@GoSailGlobal: Nathan Lambert visited all of China's top AI labs — Moonshot, Zhipu, Meituan, Xiaomi, Qwen / Ant Ling, http://01.AI — and wrote a piece titled Notes from inside Chi…

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Summary

Nathan Lambert shares observations from visiting top Chinese AI labs, highlighting cultural differences in research focus and ego compared to US counterparts, while noting parity in hardware and model capabilities.

Nathan Lambert visited all of China's top AI labs — Moonshot, Zhipu, Meituan, Xiaomi, Qwen / Ant Ling, http://01.AI — and wrote a piece titled Notes from inside China's AI labs. What shocked him most was the cultural difference: at the hardware level — GPUs, data, models — China and the US are nearly on par. In his own words: "US researchers have a culture of 'speaking up for themselves,' with ego and career ambition that often gets in the way of building good models. The state of Chinese researchers is the complete opposite: extremely low-key, extremely focused. When asked macro questions like AI's economic impact or AI ethics, their first reaction is 'I don't know about this, I shouldn't comment.'" He says: these small cultural differences accumulate into real gaps in final model quality. - It turns out that building models ultimately comes down to ego. - Now the output of cutting-edge large models in China and the US is already in the same tier. Lambert listed similarities: the largest models, the best scientists, the most compute, the most agentic training pipelines — basically the same. The gap is starting to shift to the next level: whose culture allows the best people to do research more purely will pull ahead in the next generation of models. - Original article (Notes from inside China's AI labs): https://interconnects.ai/p/notes-from-inside-chinas-ai-labs…
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Nathan Lambert visited all of China’s top AI labs — Moonshot, Zhipu, Meituan, Xiaomi, Qwen / Ant Group, and 01.AI — and wrote a piece titled “Notes from inside China’s AI labs.” What shocked him most was the cultural difference: on hardware like GPUs, data, and models, China and the US are almost on par. His original words: “American researchers have a culture of ‘speaking up for themselves.’ Ego and career ambition often get in the way of building good models.” “Chinese researchers are completely the opposite — extremely low-key, extremely focused. When asked macro questions like the economic impact of AI or AI ethics, their first reaction is, ‘I don’t know about this, I shouldn’t comment.’” He said: “These small cultural differences accumulate into a real gap in the final model quality. · It turns out that when building models, in the end, it comes down to ego. · Now the output of cutting-edge large models between China and the US is already at the same level.” Lambert lists the commonalities: biggest models, best scientists, most compute, most agentic training pipelines — all basically the same. “The gap is shifting to the next layer: whose culture allows the best people to do research more purely will pull ahead in the next generation of models.” · Original link (Notes from inside China’s AI labs): https://interconnects.ai/p/notes-from-inside-chinas-ai-labs…

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