Western open-weight models still can’t beat China
restofworld.org
Chinese open-weight AI models offer high capability at significantly lower costs than U.S. frontier systems, but face monetization and compute challenges, experts said at a Rest of World event in San Francisco.
  • eicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23 hours

    Silicon Valley spent billions building AI tollbooths while Chinese labs made models people can actually download and run. Then Washington restricted chips, and China got better at doing more with less. It’s almost poetic: America tried to corner the future of AI and accidentally made efficiency China’s competitive advantage.

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.caEnglish
      22 hours

      It’s worse than that even… frontier models now have guardrails restrictive enough that I can’t use them for legitimate work. And the ones that DO work have token prices at exorbitant rates, and chew through them like there’s no tomorrow.

      Meanwhile, I can download Qwen3 and run it on my own hardware, and it’s about as good as the last generation US model without the annoying guardrails.

      Hmm… which model am I going to choose to use?

      • adr1an@programming.devEnglish
        21 hours

        Did you mean qwen 3.8 max? Or qwen 3 coder next? They are very different.

        • Em Adespoton@lemmy.caEnglish
          21 hours

          I mean both, for different purposes. They are definitely very different.

  • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    17 hours

    Can someone explain to me why I, as an American, should be angry that China is making something better than us that it is also releasing for free to the world? I mean, we still get to use it if we want, and so does everyone else.

    I don’t see why putting more money into the pockets of a few AI billionaires is considered a national priority.

    • eicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17 hours

      There is absolutely no reason to be angry. If China develops better AI and releases it freely, Americans benefit just like everyone else. The only people with a reason to panic are billionaires.

  • CosmoNova@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18 hours

    Open-weight is not the point in the AI race so this comparison doesn‘t tell us anything about who‘s leading in whatever metrics they‘re testing right now.

    I wish models had to disclose their training sets so IP holders can sue for damages. Those would get into the trillions no doubt. Hell I wish LLMs never got this much out of hand. But I don‘t understand what they‘re getting at with this or why make it a „China VS the West“ thing.

    • eicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18 hours

      Open weight AI absolutely matters if the question is who gets to shape the AI ecosystem. A slightly better closed model wins a benchmark: a good open model can be adapted, audited and run without paying a Silicon Valley landlord. And yes, training data transparency should apply to both Chinese and Western labs. That’s not a contradiction: it’s the point. Still: FOSAI » OWAI » ClosedAI

    • Quazatron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18 hours

      Because then Western AI companies can go to the governments, point to China and say: “see how advanced they are? See how they can apply that to the economy and military? You’d better give us money and not try to regulate us.”

      That is the whole story.