I think it’s fairly simple: they’re forced into this situation by being late and worse in terms of capabilities. They’re not far behind, but as long as they’re behind they’ve needed to give people some reason to try and use their models. Cost is one factor. But it probably wasn’t enough. Being open has given them a lot of attention. Free marketing. Good will.
Put another way: if they were not cheaper and open, they would simply not be competitive. They would already be dead.
I don’t think this ends well for the Chinese labs. This is going pretty much like I thought. Western labs is just copying their improvements (I don’t think publishing the techniques matter here.. they’d just hire to gain the knowledge or figure it out themselves), and they have access to more GPUs and have better branding, so in the end where can the Chinese labs compete? Even lower cost? Open weights? I’m not sure open is a sustainable way to compete either. Eventually there will be some fully open source AI models that cuts out that avenue of competition as well.
amelius · · focus · HN ↗
Any ideas?
audunw · · focus · HN ↗
Put another way: if they were not cheaper and open, they would simply not be competitive. They would already be dead.
I don’t think this ends well for the Chinese labs. This is going pretty much like I thought. Western labs is just copying their improvements (I don’t think publishing the techniques matter here.. they’d just hire to gain the knowledge or figure it out themselves), and they have access to more GPUs and have better branding, so in the end where can the Chinese labs compete? Even lower cost? Open weights? I’m not sure open is a sustainable way to compete either. Eventually there will be some fully open source AI models that cuts out that avenue of competition as well.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]