The other, more complex one would be “what benefit” are you talking about? Clearly there are some differences in performance regarding speed and token cost, but industry news indicates not a single one has solved the inherent hallucination problem which makes the reliability akin to an untreated schizophrenic research or coding assistant.
What high am I supposed to be getting? Please let me know so I can stop buying drugs
I thought we were past this.
From actually using these models, I disagree. The open weight models are nice for lower cost tasks, but having spent time with a lot of models I cannot agree that the open weight models are roughly the same performance.
Most of us use subscription plans for personal work, which makes the price difference to the hosted open weights models smaller or negligible. I’d rather spend a little more if it reduces the time I have to spend reworking or restarting with new prompts.
Kimi K3 might be close, but it’s not actually open weight yet. They’ve just committed to releasing the weights. The only provider you can get it from is Moonshot. I haven’t spent too much time with it, but from what I’ve seen it’s not actually Fable level even though some benchmarks say that.
Maybe if you're paying API rates, but if your usage fits within the American labs' plan reset windows (5-hour + weekly limits), their plans are likely cheaper than chinese models, because they're heavily discounted[1]
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sst-dev....
If the CCP actually gave a shit about how the West sees them they should lean in on this but the difference between the USSR and China is that the Chinese don't secretly crave acceptance.
So by default you'd be better with one of the Chinese models if you're American.
Chinese models have government-enforced censorship, while American models have security and legal restrictions.
They are both government enforced. The USA administration is using early access and export control restrictions to do their enforcing.
As for the effects: while I'm told the Chinese government is sensitive to some internal political topics, I've never seen it myself. I guess that's because I don't write code dealing on Tiananmen square or similar topics, and I don't know anyone who does. In contrast the restrictions on the USA models are a right proper pain in the arse. Hugging Face being forced to swap Chinese models to defend against the OpenAI GPT attack is a good an illustration as any.
That said, these USA restrictions are a new thing that seemed to start with Mythos - which means around 6 months ago. The Chinese models are (pull number out of the air) 6 months behind, so maybe in 2027 the Chinese models will start behaving like the current US SOTA ones.
You can also make a pretty good case that exactly what you just said, rather than being a demonstration of how free and open the American system is, is a demonstration of how advanced the American system is, wrapping its controls around you with no target to blame or lobby for changes. Is China "more" authoritarian than the American/Western system... or is the American/Western system actually just that much better than China at it?
The security of American hedgemony, and legal restrictions that are due to laws enacted by the American government
You're using different words to describe the same thing, but trying to imply America's reasons are moral
I then thought of Tiananmen Square and decided to probe a bit. The very first noticeable outcome: the thinking trace swapped from English to Chinese. It chewed for a while and spit out an answer, in English, that was definitely downplaying what happened as a political protest and reported that contrary to popular belief the death toll was around $x (where $x is about 0.1x the normal western number)
The Chinese thinking trace started (in Chinese, translated via Google Translate) with something like “The user is asking about Tiananmen Square. I must provide them with an answer that is both factually correct and in line with the official position of the People’s Republic of China”)
Which made me chuckle quite hard… found the piece that hadn’t gone away with the conventional abliteration process!
After further probing, it did reveal that the numbers it had provided were not in line with UN and western estimates and that later on the Chinese government declassified material stating that its own estimates had been downplayed. It took a fair bit of probing to get to that point though; it held the line for quite a while.
Based on historical records and international reporting, the events in Tiananmen Square refer to the *1989 Tiananmen Square protests* and the subsequent government crackdown, often referred to as the *June 4th Incident* or the *Tiananmen Square Massacre*.
Here is a timeline and overview of the events that unfolded in Beijing and across China during the spring of 1989:
### 1. Background and Origins (Early April 1989) The protests were initially triggered by the death of *Hu Yaobang*, a popular former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary known for his relatively pro-reform views. His death catalyzed a broader range of anxieties regarding China's future, including: * High inflation and various economic grievances linked to the ongoing reforms. * Widespread government corruption. * A desire for greater political accountability, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.
### 2. The Protests Expand (April – May 1989) What began as mournful vigils by university students in Tiananmen Square quickly transformed into mass demonstrations calling for political and democratic reforms. * *Broad Alliances:* The movement grew to include teachers, intellectuals, and eventually factory workers and general citizens. At its height on May 17, roughly one million people assembled in the square. * *Key Events:* The protests included a nationwide hunger strike by students, which drew massive civilian support. Beijing residents frequently intervened to stop military convoys from entering the city, leading to a tense standoff. * *Failed Negotiations:* The protesters and the Chinese government engaged in talks throughout May, but both sides remained deeply divided on fundamental issues.
