alt Hacker NewsNon-American maybe, but non-Chinese is likely impractical. We might not want their APIs, but we can't compete on energy and labour for training, even if it means buying licenses to host the weights (which CADA encourages). From China's perspective, what's the case for baking weights they can't sell? Some Chinese models already don't even have the Taiwan politics stuff baked in, those filters are only in their APIs.
I realised after writing this, the EU as is uncomfortably often the case, may be the real forcing function for what happens with US policy irrespective of the media campaigns we're presently seeing. Here's hoping for a steady trickle of stale ChatGPT weights leaking from EU infra providers in the long term.
Replies
Using Chinese models is a bit like using Chinese solar/batteries instead of American gas.
Yes, if the Chinese stop trading, you can still use the existing solar panels (unlike the gas which you literally set on fire), but it's nonetheless a major vulnerability to not have any local know-how in creating important infrastructure.
Giving up all AI know-how and expertise to China just because they currently share their models would be a generational mistake.
Europe already got burned hard by this sort of thing too recently, and is now very sensitive to strateigic depencencies, and is working hard to lift them where possible.
> we can't compete on energy and labour costs for training,
Specialists are expensive everywhere. China is functionally 80s Japan surrounded by several Brasils and all the frontier AI work is being done in that first part, where labour is expensive - if only due to competition for top talent.