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Non-American maybe, but non-Chinese is likely impractical. We might not want their APIs, but we can't compete on energy and labour for training, even if it means buying licenses to host the weights (which CADA encourages). From China's perspective, what's the case for baking weights they can't sell? Some Chinese models already don't even have the Taiwan politics stuff baked in, those filters are only in their APIs.

I realised after writing this, the EU as is uncomfortably often the case, may be the real forcing function for what happens with US policy irrespective of the media campaigns we're presently seeing. Here's hoping for a steady trickle of stale ChatGPT weights leaking from EU infra providers in the long term.

by Tade010 hours ago|

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> we can't compete on energy and labour costs for training,

Specialists are expensive everywhere. China is functionally 80s Japan surrounded by several Brasils and all the frontier AI work is being done in that first part, where labour is expensive - if only due to competition for top talent.

by eigenspace10 hours ago|

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Using Chinese models is a bit like using Chinese solar/batteries instead of American gas.

Yes, if the Chinese stop trading, you can still use the existing solar panels (unlike the gas which you literally set on fire), but it's nonetheless a major vulnerability to not have any local know-how in creating important infrastructure.

Giving up all AI know-how and expertise to China just because they currently share their models would be a generational mistake.

Europe already got burned hard by this sort of thing too recently, and is now very sensitive to strateigic depencencies, and is working hard to lift them where possible.

by badatnames10 hours ago|

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If trade stopped, AI capability would be the last thing on the minds of administrations in both regions. The question I think is more if EU can't compete (and we know we can't) who the more reliable partner is to depend on, especially where leaning towards dependence on that partner applies pressure to a recently highly unreliable partner.

by eigenspace9 hours ago|

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Yes we absolutely can compete. That's such a dumb defeatist attitude.

And I dont mean actual trade stopping in the case of AI. The CCP could ban the release of Open Weight models tomorrow without running afoul of a single trade treaty

by badatnames9 hours ago|

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Maybe we lived on different planets at the time, but watching the response at the start of the Ukraine war taught me the EU is little more than a disjointed balancing act with no real potency of its own outside of economic policy, and that seems unlikely to change in my lifetime. We are still buying their gas to this very day.

by drstewart9 hours ago|

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What makes you think the rest of the world trusts Europe more than the Chinese?

by eigenspace8 hours ago|

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I didn't say they did (though granted, I believe it's the case). What matters here is that countries without their own AI labs have multiple potential partners to choose from.

Having a third option significantly lowers the leverage that both China and the USA have over other countries.