posted in Technology
If open weight models are the future, U.S. AI companies are going to have a hard time
www.fastcompany.com/91577359/why-u-s-ai-companies-cant-match-chinas-open-weight-frontier-models
Fast CompanyIf open weight models are the future, U.S. AI companies are going to have a hard timeOpenAI, Anthropic, and other Western labs have spent billions training the model weights at the heart of their most advanced systems.
Replying to @sanitation@lemmy.today
The article wastes no time getting to the underlying point in the very first paragraph:
Top executives at leading Western AI companies are increasingly warning about the safety and national security risks posed by Chinese open-weight frontier models. What they tend not to mention is that these models are improving rapidly and, because they are freely available, pose a serious threat to Western labs’ business models.
I found the following two paragraphs interesting:
By mid-2026, however, open-weight frontier models from Chinese labs such as Alibaba, DeepSeek, and Moonshot AI had nearly matched the leading Western models in intelligence and performance. Many companies have already begun building their AI systems on top of these free models, avoiding the high cost of closed-model APIs.
Because businesses can host open-weight models in their own private clouds, they can also avoid sending proprietary data to systems controlled by outside providers. Developers can fine-tune the models for specific needs, build applications and tools on top of them, and optimize them for their preferred infrastructure.
Replying to @nkat2112@sh.itjust.works
they can also avoid sending proprietary data to systems controlled by outside providers.
Not only proprietary but also personal or other kinds of sensitive data.
If you are doing health research on databases of personal health data, you should be able to guarantee the safety of that data.
That means you can’t use the current American systems, because they’ve been shown to be insecure.
This would be a major issue in EU, where such data is legally protected.
Replying to @Buffalox@lemmy.world
This would be a major issue in EU, where such data is legally protected.
Nothing a EU–US Data Privacy Framework can’t handle.
Replying to @plyth@feddit.org
I absolutely agree that that agreement is complete and utter bullshit.
Hopefully the shift there has been to achieve IT independence from USA will mean EU doesn’t give in so easy next time.
These people are too rich to be punished by laws. They’re the people laws protect not the ones they bind.
Replying to @cavitationfetishist2@quokk.au
Not in EU, Eu has given fines to those big tech companies before and can do it again.
Replying to @Buffalox@lemmy.world
Fines are just the cost of doing business.
Wake me up when corporate charters are dissolved and executives are put in prison.
Replying to @grue@lemmy.world
Fines are just the cost of doing business.
In theory fines in EU don’t have a ceiling. 10% fine of companys turnover with OpenAI (or any other company running on borrowed money) would be a pretty steep cost of doing business and I don’t think all (if any) of AI-hype entities could actually swallow that.
Obviously that’s just in theory, so far the fines have been a slight slap on the wrist, but mechanisms are in place to give actually meaningful fines for unethical practices. No one will go to jail tho, as EU doesn’t really have the power to jail US citizens.
More than their profits? Their profits over course of the shittiness?
Being less bald face and trying to hide your corruption better than America doesn’t make you the good guy.