Personally, when I use open code or routers, I feel that beyond a certain level, the models don't make a huge difference to me. Except for expensive and mediocre models like Gemini. In that sense, Chinese models are pretty good. I usually write code in function or method units and then design and assemble them together.
GPT series models are more thorough and better, but I'm not sure if the difference is enormous. It seems to depend on the workflow, but in my opinion, if you are thorough enough, I wonder if there really is a big difference
I've kind of given up on the routers for "free" inference, as you would expect, they tend to give you sub-par thinking because they are obviously trying to conserve as much inference as possible.
I've had some success turning my macbook M1 pro into a heating pad with Qwen 3.6 35B A3B MTP. Trying to use Gemini models "locally" resulted in a similar "short shrift" of effort resulting in mistakes and lots of turns. The reports of Fable being relentlessly "proactive" shows you can go the other direction as well, if you have strong enough branding and effective invoicing.
> I've kind of given up on the routers for "free" inference, as you would expect, they tend to give you sub-par thinking because they are obviously trying to conserve as much inference as possible.
Tangent: did the MTP help you at all? I’ve tested that model back to back on my M1 Max MBP and the MTP version was actually marginally worse. I wonder if I didn’t use the right settings, although I tried several based on the obvious sources.
The difference in outcome isn't that big but yes, you need to be more rigorous. For instance I've found that the Kimi K2.5 and K2.6 models will comment out failing tests rather than fix a problem they just caused (mistaking them for "pre-existing failures"), so you need to specifically make commented-out tests break the build. I've not personally had that problem with any of the Anthropic or OpenAI models.
I wonder why it's the natural tendency of models to BS or do stuff like this when they don't have the correct answer - it's clear that they can program refusal into them, but for some reason, refusal has to be injected after the fact, and models can't really arrive at the conclusion that they can't answer properly.
I really hope we stop using the term "Chinese models". It has this air of Negative connotation. It's the equivalent of calling cars Japanese, which people used to do but now is almost entirely meaningless. You just call them Toyota, Honda, Lexus etc.
I don't think "Chinese" is pejorative in this context any more than "American" is. They are one of the two ecosystems. What's wrong with saying "Japanese cars" today?
Only that it’s a fairly meaningless grouping. When japan first entered the car market in north america there might have been some commonality, but now what characteristics do they share that some american cars don’t have? They’re not even imported a lot of the time.
Given that, it does start to feel tinged with racism if someone insists on grouping things together that don’t really belong together.
As for Chinese LLMs, the term doesn’t “feel” pejorative to me - but i also don’t see a totally clear set of attributes they share. Not all are open-weight. Some are small and can be run on consumer hardware, some are huge. They even have a variety of answers to what happened june 3rd 1989
> When japan first entered the car market in north america there might have been some commonality, but now what characteristics do they share that some american cars don’t have?
They're unique in that they even make a regular passenger car. American manufacturers only make SUVs and a couple of sports/luxury cars. They basically gave up because the Camry/Corolla/Accord/Civic ate their lunch.
The cheapest sedan you can get from an American brand is the Cadillac CT4.
> but now what characteristics do they share that some american cars don’t have?
The difference is quite big in my opinion. When given the option to pick a Japanese vs American vehicle for about the same price/features, most people will pick the Japanese vehicle. American vehicles have improved over the years, but quality and reliability are generally better for Japanese vehicles even today.
Sadly there is a pejorative context. The constant us, the free world vs China, the evil Soviets rhetoric from every major news establishment and executive creates that negative view
On the other hand the Trump administration has successfully managed to make Chinese seem better than American, so there might not be that much of a pejorative context any more..
You're right, but the bias in the US certainly persists. "China = bad" is an assumption that many people still make without any self-reflection about the ways in which the US is now at least as bad.
For me, it has a positive connotation! In my experience, Chinese Model means cheaper, but still quite effective model you can use for millions of tokens without burning your entire wallet in seconds. That's why I get more excited over a Chinese model release over American models.
I don't know, I tried using one of the Chinese models and it was VERY quick to scan my entire home dir, so maybe your threat surface is a little different than mine
They return instructions for you to do something, and you or a script you permit chooses to execute what the model tells you and return the result to the model.
For those that don't like calling them CCP models, may I remind you, the CCP won't let Chinese AI researchers out of the country any more without securing approval first[1].
I tend to agree with the comment in my reply thread about whether we really need to add biased modifiers to the essence of a good product. I think every national system in this world is flawed. And in this context, 'China or Chinese' is often used in a negative sense, like 'Made in China'. But KIMI is a good model, and I think the comment that pointed this out to me correctly identified my unconscious bias.
And even if the Chinese Communist Party provided funding, the result is still transparently released. So even if it is some kind of propaganda, I don't see what the problem is.
