alt Hacker News> I'm sort of baffled by what the entities that train the open-weights models get out of it though. Is it just a direct play to undercut the US providers because they view them as a threat? I just don't really understand the business model behind it.
In China, it's because they are being heavily subsidized to do the research activity. It's not really complicated -- if you allocate public money for people do to a thing, they will do it.
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> it's because they are being heavily subsidized to do the research activity
Is it actually true? This seems pivotal because currently most theories rest on the idea that individual Chinese companies are acting in China's overall economic or strategic interest. It's a tough sell to believe they all just do that through implicit desire to align with the CCP's direction. I would believe it much more easily if there were concrete incentives involved.
You could say the same thing about Linux in the 90's and 00's. And yet here we are.
Remember the Halloween papers?
China wants the US economy to flounder. Building our entire growth model on software that can be copied and taken by a small group of people will have no possible consequences.
China is known to spread love and kindness through markets with no self-interest, after all.