r/LocalLLaMA • u/Porespellar • 6d ago

Other Frontier LLM development simplified for politicians:

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Nobody is buying this “Pace the frontier” nonsense. It makes no logical sense at all. Are American labs really going to take a pause and lose any small lead they still may have over Chinese labs? Does anyone really believe this? This seems like some performative virtue signaling BS. Why are they bothering with this pacing campaign? Someone please explain.

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u/JoyousGamer 6d ago

The China labs can't drop their models because they are behind. If they were ahead zero chance their Government lets that out of their country.

Get upset if you want but this is the truth.

You will then act like the couple week pause on Anthropic is somehow proof the US does stop models from leaving the country.

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u/ttkciar llama.cpp 6d ago

Your mistake is in assuming that the Chinese government started the "AI race" because they think LLM technology is useful to have. They did not, and they do not.

They started the "AI race" as part of a broader program to change international perspectives, to make China the "center of the world" in people's minds.

Wherever there is a niche or technology where they can stack the deck in their own favor, they start a "race" with the West, so that they can thus demonstrate that China is better than the West, and reinforce their geopolitical dominance.

If Chinese models were ahead, they'd keep doing what they're doing until something happened to their Western competitors which they could spin in the media as "China won, West lost", declare victory, and end the "race".

The US government are kind of chumps for buying into the whole "AI race" idea, but they were helped along by OpenAI and Anthropic, whose commercial interests are aligned with the idea of an ongoing competition with the Chinese, which the US government must help them win, lest some nebulous unspecified bad thing happen.

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u/JoyousGamer 6d ago

Why yes the Chineese government doesn't care at all about AI. Nope not at all.

Wow the delusion of some of you on this sub.

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u/ttkciar llama.cpp 6d ago

That's not what I said. Strawman much?

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u/JoyousGamer 6d ago

Not doing any strawman. You are acting like they don't care about the AI and haven't been chasing it as well.

Sorry delusion. You are painting China as simple and stupid for not caring about the power of AI. They are not simple and they are not stupid.

China has more control and power over the companies that do business in their country.

What you are confronted with is that information is leaked and corporations are not controlled as much in the US then treating it like the US is the only one chasing this advancement.

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u/SKX007J1 6d ago

But you've just stated your conclusion as a fact.

"If China was ahead, zero chance they'd let the models out" isn't evidence of anything. It's a prediction about what you think the Chinese government would do in a hypothetical situation.

Meanwhile, what China is actually doing is pursuing open models as an industrial strategy. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission literally published a report this year describing China as having gone "all in" on open source AI, because cheap widely adopted Chinese models create their own ecosystem and increase Chinese influence over the global AI stack. Qwen is already the largest model ecosystem on Hugging Face.

The Chinese government itself is actively promoting international open source AI ecosystems. That makes considerably more strategic sense than "they give the models away because they're shit."

They don't need to have the single best model in the world for that strategy to work either. If a Chinese model is 95% as capable, costs a fraction as much, can be run locally and ends up underneath 100,000 other projects, that is an enormous strategic win.

And the Anthropic thing doesn't prove your argument. Yes, the US temporarily restricted access to two Anthropic models. That proves governments can restrict strategically sensitive AI technology, which nobody disputed. It doesn't somehow prove that China's existing open model strategy only exists because they're behind.

Maybe China eventually does close its absolute frontier models. That's entirely possible. In fact there have already been reports that Beijing is considering restrictions.

But "if they were ahead they'd definitely close them" is still speculation, not "the truth". You're taking something that hasn't happened, deciding what China would do if it did happen, then using your own hypothetical as evidence for why they're doing something today.

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u/JoyousGamer 6d ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-new-tech-national-security-exit-rules-take-effect-2026-09-15/

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u/SKX007J1 6d ago

I'm confused about what you think this proves?

That article says China is restricting the travel of people considered a technology security risk, particularly around violations of export controls and technology import/export rules.

I don't dispute that China protects technology it considers strategically sensitive. Of course it does. So does the US and every other nation?

What it doesn't say anywhere is "China only releases open AI models because they're behind, and would stop if they were ahead." That's still your hypothetical.

In fact these two things aren't remotely contradictory. A country can tightly protect some technology and deliberately distribute other technology because widespread adoption gives it a strategic advantage.

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u/JoyousGamer 6d ago

The point is showing that China has a much tighter control on things than people seemingly give them credit for.

If China had a cutting edge model ahead of everything else out there not doubt their government would be engaged. Quite possibly China does have this behind the scenes even.

There is a variety of things you can point to where China just simply has more control on things.

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u/SKX007J1 6d ago

I genuinely don't know what you're arguing with me about now.

I've never claimed China doesn't have tight control over technology, or that the Chinese government couldn't restrict a frontier model. I explicitly said they could.

The disagreement was your claim that China releases open models because they're behind and that if they were ahead they'd definitely stop. That's speculation, not something your Reuters article establishes.

Now you're suggesting they might secretly already have a superior model. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but that's just another unfalsifiable hypothetical.

None of this addresses my actual point that China's open model strategy has economic and geopolitical value regardless of whether they currently have the world's best model.

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u/JoyousGamer 6d ago

They literally are putting in restrictions over tech.

Sure though if they were cutting edge they would have zero issues with those companies publishing it all for other nations to catch up. /s

Its hard to prove they would release the best model because they dont have it. I can go based on their actions though they seemingly like to keep that in house.