alt Hacker NewsThis is the major reason China has been investing in open-source LLMs: because the U.S. publicly announced its plans to restrict AI access into tiers, and certain countries — of course including China — were at the lowest tier of access. [1]
If the U.S. doesn't control the weights, though, it can't restrict China from accessing the models...
1: https://thefuturemedia.eu/new-u-s-rules-aim-to-govern-ais-gl...
Replies
dist-epoch • yesterday at 8:37 PM
It isn't "China" which open-source LLMs, but individual Chinese labs.
China didn't yet made a sovereign move on AI, besides investing in research/hardware.
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slanterns • yesterday at 9:20 PM
and Anthropic bans access from China along with throwing some politic propagenda bs
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Why wouldn't China just keep their own weights secret as well?
If this really is a geopolitical play(I'm not sure if it is or isn't), it could be along the lines of: 1) most AI development in the US is happening at private companies with balance sheets, share holders, and profit motives. 2) China may be lagging in compute to beat everyone to the punch in a naked race
Therefore, releasing open weights may create a situation where AI companies can't as effectively sell their services, meaning they may curtail r&d at a certain point. China can then pour nearly infinite money into it and eventually get up to speed on compute and win the race