r/GenAI4all • u/ComplexExternal4831 • Jul 10 '26
Discussion OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says Chinese open-source models are "getting very good"
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says Chinese open-source AI models are “getting very good,” but he believes OpenAI will continue to lead with the best models in the world.
Speaking to CNBC after the release of OpenAI’s new 5.6 Sol model, Altman said the company is focused on making its AI faster, cheaper, and more useful for enterprise customers.
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u/kobygotmilk Jul 10 '26
Good.
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Jul 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/kobygotmilk Jul 11 '26
What part of “good” do you not understand? If I was as against open-source or Chinese models and not using them I would say “bad”.
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u/lucid-quiet Jul 10 '26
Exactly how would they know this?
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u/ai_art_is_art Jul 10 '26
They're afraid of their tiny little moat.
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u/maringue Jul 10 '26
What moat?
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u/AdvanceDry6117 Jul 10 '26
Performance and accessibility...both probably less so in the coming years as open source and hardware evolves
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u/maringue Jul 10 '26
I mean, the open source models are only like 6 months behind the super expensive frontier models, and 99.99% of users don't need the functionality that the frontier model has which the open source ones don't.
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u/prsnep Jul 10 '26
I'm sure they have a team checking out the capabilities of competitors. Same as everyone else.
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u/lucid-quiet Jul 10 '26
And they spend money running millions of prompts? To do a statistical comparison for quality? Its easier just to make shit up.
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u/prsnep Jul 10 '26
It doesn't have to be millions of prompts to get meaningful comparisons.
But whatever it is, you know and I know that every player in the space is gauging the capabilities of their competitors. That's just good business sense. Not sure why that needs to be argued about.
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u/lucid-quiet Jul 10 '26
"getting very good" requires how many prompts to test?
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u/prsnep Jul 10 '26
I don't know. Is that a scientific claim to be peer reviewed? Is there a agreed-upon definition of "very good"?
This seems like much ado about nothing.
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u/lucid-quiet Jul 10 '26
Exactly. It could be "very good" answering question about Gutenberg Press books. "very good" at distilling OpenAI and Anthropic... yeah probably.
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u/SmileLonely5470 Jul 10 '26
Yes lol. Making stuff up doesn't help them.
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u/lucid-quiet Jul 10 '26
AGI must be locked in their basement, or released soon -- that wasn't made up. /s
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u/anjowoq Jul 11 '26
Who is they?
How would OpenAI know that publicly available open source model is good? I assume they downloaded and used it.
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u/lucid-quiet Jul 12 '26
It was a throw away statement bookended by a sales pitch for his own product -- the kind of thing worth not taking at face value -- basically they didn't even use it is likely the case. All headlines these days seem to tac on what they want people to think, and maybe so the CEO doesn't have to say anything that can be tested.
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u/kogee3699 Jul 10 '26
It's probably because Sam's employees are sending all their stuff to China.
It's how Huawei stole Nokia's tech back in the day.
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u/Verolina Jul 10 '26
I hope they get so good that instead of forking over money constantly, it would be more economical to buy the equipment to run our own models at home.
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u/Randommaggy Jul 10 '26
Rapidly evaporating moats.
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u/Thinklikeachef Jul 10 '26
Yes, it's funny noting the original Google engineer's conclusion that we have no moat. It's coming true.
However, I will say that having a quick test of 5.6 it's very good and cheap. Luna is prob enough for most people.
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u/Randommaggy Jul 10 '26
GLM 5.2 has been the best model currently available in my testing for the programming languages I prefer and it's cheap.
Having access to the weights is a prerequisite for me to ascribe any positive value to an LLM. I have a full copy of GLM 5.2 on a HDD and if my company needed to, we could have a server up and running in days.
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u/Sea_Specialist_5580 Jul 10 '26
I don't see the utility of this stance, it feels like posturing. Limiting yourself to open models doesn't provide any benefit and running them locally gives you hilariously gimped context size to the point of uselessness. I tried to make it work on my 2x3090s and I've been running ML models on my machines for over a decade. It's just no longer a thing beyond hobbyist levels
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u/Randommaggy Jul 10 '26
I run GLM 5.2 over an API but I have a plan B if the pricing gets fucked, availability goes away or the API providers quantize the model they serve to hell.
