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Comment by dvduval | Hacker News Reader

As I have watched places like x.com and Reddit it’s pretty clear to me there is some sort of weird propaganda thing going on promoting the Chinese models and casting shade on the big American models

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The Chinese labs are giving us open-weight models that we can serve with hardware that we own or control. Some of those models are extremely capable, judged by frontier or at least near-frontier standards.

The American labs are giving us endless FUD and unaffordable DRAM.

So, yes, there's a lot of room to 'promote' Chinese models and 'cast shade' on domestic models.

It's like African geopolitics. The US comes to some African country and gives them a lecture about fiscal responsibility (mostly involving ways they get give America all their money). China comes to the same country and gives them roads and a power plant. America complains that China is exploiting African countries.

Because they are free.

The Chinese models are cheaper and probably soon are going to be better, too. They're also open weight, which is the most important thing in the future. US companies are no longer considered safe enough against industrial espionage outside the US and do not meet mandatory data protection standards elsewhere. There have also been known incidents of direct interference with US models for propaganda/political purposes (e.g. Elon Musk admitted to doing that), making US models a fairly direct threat to EU sovereignty.

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