Coincidence or not, let's just marvel for a second over this amount of magic/technology that's being given away for free... and how liberating and different this is than OpenAI and others that were closed to "protect us all".
Also their license says that if you have a big product you need to promote them, remember how Google "gave away" site searche widgets and that was perhaps one of the major ways they gained recognition for being the search leader.
OpenAI/NVidia is the Pets.com/Sun of our generation, insane valuations, stupid spend, expensive options, expensive hardware and so on.
Sun hardware bought for 50k USD to run websites in 2000 are less capable than perhaps 5 dollar/month VPS's today?
"Scaling to AGI/ASI" was always a fools errand, best case OpenAI should've squirreled away money to have a solid engineering department that could focus on algorithmic innovations but considering that Antrophic, Google and Chinese firms have caught up or surpassed them it seems they didn't.
Once things blows up, those closed options that had somewhat sane/solid model research that handles things better will be left and a ton of new competitors running modern/cheaper hardware and just using models are building blocks.
Scaling depends on hardware, so cheaper hardware on a compute-per-watt basis only makes scaling easier. There is no clear definition of AGI/ASI but AI has already scaled to be quite useful.
? Yes there's a clear defintion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...
I think you mean there is no agreed upon definition? Even that is dubious statement.
So they are on the same page as the UN and US?
The One China policy refers to a United States policy of strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan.[1] In a 1972 joint communiqué with the PRC, the United States "acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China" and "does not challenge that position."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_and_the_United_Nations
That is why Chinese Taipei is not independent and why Beijing has said that if they threaten independence (that is to say, that if Chinese Taipei relinquishes its claim over the mainland -- that it in a way secedes from the union state) that the mainland would move to take full political control over the island.
It's a highly unusual situation -- there are countries which have governments in exile, this is not that. You can think of this like one country with two separate competing governments which irreconcilable claims. Clearly given the mainland's economic (and consequent military rise) Chinese Taipei cannot take over the mainland and again considering the power differential they would be insane to declare full independence. Why is why this bizarre situation persists.
Furthermore third-party countries which recognise Chinese Taipei's independence is shrinking and shrinking (and so it should be) because properly speaking the sane thing to do is recognise that there is only one China (because both the the authority of mainland China (the CPC) and the government of Taiwan assert that there is but one China) but deal with each authority separately. Economically speaking and politically speaking this is how things play out.
Because the situation is so unusual I think it is fair to say that most people just assume Taiwan is a breakaway province. And it's not surprising that they do because that's what happens normally in these situations. That would be the case if Taiwan amended it's constitution to explicitly relinquish its claim over the mainland but they are not going to do that unless they are prodded to by an outside third-party or if they suddenly get a wave of nationalism or if they suddenly become collectively suicidal. So this highly unusual and bizarre status quo persists.
This is my interaction with ChatGPT (obviously it would be pointless talking to DeepSeek, etc about this)
===
ME: does chinese taipei lay claim to mainland china?
ChatGPT: Yes — but it depends on *which “Chinese Taipei” you mean*:
### \*Chinese Taipei as the Republic of China (Taiwan)\*
\* The government based in Taiwan is officially the \*Republic of China (ROC)\*. Under its \*old constitution\* (dating back to when the ROC ruled all of China), it *theoretically* still contains language implying sovereignty over all of China — including the mainland. In practice, modern Taiwanese governments (especially under the Democratic Progressive Party) do \*not actively assert a real claim to govern mainland China\* and focus on governing Taiwan and nearby islands. ([House of Commons Library][1]) ### \*People’s Republic of China (PRC) claims Taiwan\*
\* The \*PRC\* (mainland China) claims that Taiwan is part of China and should eventually be “reunified,” insisting on a \*One-China principle\* that includes Taiwan under its sovereignty. This is the basis of most countries’ diplomatic relations with Beijing instead of Taipei. ([House of Commons Library][1])
### Key nuance
\* Taiwan (the ROC government) effectively functions as a \*separate political entity with its own government, military, and democratic system\* and does \*not control or claim to govern mainland China’s territory in practice\* even if older constitutional wording could be interpreted that way. ([House of Commons Library][1])[1]: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-... "International status of Taiwan - House of Commons Library"
[2]: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2025/03/08/2... "Taiwan rejects China’s UN claim - Taipei Times"
ME: What does "it theoretically still contains language implying" mean? It either does or it doesn't.