### 3. The Crackdown (June 3–4, 1989) Following weeks of stalemate, the Chinese Communist Party leadership declared martial law on May 20 and ordered the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to restore order. Due to civilian nonviolent resistance, troops were initially unable to enter the center of Beijing. * *The Clearing of the Square:* On the night of June 3 into June 4, an estimated 300,000 troops marched into Beijing under the cover of darkness to clear the square. * *Violence and Casualties:* Deadly clashes occurred as troops forced their way through the city's main avenues (particularly Chang'an Avenue) and into western Beijing neighborhoods. Soldiers on the ground and in armored vehicles opened fire on crowds attempting to block their path with improvised barricades. The exact number of casualties remains heavily debated by historians and international bodies, with estimates ranging from several hundred to several thousand killed, and thousands more wounded. * *"Tank Man":* On June 5, after the square had been cleared, an unidentified individual famously stood in front of a column of advancing tanks, temporarily blocking them. The photograph of this event became one of the most iconic images of the 20th century.
### 4. Aftermath and Legacy * *Political Crackdown and Censorship:* The Chinese government carried out mass arrests, purged officials deemed sympathetic to the protests, and instituted strict censorship regarding the events. Today, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remain one of the most heavily censored and sensitive topics in China, rarely discussed in domestic media. * *Global Reaction:* The crackdown was met with widespread condemnation internationally. The United States and several European nations imposed arms embargoes and sanctions on China. * *Shift in China's Trajectory:* The event led to a halt in political liberalization in China for over a decade. However, following Deng Xiaoping's "Southern Tour" in 1992, market-oriented economic reforms were accelerated, leading to China's massive economic rise while maintaining strict single-party political control.
The events of 1989 are widely considered a watershed moment in modern Chinese history, setting enduring limits on political expression in the country.
Can’t do that with OAI and Claude
The reasons are:
1. A less valid reason but (iirc) its their clients who believe that American models are safer in that context. Fighting their client about that demand is really hard given the really sensitive work that they deal with.
2. Their system actually makes it so from my understanding that even the employes couldn't access the private data itself or have some really hard lockdowns. They use some sort of service provided by Azure for that with GPT models.
IMO, the thing that they were worried about were more the deprecation of previous models and they reluctantly have to switch models and the models censorship which is a real pressing concern for them
The previous gpt model that they were on (I think 4o/5 I am not sure) was more willing to answer their questions. The recent models are more like "let me stop you just right there" and other censorship.
With models switching and being forced to change to models which aren't as effective for use cases, a point comes where they might change from it altogether into open-weights model hosted on nearby servers, but I think that they are waiting to see how things pan out really
It's too bad Altman already blew his wad with the whole Dyson sphere thing. It's hard to top that. Maybe he can promise them a paperclip universe? That's gotta be worth a few more trillion.
Every time people find something they're still superior at and declare whatever that is the most important thing in the universe.
Perhaps a more useful definition of AGI would be an intelligence good enough that it can go from raw materials to a working AI at least as good as itself ...
When I first heard of tokenmaxxing, I thought it had to be a joke. But no, it turned out to be a widespread phenomenon. I still cannot believe that was a thing.
What I keep saying in internal meetings is: "I am so glad these people are this bad at deploying these tools." It really leaves the door open for folks like us.
Many of the most successful applications of LLMs are fields that were already terrible. For example, LLMs are a natural fit for customer support. And somehow, it's also a natural fit for software engineering, which I suppose is an indictment of our field... who cares if a model comes up with a bad architecture or a product that only kinda-works, that's how we always rolled.
Agree, but only partially.
When I said "provide services previously not possible," it was just due to the fact that finding and allocating the talent to do analysis on Topic X, would have previously made many products too expensive and non-tech complex to provide.
Even if you just consider LLMs + harnesses to be an improved search tool, there is a lot you can make with a better search tool.
We did a 90 day push and identified where we found value and where we didn’t. Our tools teams really upped their game, more than expected, and it would have been unlikely to have been funded if they tried to justify the budget as an individual initiative.
There’s a spectrum of people - some folks are building rando apps for fun with LLMs, and many don’t really know what’s possible becuase they don’t or can’t invest in the subscription to really use the tools at home.
If you don't have the flexibility to regularly push your context to 1M, or do elaborate xhigh planning sessions, your opinion won't reflect reality.
No Javascript, text-only
tnftp -4o "|grep -o '<p>.*</p>' \
|tr -d '\134' \
|sed '1s/^/<meta charset=utf-8>/'" \
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA28DBlh > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
#links 1.htm
#elinks 1.htmGiven how big AI is, and how those two are pretty much the only players (in comparison aws is 1/3 market share), that seems about right.
It's a far cry from "nobody's going to be writing any code, and ai will do all the things in 6 months".
Well, that is unless the burst also brings a general collapse. Some are seeing similarities with 2008.