The solution of a global arms race of state vs state with integrated statist corporations as the best outcome for end users sure is a choice though
HF could not be helped by US frontier models because of the "safety" features they have.
HF had to use an open model from china.
Anthropic wants to add those "safety" features to open models - especially from china.
End result would be HF hack would have continued atleast until the Monday that OpenAI engineers finally walked back into work.
And on top of that, with low/no guardrails, people call you a child pornographer(grok), so the public is also against it. Yet mysteriously few complain about Chinese open models being child pornographers.
So even if your goal isn't ethical, but just fiscal, it's reasonable to say there are two standards. And to complaint in some way.
I don't think banning is going to work, that's just silly. And over the next few years, everyone and their dog will have local GPU compute to train locally. People have home labs, the bar isn't that high, and eventually large text datasets will escape from Anthropic and other companies, allowing for comparable training.
It's a genie that's not going back in the bottle, the bottle is smashed.
The only reasonable outcome would be section 230 style carveouts so that there is zero liability for anything a model does.
Because having guardrails on corporate models barely months ahead of open ones, which will never be restricted, is entirely pointless.
Though I think your overall point still stands, and at least Grok's twitter bot has received a lot of criticism for pure text too (Mecha hitler comes to mind)
Open weight models get scrutinised in a different way, also linked to perceptions of their developers' bias, like the tests to see whether they refuse to answer questions on certain historical events at Tiananmen Square
John Oliver disagrees with this
You're vastly underestimating the scaling problem here.
Things that would need to be true for your statement to be valid:
- Model intelligence doesn't increase with model size
- Model intelligence doesn't increase with training set size
- Novel architecture completely decouples model intelligence scaling from hardware scaling
- Residential electricity is as cheap as industrial electricity
- RAM and GPU supply outpace demandPeople call grok that because deviants were abusing grok's ability to edit images and post them publicly on X to strip people - including children - of their clothes, from their public photos. Then when there was backlash, Elon laughed it off. It took half the world opening investigations against X for violations of existing regulations for action to be taken.
The leniency that internet companies get in terms of dealing with illegal content comes with the expectation that they're making reasonable efforts to control the distribution of said content. X, and Grok, were actively supporting the production and distribution of the content in public.
It is very different from someone creating such images in a private account, and definitely very different from someone using a local model to do it.
The only realistic, non-double standard is that the creator of the model should be 100% responsible. What on earth does it have to do with who's hosting it?
And by this metric, aren't all the uncensored models on huggingface, child pornographers? And if so, why not? Provide tangible, real, sensible reasons please, and after all, isn't hugging face a company?
You know, people are all over the place on this. I see people complaining about guardrails, then in the next breath complaining there aren't enough. Complaining that open models are the thing, but then creating double standards.
So once again, what is your actual reason why it's different?
If someone uses something one of OpenAI's hosted models to generate illegal content, it isn't automatically spread to anyone that clicks on the post the original image is from. On top of that, OpenAI does not explicitly endorse the use of their models for such activities the way Musk did.
If someone uses a local model to generate illegal content, same thing applies.
I have a hard time believing that you're arguing in good faith. The differences are so blatantly obvious and they don't even require any discussion about guardrails. Grok was being used to edit images and post them on public social media. The technology to edit images has existed for decades now. So here's a direct analogy via Photoshop:
1. In the case of a local model: Someone using a local image editor to edit photos into illicit material and manually distributing them.
2. In the case of a hosted model: Someone using a cloud image editor to edit photos into illicit material and manually distributing them.
3. In the case of Grok: Someone using a cloud image editor to edit photos into illicit material, the cloud image editor automatically distributing it to the public, and the owner of the editor endorsing the material as an exemplar of what their editor is capable of.
In 1 and 2, the editor (ie the AI) was just a neutral tool. In 3 the issue is that the company explicitly endorsed and distributed the material, no longer neutral. This is why it's reputation is of being a CP machine.
Your words. Grok was an example, the owner is irrelevant in the discussion.
