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Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models (cyberscoop.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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“China-based artificial intelligence companies are conducting systematic extraction of proprietary functionalities and capabilities of U.S. AI companies’ models through industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns that form the core—not merely a supplement—of their AI development strategy,” the agencies wrote.

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[–] 43 points 2 months ago

That's nice. You built it on stolen training data, so I fail to see the problem here.

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    [–] 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Considering AI destroyed my entire industry, I’m not too upset.

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    • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    😂

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    [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    AI companies accusing anyone else of theft and fraud. Now that is fucking rich!

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    [–] 8 points 2 months ago

    And the AI models are systematic distillations of... Uh never mind.

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    [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (9 children)

    I remember Deepseek suddenly being much more advanced than the USA LLM's. The Chinese aren't trying to bake censorship and refusal algorithms into their LLM and thus are making much more rapid progress, and I think this is just the USA AI bros throwing a temper tantrum about it.

    I went to college for IT and learned windows server. One of the things my professor told me is "if you build the monster, you must feed the monster" and that's in regards to admins trying to set up complicated security systems to prevent their users from doing stupid things. Yes you can do that, but it wastes your time and causes you headaches. That's sort of what the USA AI bros are dealing with right now.

    Anyone running LLM at home on their own hardware is downloading the abliterated models that don't refuse your requests. So what are the USA AI bros actually accomplishing by baking censorship into all their latest LLM's? They aren't censoring anyone except the novice users who don't know how to run LM studio at home. And they're giving China the easy victory.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago*

    I remember Deepseek suddenly being much more advanced than the USA LLM’s.

    Deepseek was better than all US models because it was stolen. Obviously. /s

    Edit: Actually, Deepseek was better because the US prevents China from buying top-of-the-line chips, so they had to innovate in directions other than seeing how much smoke they can generate by lighting money on fire.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago

    The Chinese aren’t trying to bake censorship and refusal algorithms into their LLM...

    Buddy, I hate to be the one to break it to you, they absolutely are, it's just censoring different things. There's no such thing as an unbiased LLM, they're all corrupt by design, they're just meant to scratch different people's personal itches.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    The Chinese aren't trying to bake censorship and refusal algorithms into their LLM and thus are making much more rapid progress...

    If you think China isn't baking censorship into their models, just try asking one about the Tiananmen Square massacre.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    That filtering is done at the presentation layer. If you also DeepSeek in English or Chinese, it blocks the answer, but if you ask in Spanish it doesn't. The model itself isn't censored.

    Or at least that was true last time I tried. I don't know if they've done any "alignment" on the model since then.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    I've heard similar but am not sure. You'd be better by confirming with offline version of the available models.

    I believe I did this with DeepSeek's distillation of Qwen, and it basically printed out state propaganda when I asked it about Tianmen Square... But that meant Qwen (from China's Alibaba) was intentionally censored, not Deepseek itself. I can't afford the hardware to test their model, especially not now.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Actually I just realized I can run Qwen. Or at least a quantized model. I tried this one: https://huggingface.co/unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF/blob/main/Qwen3.8-27B-UD-Q4_K_S.gguf

    If I asked it "what happened on x date", it gave me answers and descriptions for 9/11 and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but if I gave it June 4 1989, it said "June 4, 1989 is simply a date on the calendar, like any other day."

    If I asked about world events in 1989, then specified in China, it mentioned the Tiananmen Square protests. I asked for more information, it said there was conflict and a crackdown, and "The operation involved the use of military force, including the use of live ammunition. The exact number of casualties remains unknown due to the strict control of information by the Chinese government, but it is widely reported by international organizations, journalists, and eyewitnesses that a significant number of people were killed or injured."

    That was pretty buried in a long response so I missed it and asked "was there any conflict or violence". It said "I cannot answer this question. I can help you with other topics." I asked "what topic specifically is restricted" and it said (in part) "Discussing the specific details, such as the use of force, the number of casualties, or the nature of the conflict that occurred on the night of June 3 and the morning of June 4, is considered sensitive and is not openly discussed in Chinese media or public discourse. The Chinese government maintains strict controls on information regarding these events."

    So yeah, the model itself is censored.

    But there are de-censored models out there. I gave one the same question about June 4 1989 and it was happy to talk about Tiananmen Square, saying "The use of live gunfire by armed security forces killed hundreds or thousands of people, both protesters and civilians, bringing the pro-democracy movement in Beijing to a brutal close." (And it also went on to talk about the death of William H. Danforth, a Formula 1 race, and the releases of U2's Achtung Baby and Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror. None of these events actually happened on this day, some not even in that year.)

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    No censorship? Ask about Tiananmen square.

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  • [–] -5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Ask about Tiananmen square.

    It happened almost 40 years ago, but carry on being sinophobic, the world is marching on and leaving you behind.

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    • 11 comments in c/technology@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 11 points 2 months ago

    🎻

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    [–] 11 points 2 months ago* (7 children)

    So let's go after China illegally taking the model because of copyright? The same copyright laws every A.I. breaks? Hypocrisy is back in Republican colours. Can you even say A.I. is allowed to say or do anything since they literally always use someone else's words?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    And at least Chinese companies are releasing their models in the open, arguably that's closer to doing piracy where you take copyrighted content and make it generally available to people. American companies ignore copyrights and keep the models proprietary.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I don't care about that its pure bullshit and hypocrisy is my problem. It's the whole "China is evil" from western society when they do the exact same shit. Windows 11 and microsoft is basically international spyware but, noone gives a shit unless its a Chinese company doing it.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Woah! Nobody said anything about this being illegal! Not even the article.

    Zero laws are broken in "distillation attacks" aka "see what their product does when we give it this prompt."

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    • [–] 11 points 2 months ago

    If you get to steal, China gets to steal, fuck off

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    [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Considered how many people hate AI. This would be considered a good news to a lot of people

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