Even when self-hosting, there is still a real risk of using Chinese models (or any provider you can't trust/sue) because they can embed malicious actions into the model. For example, a small random percentage of the time, it could add a subtle security vulnerability to any code generation.

This is a known-playbook of China and so it's pretty likely that if they aren't already doing this, they will eventually if the models see high adoption.

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nagaiaida 4 hours ago | parent [-]

on what hypothetical grounds would you be more meaningfully able to sue the american maker of a self-hosted statistical language model that you select your own runtime sampling parameters for after random subtle security vulnerabilities came out the other side when you asked it for very secure code?

put another way, how do you propose to tell this subtle nefarious chinese sabotage you baselessly imply to be commonplace from the very real limitations of this technology in the first place?

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kriops 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Baselessly" - I'm sorry but realpolitik is plenty of basis. China is a geopolitical adversary of both the EU and the US. And China will be the first to admit this, btw.

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coliveira 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Competitor != adversary. It is US warmongering ideology that tries to equate these concepts.

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kriops 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is just objectively incorrect, and fundamentally misunderstanding the basics of statehood. China, the US, and any other local monopoly on force would absolutely take any chance they could get to extend their influence and diminish the others. That is they are acting rationally to at minimum maximise the probability they are able to maintain their current monopolies on force.

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jrflowers 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Isn’t every country by definition a “local monopoly on force”? Sweden and Norway have their own militaries and police forces and neither would take kindly to an invasion from the other. By your definition this makes them adversaries or enemies.

	▲	kriops an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly. I am Norwegian myself, and I don’t even know how many wars we have had with Sweden and Denmark. If you are getting at the fact that it is sometimes beneficial for adversaries to collaborate (e.g., the prisoner dilemma) then I agree. And indeed, both Norway and Sweden would be completely lost if they declared war on the other tomorrow. But it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the relationship.

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delaminator an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

you clearly haven't been paying attention

remember when the US bugged EU leader's phones, including Merkel from 2002 to 2013?

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nagaiaida 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

sorry, is your contention here "spurious accusations don't require evidence when aimed at designated state enemies"? because it feels uncharitably rude to infer that's what you meant to say here, but i struggle to parse this in a different way where you say something more reasonable.

	▲	kriops 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’m sorry you feel that way. It is however entirely reasonable to assume that the comment I replied to was made entirely in bad faith, seeing as it dismisses any rational basis for the behaviour of the entities it is making claims about.

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saubeidl an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The US has also been behaving like an adversary of the EU as of late. So what's the difference?

	▲	kriops 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The EU isn’t a state and has no military or police. As such the EU’s existence is an anecdotal answer to your question in itself: Reliance on (in particular maritime) trade. And yes, China also benefits from trade, but as opposed to democracies (in which the general populace to a greater extent are keys to power) the state does not require trade to sustain itself in the same way. This makes EU countries more reliable partners for cooperation than China. The same goes for the US from an European perspective, and even with everything going on over there it is still not remotely close. All states are fundamentally adversaries because they have conflicting interests. To your point however, adversaries do indeed cooperate all the time.

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fragmede 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This paper may be of interest to you: https://arxiv.org/html/2504.15867v1

	▲	nagaiaida 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		the mechanism of action for that attack appears to be reading from poisoned snippets on stackoverflow or a similar site, which to my mind is an excellent example of why it seems like it would be difficult to retroactively pin "insecure code came out of my model" on the evil communist base weights of the model in question