US accuses China of “industrial-scale” AI theft. China says it’s “slander.”
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On one hand, China is definitely guilty of distillation.
On the other hand, China is the leading provider of open models.
At least thus far, it seems like the end result is a stronger ecosystem.
On the other hand, China is the leading provider of open models.
At least thus far, it seems like the end result is a stronger ecosystem.
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The Chinese AI companies are in a hot race that, to American AI companies who want ai to remain a unique technology, risks commodifying their products in my opinion.
I can see why they’re so eager to try to slow them down.
I can see why they’re so eager to try to slow them down.
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Technically the "AI labs" stole their data in the first place. Maybe China just wants to be Robin Hood?
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IP theft by chinese companies has bene a huge problem for a long time but
... It's really hard for me to find it anything other than absurd to see the data scrapers complain about their own data getting scraped.
... It's really hard for me to find it anything other than absurd to see the data scrapers complain about their own data getting scraped.
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I mean, clearly they are distilling frontier models.
But a lot of the best Open research is coming out of Chinese labs. And a lot of the best local models are too.
So it's kinda like a Robin Hood type situation where they are stealing from these big labs and giving it away to all of us.
But a lot of the best Open research is coming out of Chinese labs. And a lot of the best local models are too.
So it's kinda like a Robin Hood type situation where they are stealing from these big labs and giving it away to all of us.
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US AI companies steal every IP and copyrighted work not bolted down to create their models. That's innovation!
Chinese companies steal every model, or "distil them". That's a problem!
OK.... /s
Chinese companies steal every model, or "distil them". That's a problem!
OK.... /s
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I'm shocked that emerging powers would countenance the use industrial espionage to gain economic advantages. We should write some very strong laws and make some very disapproving noises so that Chinese scientists and technologists who have ever-more-vanishing reasons to ever leave China's borders and sphere of influence live in fear of the FBI showing up at their homes.
A whole lot of /s in there, for what should be obvious reasons.
A whole lot of /s in there, for what should be obvious reasons.
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Why are US companies allowing these kinds of accounts to proliferate while simultaneously bragging about how many users they have?
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Because if you don't allow what turn out to be these kinds of accounts, you can't show a growth in how many users you have that justifies the loans, the tax incentives, and the stock price.
The apocryphal statement doesn't actually herald the supremacy of communism, but it still applies to so many things: "The Capitalists Will Sell Us the Rope with Which We Will Hang Them".
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Bit of an interesting argument when the AI were all trained with stolen copyrighted content.
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"Boo hoo I stole it first..." No honor among theives I guess. They stole from pretty much everything on the internet and loads of physical media to train these LLMs. I can't manage much sympathy here.
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Imagine a scenario in which China responds to this by passing new laws/enacting policies that declare “Public accusations of espionage directed at China or its citizens are violations of law unless successfully prosecuted in Chinese proceedings on Chinese soil. Penalties include withholding of mineral resources and/or imprisonment.”
Now what?
Now what?
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“China attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights” is DEFINITELY the funniest thing I’ll read all day.
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It is a strange one. AI only exists because it essentially steals data.
Ask AI a question and it will report someones data answer.
If that answer is knowingly wrong, a small tweak to the question might then returns a diffrrent correct data answer obtained/stolen from elsewehere.
I bet all AI also steal from other AI systems, AI itself a shortcut to pertinent data.
Ask AI a question and it will report someones data answer.
If that answer is knowingly wrong, a small tweak to the question might then returns a diffrrent correct data answer obtained/stolen from elsewehere.
I bet all AI also steal from other AI systems, AI itself a shortcut to pertinent data.
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I thought the same thing. China is incredibly industrious, but if it hadn't stolen technology over the last 30 years, they wouldn't be nearly as dominant as they are.
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Pot meet kettle. All of AI is industrial scale theft, now you want to clutch pearls when its affecting you?
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Oh goodness. The plundering botherds might be getting scraped. My heart bleeds for them.
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"They're stealing the stuff that we already stole!" - US AI companies
This feels like karma for the massive amounts of IP they misused to train their models..
This feels like karma for the massive amounts of IP they misused to train their models..
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Given the competency evinced by the US federal government of late, I assume they'll end up targeting Ryan Reynolds, foreign actor and part owner of Aviation American Gin.
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Anyone can create a crawler to trawl the internet scraping data to feed into an LLM. Chinas probably been doing it for years.
Why would they need to steal from US AI companies? And what would they steal? Scrapings of scrapings?
Why would they need to steal from US AI companies? And what would they steal? Scrapings of scrapings?
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Because there are no copyrights granted to output generated by an LLM alone, I am of the opinion that there cannot be intellectual property theft from a distillation attack. There was a large scale terms of use violation, which is not something the government should be pursuing.
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How are we going to sanction China? Cut them off from skilled workers? Half of our skilled workforce is foreign born, and I will bet at minimum 30% of that half is from China. Regardless of whether their LLMs stole for a second time what our AI companies stole first or not, by being a ship of fools we have largely sacrificed our leadership.
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The Trump administration lies about so much, that even with China's track record of doing exactly what they're being accused of here, I lean toward disbelieving the scale is anywhere near what the US is claiming.
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But... but... if people can learn by talking to an LLM, why is it so wrong for an LLM to learn by talking to an LLM????? Because LLMs are totally the same as people, right?
/s
/s
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The entire LLM industry is stupendously unprofitable and requires enormous investments of capital to build the data centres that power it, which then immediately depreciate and become obsolete once NVIDIA releases a new GPU. You basically set money on fire for extremely dubious benefit. China might be prompting currently-existing models to build their own, but continuously training models carries its own high cost, regardless of where the data came from.
If I was the emperor of the US, I'd let 'em have at it, lol. (And have the heads of several venture capitalists, Larry Ellison, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei brought to me on a plate, but that would come later.)
If I was the emperor of the US, I'd let 'em have at it, lol. (And have the heads of several venture capitalists, Larry Ellison, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei brought to me on a plate, but that would come later.)
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That's the history of every single industrializing country. They either steal or are given tech and hire engineers from the countries that has better tech to train their own engineers...
The US "stole" (by importing machines and then and ignoring uk patents) a lot of the steam tech from England back during the industrial age and then surpassed england in the tech, and so forth...
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This one definitely seems appropriate:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2025/02/03/vengeance-is-mine-saith-the-lord
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I am guessing this is the investigation that is required as a basis for imposing Sec. 301 tariffs against China.
Trump is probably planning to use this as the justification for imposing more tariffs against China ahead of the meeting in Beijing. This would be his only real option to impose tariffs now that IEEPA is no longer available.
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You should pack straw more densely when you build a strawman. That way, it holds its shape better and is a bit less obvious.
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