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Comment by milkshakes | Hacker News Reader

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milkshakes·

> with budgets

and what will fund these budgets exactly? inference is cheap, distillation is cheap, training is what's expensive.

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Same people who fund linux kernel development. A coalition of companies that find it useful.

Presumably the US military / NSA.

the USG/NSA will fund chinese labs? to what end?

I was more thinking they would be funding US labs.

the question was: what is the endgame for the stated "second class labs" strategy of distilling their frontier competitors then undercutting them on price?

Making lots of money?

Yes yes, we all understand the game-theoretic race-to-the-bottom you're describing here. Somehow despite linux being FOSS it still powers most of the important computing in the world. Can you explain how that works despite it being free? Once you understand that case I think you'll understand the game-theory behind how large projects can exist in the absence of traditional IP protection.

the obvious difference is the massive scale of data and compute required to develop and evolve these models, and the costs they impose on those building them.

Smaller budgets, slower improvement, less risk. They're not entitled to profits if that business model isn't sustainable. They're not entitled to a change in IP laws to protect their business model. They're not entitled to growing that fast.

who are you talking about? again, my question is concerned with the "second class labs" and the sustainability of the distillation-as-a-service model.

They will make a bunch of money then maybe go out of business eventually when the economics shift? Do they need an endgame?

Some people are just happy to follow the money.

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