I agree. I can totally see in the future that open source LLMs will turn into paying a lumpsum for the model. Many will shut down. Some will turn into closed source labs.

When VCs inevitably ask their AI labs to start making money or shut down, those free open source LLMS will cease to be free.

Chinese AI labs have to release free open source models because they distill from OpenAI and Anthropic. They will always be behind. Therefore, they can't charge the same prices as OpenAI and Anthropic. Free open source is how they can get attention and how they can stay fairly close to OpenAI and Anthropic. They have to distill because they're banned from Nvidia chips and TSMC.

Before people tell me Chinese AI labs do use Nvidia chips, there is a huge difference between using older gimped Nvidia H100 (called H20) chips or sneaking around Southeast Asia for Blackwell chips and officially being allowed to buy millions of Nvidia's latest chips to build massive gigawatt data centers.

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pezgrande 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> have to release free open source models because they distill from OpenAI and Anthropic

They dont really have to though, they just need to be good enough and cheaper (even if distilled). That being said, it is true they are gaining a lot of visibility (specially Qwen) because of being open-source(weight).

Hardware-wise they seem they will catch-up in 3-5 years (Nvidia is kind of irrelevant, what matters is the node).

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aurareturn 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I highly doubt they can catch up in 3-5 years to Nvidia.

Chips take about 3 years to design. Do you think China will have Feymann-level AI systems in 3 years?

I think in 3 years, they'll have H200-equivalent at home.

	▲	RALaBarge 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You must have an inside line on information for 'China' -- those are bold predictions!

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spiderfarmer 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“They will always be behind”

Car manufacturers said the same.

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aurareturn 11 hours ago | parent [-]

It did take decades to catch and surpass US car makers right?

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seanmcdirmid 10 hours ago | parent [-]

About 2.5 decades from the start of the JVs, but they did it. Semiconductors and jet turbines are really the last two tech trees that China has yet to master.

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aurareturn 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Right. When I said "they'll always be behind", I meant in the next 5-10 years. They're gated by EUV tech. And once they have EUV tech, they need to scale up chip manufacturing.

	▲	spiderfarmer 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You will always be wrong.

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Barbing 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which might they master first?

	▲	seanmcdirmid 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Both are hard nuts but China is throwing massive amounts of money at the problem. They can already get performance or economy from each, they just need to figure out how to get both at the same time.