Is the monopolistic greed of American companies 'good', and China's greed 'bad'? I do have that question.
The question is not whether it is a good model, it is whether the model can be trusted to not act intentionally maliciously against certain topics or certain users.
We live in a time of a great geopolitical rivalry and high tensions with an emergent technology with tons of national security implications. To pretend otherwise is silly, and to fail to ask the question, dangerous.
> The question is not whether it is a good model, it is whether the model can be trusted to not act intentionally maliciously against certain topics or certain users.
We absolutely know that we can't trust the American model not to do that - it's "by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs" - so it's not clear what the claim really is.
Doesn't matter, because they're open-weight, so I can just download them to my PC and... hey, look, now they're owned by me! Unlike the "good" Western counterparts which are all fully proprietary. (Except Mistral, but they're nowhere near SOTA.)
Ah yes, those pesky Chinese backdoors that no single instance was ever found, even though Chinese open-weight model are a thing for many years now. Many people burn through millions of tokens on these models every day - surely someone would have triggered one of those backdoors, right?
Or that pesky CCP censorship and propaganda baked into the model, which any random guy can remove from whichever model they want as a single weekend side project with an off-the-shelf tool[1]. (Try it. It's fun. I've done it myself.)
I agree it is an empirical question. I do not know if that research has been done in the open sphere. But please, do not pretend that there isn't a real geopolitical rivalry going on that makes such questions a legitimate, non-fruity concern.
This is a fair point, alongside the one about the hidden content in the weights.
Exactly why my prime suspect would be the one country with focus on proprietary models, and the one country prone to bombing others, including with nuclear weapons.
Unlike China, the US government doesn't own the models. The models will freely talk about any of those bombings or other atrocities of the US government.
Sure, but the difference is that one side (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and co.) hoards everything, keeping it proprietary behind API paywalls and constantly spewing AI doomer rhetoric while limiting what you can do "for your own safety" (especially Anthropic; Dario has been consistently doing this since GPT-2 days, every time claiming that things are "too dangerous" for the common folk to handle). While the other side (big, bad China) releases all SOTA open-weight models with which you can do whatever you want with, along with a ton of open research.
So yes, there is geopolitical rivalry, but one side is deliberately antagonistic (not releasing anything in the open, putting arbitrary restrictions, spewing toxic rhetoric, applying sanctions, etc.) while the other side is letting everyone (including their rivals) to use what they've produced with little-no-to restrictions.
I'm under no illusion that if the situation was reversed China would most likely do the same, but as things stand you can probably guess which side I'm rooting for here (at least until the roles reverse).
Yes, each are following their own business strategy, frontier labs have no incentives for releasing open weights, while second and third-tier labs, it is one of their few plays to gain market/mind share. But business is only part of it, as national security is another. It may be that the CCP has been relatively hands off exactly because of my concern, judging that market share and reputation is more important (for now).
Do you believe there's some meaningful benefit to the American VC funding model in this case? It's not clear to me what you're trying to say or why you think it's an important distinction.
I, too, can claim that "the spaghetti monster exists" is in the same ballpark as "UK is a parliamentary system".
Let's take a look at a related field: the accusation that Chinese car makers are subsidized/funded by "the CCP". It just so happens that the CF40 research forum recently published a study that shows there the money actually comes from, by analyzing the companies' financial reports. https://www.pekingnology.com/p/oecds-subsidy-centric-narrati...
Turns out that they most rely on equity financing or alternative forms of financing (like delayed repayment to suppliers). They don't even make that much use of cheap credit from state banks.
More counter evidence: a new study based on 3+ years of fieldwork, 60+ interviews (with officials, entrepreneurs, and engineers), and rich first-hand accounts, shows that Chinese EV makers rose despite central government's efforts, not because of them. The central govt favored state-owned enterprises. Private firms had trouble getting state funding and even licenses. For example Geely operated illegally for years. But private industry and local mayors teamed up and created an alternative system. They then grew to a point where Beijing was like "ok you guys are obviously doing better, so we will not make a fuss about this and just legalize you".
This is in complete contrast to the usual western tropes that state that everything in China is tightly controlled by Xi or by the central govt. In fact, the central govt's merit is in being lenient to deviance and operating based on results rather than amount of control. The opposite of the "totalitarian" trope. All the while western pundits would predict something like "Xi has a huge ego and will never tolerate the humiliation that his plans are imperfect" or something like that.
So no, "of course everything is CCP funded and CCP controlled" is not a given, nor in the same league as "UK is a parliamentary system". If they got the car maker situation so, so wrong, then what else is wrong?
If you want to win against China, isn't your first step to properly understand who they are and how they operate, rather than doubling down on your imagination of who they might be? Know your enemy and all that (not saying that I agree with seeing them as an enemy, but if you do, then you sure are doing yourself a disservice)
Letting someone do something is different than being unable to stop someone from doing something. Your response even implicitly acknowledges this, but then you seem to miss it.
