> The best models are owned by a few companies

In terms of cost per task, the open weight Chinese models are winning by a long shot. So it depends on what you mean by the best model.

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jbellis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is only correct if you ignore subscriptions. I ran the numbers on what you get for your subscriptions last week: https://blog.brokk.ai/a-coding-subscription-tier-list/

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polytely 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Don't you think open weight Chinese models will be the first thing they start banning once the regulation of this industry starts to kick in?

	▲	nickysielicki 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, but if you read up two messages in this thread they’re discussing whether AI is power concentrating by default. If you concentrate power through regulation, that’s not “by default”. That’s just corruption in government resulting in a concentration of power.

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Paradigma11 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you sure about that?

when I checked a few weeks ago I did not really find anything competing per value with a 20x Codex subscription.

	▲	TuxSH 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In terms of API costs they're about right, 10% of weekly usage on a 5x sub is roughly $40 (for Astra). Chinese models cost roughly half as much (and have fewer refusals). Subs have insane value because large companies cannot use the subscription model. They are loss leaders and are often used for passion projects & startups (where the juicy data is). Ah and OAI stopped offering the 20x sub as of yesterday.
	▲	kfkfjfidirn 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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switchbak 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s only one metric. It doesn’t matter how cheap it is, if it continually fails to solve a problem.

Yes they’re getting better. No, I don’t think this will be a panacea. If only for the fact that this is China (more specifically the CCP) after all - they’ve got their own plan, and altruism is not part of it.

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lelanthran 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

TBH it doesn't need to completely solve a problem.

I can use GLM to do in 2 hours what would have previously taken me a week.[1] Switch to Astra or Fable might take that down to 1 hour, maybe.

The difference is not so big when you look at it that way.

==================

[1] Actually, no, but let's pretend for the sake of argument that SOTA models can 10x - 40x your productivity.

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znnajdla 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you actually used the latest Chinese models? Because, in my experience, they're not just cheaper, they're actually better in many cases. In one recent experiment I did a few days ago on a task that I need in production at scale at my company, Qwen 3.8 and GLM 5.3 Flash were not just cheaper, the results were significantly higher quality than GPT 5.6 Sol.

Even if China doesn't continue to release this stuff for free, I think somebody will. Eventually, maybe Europe or maybe a smaller country that picks up this knowledge will. Or maybe just some random philanthropic billionaire.

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switchbak an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, I use the messing Chinese models extensively. Like you, I very much appreciate them and sometimes prefer them.

But there is a bar of complexity at which they fail, and repeated invocations typically doesn’t make much progress. This is a small subset of most work, but it still exists. And yes you can help it along, but in those cases I’d typically break out the big guns.

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villish 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Qwen 3.8 and GLM 5.3 Flash were not just cheaper, the results were significantly higher quality

How can they be higher quality than models they were distilled from?

	▲	lelanthran 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> How can they be higher quality than models they were distilled from? The word "distillation" is not specific to AIs, has been in use for 100s of years, and does not mean the same thing as "dilution". It means "getting a more concentrated form of the original product".