Comment

Comment on Yet again, a free open-source Chinese AI has beaten all the investor-funded favorites like OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok, etc.

thejml@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

China’s government is absolutely bankrolling the AI efforts there, just as the US government is openly bankrolling efforts here in the US. It would be dumb for them not to. The Cold War of AI is upon us.

I’m not sure western AI companies will go bankrupt due to China’s models winning, though. There are plenty of security focused “we can’t use foreign AI” things that would keep them afloat, especially as not everyone needs the absolute most cutting edge AI for their stuff and many US and EU companies are self hosting tuned models for their customers needed.

There’s, of course, the fact that most of it at the moment is a giant bubble that will eventually pop as the next big thing takes its place in importance for world dominance. Will AI continue to find a place in the tech stack? Definitely. New models, tweaks for niche use cases and huge benefits for specialized industries, etc. Will newer tech and processes usurp it over the long run, absolutely. That’s just the way Tech has always worked.

source

Sort:hotnew top

logicbomb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
The Chinese government is more hands on with businesses than the US. Like, they even put members of the government onto the company’s board.

That’s the sort of behavior that makes me suspect that a lot of Chinese businesses are intentionally operating at a loss at the direction of the CCP to undercut international business.

American politicians do similar things, but it’s more about corruption rewarding companies who support politicians. China is doing it much more pointedly and deliberately. That’s why they’re seeing such good results lately.

source
- boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  They’re also making electric cars that undercut the competition by about 20k in price. Of course they’re running a loss on purpose.
  
  source
riskable@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
The US is not “openly bankrolling” any AI companies. The closest thing would be OpenAI’s recent contract with the military:

theverge.com/…/openai-us-defense-department-200-m…

Whereas China is definitely funding AI efforts in their country because they’re communist (sort of). That’s literally how communism works: The government funds stuff.

China isn’t really communist in the traditional sense but they definitely use government funds to prop up business they feel will give the country a strategic advantage. They do this directly (here’s a check to pay people) and indirectly (we’ll subsidize all shipping for your business and make sure you get sweetheart deals with other businesses you rely on).

The Chinese government is in the business of picking winners and losers in the market and they’re open about it. It’s not a secret. That’s literally how their government is setup.

The US has ways of picking winners but there not nearly as direct and there’s a whole lot of rules that must be followed or competitors will sue and win. Then the whole process falls apart.

TL;DR: You’re directly wrong and you’re framing the story wrong as well.

Aside: If OpenAI goes bankrupt after wasting billions of rich investor dollars the citizens of the US will not have lost billions as a result. Whereas in China…

source