To spell it out for you further, the owner's actions matter. It doesn't matter that it was specifically Elon doing it. The owner promoting the ability to produce and post illicit content is the opposite of making reasonable efforts to control it!
Further reading: XAI Bets on Grok's Racy Side, The Information, Jun 24, 2026
&: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/xai-cant-deny-gr...
lawyers cited a 2026 National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) report confirming that 90 percent of xAI’s CyberTipline reports “were not actionable by law enforcement because xAI declined to include user information that would allow law enforcement to track and locate perpetrators.”EDIT: of course it probably helps to have an up front tdd test suite, but often isn't the case.
The summary is that an instance was running on certain benchmarks without any limits or supervision and the AI decided to cheat by exploiting a silly series of vunlns.
Incentive and ability are what should be looked at. There, things get far more interesting: what is the current state of AI employed by the US intelligence agencies and what do they use it for?
Having the public convinced, their "superiors" would only do everything in their best interest, even without anybody knowing for sure, is Huxley's Brave New World in real life.
shouldn't any reasonable person when presented with a line of thought that has no substantiation at all conclude that they just can't reasonably be expected to support or reject the theory?
Positions of power attract people who want to use that power for their own gain. They abuse it regularly, whether it's politics, enterprises or even charity.
To assume, that somehow wouldn't happen when you don't look is beyond absurd. Of course it does.
So I pointed explicitly at US intelligence agencies, because there corruption is rampant and oversight virtually non-existent, respectively itself involved in the corruption.
What you suppose there is a grotesque "don't ask don't tell"-complicity.
In reality, trust has to be earned and that deservingness has to be verified.
But they have. I dont know what specific country you are referring to but China has interfered with US elections as well as Canada, Taiwan, and Australia in addition to many many others.
They’ve annexed Tibet (1950), fought India (1962) and Vietnam (1979) among others and more recently in 2020 a deadly skirmish with India. They’ve generally shifted their focus to cyber military actions but you’d have to be pretty naive they won’t start to exercise military control over Taiwan when/if they get a chance.
That's pre 1945 style thinking, which is coming back with a vengeance.
What about women too ? Especially in red states.
But I hate this talking point for one primary reason: almost nobody who brings it up actually cares about the Uyghurs. It's just a talkijng point.
How do I know this? Because of Palestine. If Benjamin Netanyahu turned around tomorrow and treated Palestinians as Uyghurs were and are treated and developed the region like China does today then he would win the Nobel Peace Prize and Palestinians would be unquestionably better off. It wouldn't be sufficient mind you.
Israel's crimes in Palestine are America's crimes because Israel could not exist without the economic and military support of the US, political cover in the UN and international community and the political will of Us domestically. It would collapse tomorrow if the US withdraw support.
So I don't want to hear a thing from China hawks and skeptics about Xinjiang unless they're louder what Israel is doing to the region.
Exactly, it's just people parroting psyop narrative talking points, Taiwan is another. Repeat something enough and people will eventually believe it.
There's a reason other nations are choosing China over the US/EU (including Muslim and Turkish ones) - there's no moralizing, political requirements, nor bombs.
> Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor; Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a campaign of political repression by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America, involving intelligence operations, coups, and assassinations of left-wing sympathizers in South America. Operation Condor formally existed from 1975 to 1983. Condor was formally created in November 1975, when Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's spy chief, Manuel Contreras, invited 50 intelligence officers from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay to the Army War Academy in Santiago, Chile. The operation was backed by the United States, which financed the covert operations. France is alleged to have collaborated but has denied involvement. The operation ended with the fall of the Argentine junta in 1983.
The claim is they don’t engage in warfare when they do, just exclusively in the digital domain for now. Believing it’ll stay there is naive.
Playing the moral superiority game is uninteresting in either direction. Games of power inherently are devoid of morality.
If someone is vocally complaining about country A doing some oppressive activity, while ignoring country B doing 100x the same activity, the comparison does not forgive or excuse country A, or make them right or admirable.
But it does allow us to conclude that the person complaining is biased. Either they don't care about the oppressive activity and want to attack country A for some other reason. Or they have a particular fondness for country B and will never accept that it does wrong. Or some variation on these.