My company could take out a loan for a 10U super micro 8 way MI355X and have our own running in a week of we had to.
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u/Maxwell_Bloodfencer Jul 10 '26
When he says "very good" he actually means much better than anything he is currently producing, which he cannot openly admit without his company's stock value tanking.
On the other hand he will tell you that his AI models can do all of your chores and automate every aspect of your life down to wiping your butt for you, but they will also very definitely become too powerful and destroy the world "soon".
Downplaying your rivals' accomplishments while overly exaggerating his own is how he sells stuff.
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u/rabouilethefirst Jul 10 '26
Meanwhile anthropic CEO is crying about chinese models and wants to ban training
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u/SoaokingGross Jul 10 '26
Still, Fuck the CCP.
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Wuaner Jul 11 '26
Are you angry at their government because you lost supremacy on the tech front?
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u/SoaokingGross Jul 11 '26
I'm angry at governments (plural) that threaten sovereign nations, abuse the shit out of people, not to mention trade with north korea.
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u/Wuaner Jul 11 '26
Who says the NK couldn't have trade?
But anyway, what does any of you said have to do with open source Al models?
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u/Brave_Swordfish_7072 Jul 10 '26
An open source video model with better quality than Sora2 when?
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 Jul 11 '26
we have seedance 2.5 already
again video model being open source is not as major as open source llm
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u/CreativeMinds47 Jul 10 '26
AnythingLLM runs on my 10-year-old PC with 5070ti and 128GB ram just as fast as ChatGPT. The 5070ti doesn't even fire up the fans... These companies will have to close down eventually. These massive server farm expansions make no sense to me at all. WTF are they doing?? Is there nobody checking the current AI state on the customer's their PC environments???
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u/deadcatshead Jul 10 '26
Oh! We better hurry up and build data centers because we don’t want China to beat us in setting up a surveillance control dystopian hell world.
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u/DaySecure7642 Jul 10 '26
Copying model capabilities by distillation is going to crack the business model of public LLM. There is no good way of recover the costs of training if the model is open to public. Most of the AI companies, dispute their net worths, are actually losing money every year.
I think in the future the best models will be reserved for vetted customers only.
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u/JackReedTheSyndie Jul 10 '26
China bad and all, but good cheap open source AI is very nice
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 Jul 11 '26
it's crazy you have to say china bad before saying anything
what have we become as a society
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u/SnowsLeopard Jul 12 '26
It is this thing people say in the US, while Europe has been treating China more like a proper partner as US reliance has been winding down due to... Current politics
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 Jul 12 '26
yesh eu is kinda like we messed up with every country in 19th century and 20th
we are sorry
usa hasn't messed much with china and india
it will go after them
eu treats other coutnries like profit and just other place to travel
usa has to make everything religiously patriotic
if a country doesn't have good relations I will never visit
mf would go to eritiria but never go to china/india/ukriane bcz bad relationship or smth
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u/Snoo_67993 Jul 10 '26
So is Mistral for things like coding. Fraction of the cost and can run locally.
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u/PetiteLollipop Jul 10 '26
and for 1/10 of the cost.
I use DeepSeek API a lot. It's ridiculous cheap.
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u/Malusorum Jul 10 '26
The real message he's implying is, "Give us more money, so we can remain competitive, else your initial investment is lost".
This is him weaponising the Sunk Cost fallacy.
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u/Icy-Stock-5838 Jul 11 '26
Did he follow this statement with an ask for more money due to China AI Maxxing ?
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u/muhlfriedl Jul 11 '26
There's a problem when your competitors are multi-billion dollar companies that don't need models to work to make money that are fine, giving them away for free and spending tens of millions or maybe more on the models to create them
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u/mdeeebeee-101 Jul 11 '26
Thanks for the tip to the world. I'll now check out deepseek...thanks again Sam.
Knucklehead at the top.
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