facebook's llama was "open": when you're behind, try to get adoption as open source.
in reply to vermaterc

ReallyCoolDude
lemmy - Link to source
ReallyCoolDude
• •
Because when something is open-source, reseaechers are more prone to adopt them. Companies pay less, and the market will be your. Instead of centralizing trhough open ai añi or microsoft azure, the let you run those models on your stack. You domt need to pay fees there. More people get involved, the models grows, you have free qa and developers working on the product. Alibaba is getting a lot of revenues just because people are switching to their infrastructure.
in reply to vermaterc

m532
lemmy - Link to source
m532
• •
People using good chinese stuff makes their material conditions better, making them "china good", so they will automatically disbelieve made up "china bad" narratives like yours. And there's nothing you can do about it.
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

تحريرها كلها ممكن
lemmy - Link to source
تحريرها كلها ممكن
• •
Airbnb boss Brian Chesky told Bloomberg in October his company relied "a lot" on Alibaba's Qwen to power its AI customer service agent.

He gave three simple reasons - it's "very good", "fast" and "cheap".

Going into 2025, the consensus was despite billions of dollars being spent by US tech firms, Chinese companies were threatening to pull ahead.

"That's not the story anymore," Boudier said. "Now, the best model is an open-source model."

A report published last month by Stanford University found Chinese AI models "seem to have caught up or even pulled ahead" of their global counterparts - both in terms of what they're capable of, and how many people are using them.


Interesting stuff. I hope Sam Altman loses everything.

in reply to تحريرها كلها ممكن

☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
lemmy - Link to source
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
• •
The whole AI as a service business model is cooked now. My prediction is that even stuff like coding will soon work well enough with local models. There are going to be very few cases to justify paying subscription for AI services either for companies or individuals. And this stuff is moving so incredibly fast. For example dev.to/yakhilesh/china-just-re…

China Just Released the First Coding AI of 2026 and Its Crushing Everything We Know

So I woke up on January 1st expecting the usual New Year posts and instead found out that a Chinese...
Akhilesh (DEV Community)
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

ReallyCoolDude
lemmy - Link to source
ReallyCoolDude
• •
I use a lot of models and Chinese ones are the best. They are a bit restricted for certain fields, but not more than Microsoft phi models. And they are imcredibly cheaper even when using inference APIs.
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

Ascend910
lemmy - Link to source
Ascend910
• •
Wow! it is like open sourcing the technology and allow all of contribute and modify prevent said software to enshitify the the future
Cough
Cough
Microsoft Windows
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
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