> de minimis non curat praetor
Which basically means judges are not interested in minor disputes. When you add the USA to the mix, China's actions pale in comparison to the point of being negligible, no point in discussing them given the scale of USA's warmongering, overseas and local crimes. "They never interfered in [...]" is an exaggeration which shows the lack of importance of China's crimes when compared to the USA's, that's all.
The "whataboutism" here isn't a deflection strategy, it shows the hypocrisy and correctly minimises the scale of China's actions in comparison to the hypocrites'.
Come on, are you seriously equating hacking to literally bombing and killing people? That's just arguing in very bad faith.
Calling hacking "warfare" is just intellectually dishonest, if not downright disgusting toward the actual victims of American wars.
For Americans the answer is obvious since they are biased in this.
For everybody else, your question is valid.
the question is valid for anyone who cares for more than their own ass
All my life I heard American boasting their constitutions but now it's as worthy of my toilet papers.
this is a hilariously naive rewriting of history, the government was very reluctant to make those changes. It's thanks to popular movements that those changes were made.
Ok but when you said "There was a past American government that was strong enough to stamp out inequality" you did not make that distinction. The US government in 50s and 60s was not responsible for giving you civil rights, it was popular movements.
Wrongs don't negate each other.
But in general if you ask folks in south east Asia you will find they are likely to be more concerned with China than US except this maddening Oil Crisis.
Although I think people now are very afraid/wary of both evils.
The US govt should think why people in all parts of the world including US itself feel just if not more threatened by them, than China and other evils we have floating around.
I would like to hope my American friends didn't vote for this madness or maybe they did I have read DHH's tweets.
Here's the dangerous thing about that: modern CCP China is a newly ascendant world power.
Say what you want about the US today, but when was it at isn't interventionist worst historically-speaking?
Countries don't go to war because their leaders take them to war: they go to war because a sufficient chunk of internal interests support war.
And China has a rather politically-powerful military. Although Xi's recent housecleaning substantially weakened that power.
If China goes to war, it's probably going to be because their economy is in tatters.
Well, they probably also have to factor in whether invading Taiwan is likely to improve that situation, and I would argue that it's not - China is currently exporting stuff all over the world, so economic sanctions would be very painful for them. And there are lots of countries who would like to have a slice of the manufacturing that China is currently hogging...
They go to war because a large chunk of their population is pissed off about the economy.
See also: US
There are some internal policy papers to that effect.
It can? Have you heard of the Great Leap Forward? The Cultural Revolution? Either of those damaged the metaphorical foot more than anything the US has ever done.
You are allowing them to define a ridiculous standard by agreeing with them that not only is it in fact “two evils” but what qualifies as evil. They’ll tell you…always only when called out, mind you…all and any meddling (also something they will then define with the same kind of falls equivalence loop) is evils, when that is simply not true, not is any kind of effort to influence the same thing as actual meddling, not us it always evil.
I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point, the narcissistic personality or their little zombies in most cases will constantly shift and change things all to avoid you from being able to get a clear focus on the truth, something their explosively allergic to.
As an American child of the Empire with global perspective and very high access perspective, there is no other entity besides the cabal that controls the USA and acts flying its banner; that is more deadly, more meddling, more conniving, more evil, more supremacist, and more vile.
I eagerly await for the USA citizens to downvote this in about 5 hours.
Yes we do. We should evaluate threats and choose our allies carefully.
All technology can be used for good or used for evil depending on who is using it and how. From fire to internal combustion engines to nuclear energy.
—- “But look at the United States! What about that?”
Is this not just whataboutism? It never adds much to the discussion.
In this case it's just pointing out the propaganda and the contradiction.
The 2020 skirmish was way smaller with single digit casualties. Again, almost no civilian casualties because it's a largely empty region in the first place
You really can't compare this to the kind of wars America has started. Casualties - both civilian and military - stood in the hundreds of thousands
America's wars have been in countries so far away that they could've never posed any threat whatsoever to America as a nation.
