The Anthropic news is demonstrating much the same; fall in line or eat export controls.
There was a time I would have agreed with you, but these days even as an American I fail to see a difference. China is probably less likely to try to disenfranchise or imprison me, to be honest.
> There was a time I would have agreed with you, but these days even as an American I fail to see a difference.
I don't get it, the person you're replying to didn't mention the US at all – there was no distinction being drawn, and they weren't asserting that American models are better or more resistant to government censorship. It's possible to agree with them about Chinese models without expatiating on why American models are bad too.
If we’re talking about models that people actually use, there’s really only Chinese models and American models. I haven’t heard anything about Mistral in ages.
From that lens, criticism of one is practically implicit support of the other. If I tell you that you can buy from salesman A or B, but B is a bad person, that implies A is not a bad person. Otherwise I would have said “they’re both bad people”.
“But Chinese models are controlled by the government” makes it sound an awful lot like the US ones aren’t, because it wouldn’t be a meaningful criticism if that were true of both.
I think it's a worthy retort simply because it's the only other major provider.
The American models are less tied to the government. For now...
Trump is of course the worst US administration, but at least America is still nominally a democracy. As long as free elections exist, the regime Trump represents can be voted out. The American people and press still have free speech—they can freely criticize anyone, including Trump.
China is different. The CCP will rule forever, no matter how terrible the things they do. No one is allowed to criticize the government. Xi is like Voldemort—no one can say his name, let alone criticize him.
Trump has made some concerning moves around freedom of speech and freedom of elections, but none of it is concrete yet. Maybe it never will be, either because the threat was overstated or because he’s just not competent enough to pull it off.
China does worse on those fronts, but they do so predictably. I don’t agree with many of their goals, but you can generally rely on them pursuing those goals in a manner consistent with their values. Ie I’m not often taken aback by how they respond, it’s within the realm of things I’d expect.
The US is concerning because their behavior is wildly unpredictable, which makes them unreliable even if their values align better with mine (purportedly, anyways). I have no idea when or if Fable will be back, or what kind of modifications the government will demand, or if this will apply to other models, and whether any of that is going to impact Anthropics or OpenAIs ability to release models.
I was already wary of Claude Code and Codex because I don’t like being tied to a provider-specific tool (I don’t trust they won’t cut off swapping the API URL), and now that’s even worse because I’m not even sure either will stay at the front of the pack. I’m sure as hell not using a vendor locked tool tied to the 5th best model provider (if they fall).