As a non-European, I care. I definitely want choice in this matter, as too many things can be baked into models that we can't really know until it comes up.

For instance, I heard one of the Chinese models has some interesting "history" "facts" built into it. That's major, and can influence a lot more than just asking it for that particular history lesson.

I don't want just 1 LLM. I want a great LLM from every major region. I will probably still prefer my own region, but I still want the others to be an option.

As a European, I do. I don’t envy the state that has to buy all its water and food from its aggressive, militarized neighbour.

As a European: I do, because I'm not oblivious to geopolitics or digital sovereignty.

The problem is always the next model, or the one after. If china thinks it's beneficial to stop open weight releases, it will stop them. Then you are stranded on that one and no local industry to produce new models for you.

I hope you're aware that it's likley in the future open weight models will output tokens/commands that aren't in your interest. It could be that models are trained with spionage in mind and models could only target specific input token patterns, time zones, ip addresses, names etc... You will be able to see the output tokens but things will become so complex that you won't notice its intentions. Maybe there will be some sort of output token scanning software/llm (let's call it a modern form of a virus scanner) that validates intentions. In the end, I'm just trying to say that open weight means you have a black box in front of you that you don't know what it does. Therefore, the training material of open weight models should be known. While it doesn't matter where the model comes from, it certainly matters whether you trust those people if you don't have the training material.

I do care, because those models can contain backdoors and 'open weight' models can require specialized hardware to run in the future.

This is an oft-expressed refrain. But there are good reasons to not want to use Chinese models (or models from any adversary for that matter).

1. They may be trained, in theory, to inject subtle back-doors into certain kinds of generated code.

2. They may be also trained to include back-doors when deployed in public-facing services where user can provide text or image input.

3. Chained with (2) they may be also trained to exploit their inference environments, which though a big feat, not outside the capability of nation-state hackers.

Issue is that it is extremely hard to notice if there is backdoor or some training-related hallucinations that are completely random.

E.g. I had random, completely unrelated and irrelevant fetch by Qwen3.8 27B to " https://routify-file-proxy-sg.oss-ap-southeast-1.aliyuncs.co..." and I only noticed it because I have allowlist rules for what they can do.

It's more important to have ownership into them, they're turning into powerfull tools that we have already seen cut off in the private sector on a whim. Having our own that is comparable (this is a nice first step) is better than Alibaba for example just not releasing the rest.

As with all of the EU's dependancies on Tech with the US, the idea of "I don't care where my DNS servers are" is starting to be an oversight.

But thanks for your opinion.

If these things replace search engines, you definitely don't want that technology to originate from China or other country where "truth" comes from Dear Leader

What if you use the model to write children's stories and it starts regurgitating Mein Kampf?

Having some knowledge about the training data is useful.

yeah digital infrastructure is more achievable, more important and can produce revenue more reliably compared to AI.

if sovereignty is the goal, drop Microsoft, aws and adapt / develop open source / EU alternative.

once serious progress is made there, more resources can be redirected into AI after all it's already too late to join the race.

you should care

not being technically independent means you'll end up being a serf when American or Chinese companies decide that you don't have access anymore for geopolitical reasons

As a European: I do.

Except if it stops coming from anywhere.

That's a very limiting view of things. A model, even an open weight one, is never neutral, it is an encoding of a way of viewing the world.

What kind of "alignment" are AI labs optimizing for? Ideological alignment is the full term, self-censored into something more technological-sounding.

Every model has people behind it rating what it should and shouldn't say. Every time you ask a model and trust its answer, you become ever-so-slightly ideologically indoctrinated.

I don't want my model to reflect the views of American oligarchs or Chinese cadres. I want European values of enlightenment and humanitarianism to be the default.