Why is it a problem that the Chinese labs are just distilling down Anthropic’s models? Aren’t Anthropic’s models not just distilling down other people’s work?
Feels like Anthropic crying do as I say not as I do.
What Anthropic is doing requires way more resources than what the Chinese labs are doing. So their complaint is that they do 95% of the work and the Chinese labs do the last 5% and call it their own.
An argument can be made that Anthropic is also only doing the last 5% of the work (because the content they are training on was the other 95%) but that's a bit more philosophical.
But if you take it deeper, didn't most of those authors rely on the work of others? Most of human knowledge is small advancements of things we already knew. Often by reorganizing what we already knew.
Is that not what the foundation models are? A new reorganization of existing knowledge?
It is an ancient practice, that when a human creates something, other humans will observe it and learn from it. Every group of humans living together has practiced this in some form for tens of thousands of years if not longer. Even animals do it. It's a natural assumption when making any form of art.
It is not a natural assumption that someone will digitize the artwork and use it to adjust a couple thousand matrix coefficients in a complex computer program. To most people that seems like copying with extra steps. The brain may in some ways resemble a computer, but what sets it apart is that we have always lived with brains. Everything a human does has already anticipated the presence of other brains, while etched circuits on ultrapure silicon crystals are something new.
cmiles8 · · focus · HN ↗
Feels like Anthropic crying do as I say not as I do.
jedberg · · focus · HN ↗
An argument can be made that Anthropic is also only doing the last 5% of the work (because the content they are training on was the other 95%) but that's a bit more philosophical.
JackFr · · focus · HN ↗
The original authors of all the text, creators of the media and developers of the software did far more work than Anthropic.
jedberg · · focus · HN ↗
Is that not what the foundation models are? A new reorganization of existing knowledge?
scythe · · focus · HN ↗
It is not a natural assumption that someone will digitize the artwork and use it to adjust a couple thousand matrix coefficients in a complex computer program. To most people that seems like copying with extra steps. The brain may in some ways resemble a computer, but what sets it apart is that we have always lived with brains. Everything a human does has already anticipated the presence of other brains, while etched circuits on ultrapure silicon crystals are something new.