ChatGPT: You’re right to push back — that phrasing was imprecise. Let’s be exact.
### Short answer
\*Yes, the Republic of China (ROC) constitution *does* still claim all of China, including the mainland.\* ### What the constitution actually says
\* The \*ROC Constitution (1947)\* was written when the ROC claimed to be the sole government of *all* China. So legally speaking:
> \*Mainland China remains part of ROC territory under the constitution.\*
### Where the confusion comes from
The confusion arises because of \*later constitutional add-ons\*, not because the claim disappeared.
Since the 1990s, Taiwan adopted the \*Additional Articles of the Constitution\*, which:
\* Suspend application of many provisions *with respect to the mainland* Crucially:
\* These articles \*do not renounce the mainland\* So the situation is:
| Aspect | Status |
| ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| Constitutional territorial claim | \*All of China (including mainland)\* |
| Practical governance | \*Taiwan and nearby islands only\* |
| Active effort to reclaim mainland | \*No\* |
| Formal constitutional renunciation | \*No\* |
### Why people hedge with language
People (especially diplomats and scholars) often say things like *“theoretically implies”* to avoid the blunt conclusion that:
\* \*Taiwan’s constitution still claims mainland China\*, which is politically awkward given Taiwan’s current identity and international position.
But legally, there’s no ambiguity:
\* \*It either does or it doesn’t — and it does.\*
### One-sentence summary
\*Chinese Taipei (the ROC) constitutionally claims mainland China, but politically and practically does not pursue or assert that claim.\*
If you want, I can also explain \*why Taiwan has never amended the constitution to drop the claim\*, because that’s a fascinating mix of law, identity, and geopolitics.
(Sorry for the dreadful formatting). I am more than happy to be corrected on this.
This dark side of all this is that the original inhabitants of the island are not "Chinese" (Han) and the island has had both Japanese and Chinese rule if I'm not mistaken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_indigenous_peoples
You can't with Tiananmen square in China
The Tiananmen Square killings happened independent of one's "worldview".
What's an example of "the exact same thing" done to OpenAI models by western governments?
Given the shallowness of moats in the LLM market, optimizing for mindshare would not be the worst move.
If you look at past state projects, profitability wasn't really considered much. They are notorious for a "Money hose until a diamond is found in the mountains of waste"
China has decided they are going to participate in the LLM/AGI/etc revolution at any cost. So it is a sunk cost, and the models are just an end product and any revenue is validation and great, but not essential. The cheaper price points keep their models used and relevant. It challenges the other (US, EU) models to innovate and keep ahead to justify their higher valuations (both monthly plan, and investor). Once those advances are made, it can be bought back to their own models. In effect, the currently leading models are running from a second place candidate who never gets tired and eventually does what they do at a lower price point.
The economist Mariana Mazzucato wrote a great book about this called The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths
How many millions did Google spend on Android (acquisition and salaries), only to give it away for free?
Usually, companies do this to break into a monopolized market (or one that's at risk of becoming one), with openness as a sweetener. IBM with Linux to break UNIX-on-big-iron domination, Google with Android vs. iPhone, Sun with OpenSolaris vs. Linux-on-x86.
My biggest source of my conspiracy is that I made a reddit thread asking a question: "Why all the deepseek hype" or something like that. And to this day, I get odd, 'pro deepseek' comments from accounts only used every few months. Its not like this was some highly upvoted topic that is in the 'Top'.
I'd put that deepseek marketing on-par with an Apple marketing campaign.
https://openrouter.ai/rankings
There are a lot of applications where you really just want a cheap and efficient model that's still somewhat competitive and that's exactly the niche DeepSeek fulfills the best.
In a few years, or less, biological attacks and other sorts of attacks will be plausible with the help of these agents.
Chinese companies aren't humanitarian endeavors.