Really not the same thing
That’s fallacious reasoning that ignores how easy travel is and how cheap an attack can cause massive damage. 9/11 was massive attack from countries far away. We regularly see commercial drones being used in warfare causing huge damage and casualties. There was the 2012 terrorist attack on our CIA facilities in Benghazi.
Terrorism entrenched abroad impacts our security. Is the response we take incorrect and makes it worse / are there things we do to provoke this? Some things yes, other things are like having Israel as an ally which is a culturally, socially and economically aligned power in the region even though it’s hated in the region.
Also don’t forget the US is a major maritime power. China is trying to be, Russia is not. Maritime powers force project more broadly because a) is the nature of being a maritime power b) you have to protect shipping to make sure trade routes are uninmpeded. B is particularly important as it also helps explain the wars (eg the Iran war is about the strait and trade and who collects money, not really about nuclear capabilities).
Wow, that newest of Trump's distraction talking points made it surprisingly quickly to the uncontended (?) and commonly accepted facts in HN conversations.
You’re very misinformed if you think Trump’s latest blathering are completely wrong. I generally don’t pay attention to him so I don’t know exactly how he lied or exaggerated but I’m sure he did. It doesn’t negate the real and active influence operations China is engaged in
And this comment isn't about putting any good light on China. Lately US acts like they want to compensate for Russia fucking up less things around the world
north Americans must stay silent about interfering in other states internal issues.
Wow. I bet we'll soon be reading on HN that Biden stole the elections back in 2020.
No one who believed it definitely was not has changed their mind, they've just at most gotten quiet about it.
No one who believed it could have been but that the claim has not been proven have changed our minds, we've just decided that there's no way to know what actually happened.
Vietnam is usually recognised as a low point in Chinese history.
There's been an ongoing border dispute between China and India for over 100 years, thanks to some questionable line drawing by the British.
Also, referring to the parent comment, of these only the border skirmish with India was within my lifetime.
Tibet specifically is funny because one of the things China did was end slavery in Tibet [2]. A large percentage of the population were "serfs" but that was a generous translation because these "serfs" could be traded. You know, like property. Like slaves.
And Vietnam? They had a small border dispute. What did the US do to Vietnam? And Cambodia? And Laos?
But the funniest claim of all here is election interference. The foreign interference in US elections conversation begins and ends with Israel with an honorable mention to Russia for running some Facebook ads. Just last night we had a debate in the Democratic primary for Senate in Michigan, a race that AIPAC proxies (eg UDP) have spent upwards of $60 million. On a primary.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet_serfdom_controversy
There's a qualitative difference between interference and outright annexation, with borders redrawn and cultures violently assimilated.
This event was followed by the longest honeymoon period in Sino-US relations, which eventually lead to China's rise.
Unless you're trying to imply that China engineered the whole thing - extraordinary claim that will require extraordinary evidence
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_Chi...
We've got a fair idea where SARS-CoV-2 originated (horseshoe bats). It's the early path it took that's muddy.
> after 6 years we have just claims of where it came from. Isn't that suspicious enough?
No it is not suspicious, because most zoonotic pandemics have murky origins - spillover events are rarely identified at anything better than the species level. For evidence I point to everything on this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics_and_pandemic... (starting with the bottom of the list, in case you come back with irrelevant comments about Roman technological progress).
Never turned on and probably never will.
I only see conservative (putting it very very mildly) in your comments.
You're at least an American. That checks out.
China was the first victim of the Russian virus.
Idk to me it feels like human compassion and ethics dictates that you at least have to care a bit even about the things in other countries. Otherwise all sorts of horrible domestic policies would be justifiable.
They actively back russia and deliver them weapons and support them with their attempted Genocide in Ukraine. They also actively threaten Taiwan.
Not to mention them claiming almost the entire South China Sea even though this being against international law and threatening smaller nations into submitting to them
Don't be naive or I might even think you're working for the Chinese :-)
https://law.stanford.edu/press/state-department-lawyers-conc...
That whole thing was a very successful propaganda campaign, making people believing China has been mass murdering Uyghurs.
The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.