Its very naive to mistake leniency in Xi's playground with constitutionally protected freedoms. CCP "free enterprise" is just mock free enterprise. Like a teacher letting the kids have fun with the classroom business sim, the teacher is still in God mode, and can still intervene in any way at any point to do whatever they want.
All of China hinges on the whims of one guy. Nothing stops him from deciding that all that private money is actually state money, or that Geely's president needs "time away".
That is why it is all "CCP money and CCP controlled". Don't confuse leniency with autonomy.
And yet here we are with the US banning anything at will under the guise of national security. I'm not even discussing whether the national security label is legitimate, or whether your "everything is CCP-controlled" framing is legitimate. But you gotta be consistent and also adopt the position that US companies are "US state controlled", and consistently refer to them as such.
Also, I am pretty confused about your larger point. What exactly are you saying? Is it some variant of "only states with constitutionally protected freedoms are good, everything else is evil"? If that's your position, then where do you put the fact that the US bombs foreign countries at will? And that many western countries sponsor the killing of children in Gaza while arresting people who protest against it? We've seen that western democratic countries, and let's assume they're properly democratic domestically (disputed by their own populations, see Democracy Perception Index, but I digress), can be ruthlessly... let's call it "undemocratic"... abroad. Or the fact that ICE and US police officers detain/kill innocent people and are super abusive. This doesn't neatly fit into the simple "free states good unfree states bad" view. So what is your position in the larger context?
You also completely ignore the part where I said properly understanding China is important in order to defeat it. Do you... not wish to defeat China? Are you contend with merely stating that China is bad? Do you not support moving/developing more manufacturing to the west/US? If you want the latter to succeed, don't you need to have a super good understanding of what makes Chinese industrial policy and development successful? Or are you really contend with merely moralizing?
Assuming you are just naive like so many others about China...
China is a communist country with elements of capitalistic markets baked in. But the capitalistic elements are mostly a facade. Underneath, the state retains full ownership and control of all business. The CCP runs all aspects of the government (including the courts/judges), and is the single entity that decides what directions the country (and it's businesses) will move in.
The CCP, who defacto owns everything and has ultimate final say on everything, has one leader that has the ultimate final say on _everything_, Xi Jinping.
So while the waters of CCP models feel warm and free, understand it's not organically like that.
> China is a communist country with elements of capitalistic markets baked in.
While I get the point you're making (it should be pretty obvious to anyone who's held a newspaper), I think it's important regardless to point out that Chinese companies AFAIK aren't worker-owned or -controlled, so you can't exactly call it communism, either. And they obviously do not have a "free market capitalism", as you just discussed.
It's simply a highly authoritarian state then, I guess?
The companies are all worker owned, because the state exists for the people, and the state owns everything. At least on paper that's how it is sold. After all it is the Peoples Republic of China.
I mean, if that's the bar then the state owns everything in America as well. After all, you don't really own your land if the state can regulate what you do on it, what it can be used for, what you can build on it, and can take it away if they really need it. The state owns the land, the money supply, and regularly restricts and instructs businesses to take or desist from actions.
As such, the state owns everything in both countries, the only differences are to what extent they control things.
I wouldn't even call the USA a capitalist system anymore, the economy is so heavily regulated and interfered with. It's a "managed economy", like pretty much every other nation's economy in the present day.
Crazy mental gymnastics if you think the American oligarchs don’t have the final say on everything in America. They’re just smart enough to do it behind the scenes, well they used to be. They barely bother anymore.
Google and Tesla making products to sell to the government is different than the government funding the government to make products for the government.
In China it's all one entity with these mock facades of privatization. Trump cannot instruct Google to put picture of dogs on their homepage. If Xi wakes up and wants dogs on Alibaba's homepage, give it 30 minutes.
It's wholly ignorant or dishonest to make the comparison.
Tim Apple and the other tech CEO constantly groveling at Trump’s feet indicates that he might be able to do that.
Just like threatening TV networks about having their licenses revoked of blocking mergers unless they fire the people making fun of him on TV (of course with slightly mixed success)
> Trump cannot instruct Google to put picture of dogs on their homepage.
Sundar Pichai would personally be barking on a livestream on the homepage.
Trump is quite literally the one president showing that the US has zero rules or anything to hold power back from the white house, really not the example you want.
Courts and legal obligations are to a certain extent irrelevant at this point. There are plenty of illegal ways that Trump can fuck over Google and face no consequences.
e.g. he had Colbert fired (and who knows what else) by threatening to block the Paramount/Skydance merger
GPT series models are more thorough and better, but I'm not sure if the difference is enormous. It seems to depend on the workflow, but in my opinion, if you are thorough enough, I wonder if there really is a big difference