Posted by htrp 7 hours ago
I think Anthropic is just marketing / bluffing, because they don't even have the data.
They do distill the models, but they don't go to Anthropic, they just use platforms like aws bedrock, there are too many restrictions on Anthropic's own platform.
This is actually the only way that what Anthropic is alleging would make any kind of sense. And, as a matter of fact, is exactly what every enterprise does to train models.
This kerfuffle should be interesting to watch.
But, as always, everyone (in the US) should fully download all the Chinese models while you can. I suspect this may be the "Phantom Menace" they use to render illegal our use of Chinese AI tech just as they've rendered illegal our use of Chinese cars. Only difference is, we peasants may need the Chinese AI tech to have any chance of competing with Big Tech in the future.
And even with the Chinese tech, as Big Tech spreads their AI out into more and more niche areas, we'll likely still not be able to build startups that can compete with them.
It's just that without Chinese AI tech, we'll have no chance at all.
or is this just about the token reselling?
Whether if it is true or not, this is part of their effort into using them as an example to scare everyone into getting congress to ban powerful models from being accessed outside of the US and also banning powerful local models from being released.
Anthropic does not care about you, and they are not your friends.
In other words, they want to sell Fable or future more powerful models to rest of the world (presumably all future models are going to be more powerful than current gen). One way they can sell this is to the government is by scapegoating China (which is their primary concern anyway).
This is working on the presumption that non-US companies form a material portion of their current revenue.
If it was just "that easy" then I doubt only "Chinese models" would be doing it and we'd already be packed with competition.
Distilling might be a thing but it isn't a free win.
That's not the point. Why is it a country thing? There are plenty of non-China startups in this space having resources at that scale. The "China" has resources is some "Western media narrative" speak. So Meta should have won a long time ago? Or xAI?
> culture (Asians are generally collectively-inclined, so sharing is in their core)
Just stereotype it? So we've gone from China -> "Asian"? Then where is your Korean or Japanese model etc? And somehow you know they're sharing.
> political bent (there will be no diplomatic repercussions) to put up a fight
More inferring from "Western media news"?
Where's the reality?
The media hyped up Gemini / Google TPU free-win last year. How did that go?
Because the China vs US geopolitical situation is a thing. Meta is a social media company, not an AI company, and they direct their focus as such. xAI just never got serious traction so now they're selling their compute. Also if a US company were caught distilling, I think Anthropic could actually take them to court, and I'd guess they don't want that kind of PR.
> Just stereotype it?
Is China not Asian? Are Asians not generally collective/cooperative, as opposed to individualistic/competitive?
The "and" that joined those 3 items is very important: it means you can't pull them apart and address them independently as they each contribute to the context. I'm not too sure about Korea, but in a way Japan is a US colony in all but name. Both are very much politically intertwined with the West (along with RoC/Taiwan), which means nothing major that may be against US interest happens.
The reality is that China and the US are essentially in a trade war, where the latter is trying its best to keep the former in the Dark Ages, because "national security", but the former is refusing to take it lying down and continues to make progress regardless[0], because they have the resources and will.
[0] https://thenextweb.com/news/china-lineshine-supercomputer-to...
“Anthropic, red faced after unattended ice cream cone eaten by ants on park bench, once again demands government pick it as forever winner, adds ‘no take backsies’”
LOL!
Get a grip, son.