For example Lithuania has been punished for letting Taiwan opening an embassy (in Lithuania). So China cares what other countries do in their country. Without EU support Lithuania could have faced very harsh consequences. That's just an example. Another example is the "secret police" stations undeclared overseas police stations operated by China in various countries (i.e. U.S for example). China gave you cheap material goods because that was its business but you have to keep in mind it's an authoritarian, communist regime. It carries an extra risk on top of the potential economic coercion if you give it too power. At least you know that U.S is only after the money and does not want to turn your country in a communist "utopia".
That being said this does not mean we should ban Chinese AI models because China didn't cross any red lines(yet) compared with Russia for example.
Not mutually exclusive, just take a look at Venezuela.
China is becoming an intellectual powerhouse in addition to a manufacturing powerhouse and runs huge spyware and propaganda campaigns.
Read up about T95, MBOX, TVBOX, or other Android TV Boxes advertised as generic TV streaming devices advertised as "unlocked" or capable of accessing free content. They're loaded with spyware/malware, typically BADBOX. Some of them will record audio and record your network traffic and send it to China.
I'm also convinced that the anti-education thread winding its way through US culture is being amplified by China. They likely didn't start it, as it's been growing for decades, but China will happily keep it going.
People in Many Countries Now View China More Positively Than the U.S.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/07/15/people-in-many...
yes he is writing it as usa citizen running it a us company.
I dont see how "usa is also.." is relevant here.
Trump deports, half of the USA people screamed; Xin builds reeducation camps, most Chinese people are cool.
China had a worse reputation, but not anymore since Trump leads the US.
Im not saying that the above is objective, tho
Yes, I for sure trust the open models from China, more than anything coming out of the USA at the moment.
Its not just the USA's support for genocidal regimes, nor its heinously illegal wars and atrocious 21st century human rights record. Its also the Snowden revelations and the treatment of Julian Assange.
Slowly, surely, the world is building a firewall against the USA's imperialist actions - not just its motives. That AI is a key building block of that machination is of course, highly exciting.
There are many in Europe who feel the same. The tide is very definitely turning.
He portrays the biggest ever threat of AI as the Chinese Military using the models in their drones. He already sells his models to military customers, US and potentially allies, and they are actively used in the field.
So no objective argumentation here. Just Nationalist political rhetorics and FUD. He’s allowed to do that and he will have an audience. But he won’t be taken seriously outside the US. He appears blindsided.
Countries aren't defined like corporations in the US. Why would countries have funds to help places like Haiti otherwise?
Lots of different reasons for countries to do all sorts of things? Why would France have armed the US during their independence movement? Why is the rest of the world supporting Ukraine during this war started by Russia?
because that's what they think is best. what point are you trying to make? that countries don't pursue 'profit' at the expense of all other concerns?
Oh no, you heretic, The People freed themselves and it was ordained by God, you see. It is through the righteous might of The Greatest Experiment in The History of the World that they showed The World what Freedom really meant.
While there is no "job" of a country, it is natural that each one will work for its own best interest and any moves it makes in the global world is due to their own vested interests in some way including helping Haiti, France helpong Us and the world supporting Ukraine.
Why would a country act against its interest or just randomly? Alliances and corporation are a part of politics
Because country as an entity is a mental construction for which "interest" is a categorical error. It’s certainly a useful concept, but pretending it has interests like some human individual can have have interests. Sure it can serve as rhetorical facility to sell some arguments.
Countries don’t have interests. Some people willing to take control of other people encompassed in that "country" groups have interests, and they don’t necessarily align with best interests of everyone or even majority in each of these groups.
So why is the US supporting Russia again?
> Having the British lose the US was a good thing for France
This seems a bit reductionist. Why would they give the Statue Liberty to the US if they were only in it for the British loss?
There's plenty of people on this forum that aren't American. Including some former allies whose sovereignty has been aggressively threatened. And some of those people are Anthropic customers.
Even more so, many of us are in countries that would be well within the blast radius of fallout should the US try to "ban" open weight models or make moves to limit "US" models (often developed on research or work by non-Americans too, but that's another topic) only to those blessed by the US gov't.
That's why it matters?