points by nostrademons 8 hours ago | 0 comments
This article has the flavor of a strategic political leak by the Trump administration, likely a prelude to blackmail to get NVidia to do something friendly to the administration. You don't have multiple "people briefed on the surveillance, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings are drawn from classified intelligence" unless someone high-up in the CIA is greenlighting the leak; that's a crime punishable by decades in prison. And then the whole article has the flavor of "We appreciate your continued support, Jensen, we know you have been a strong ally in public, but if you think of defying us we will hit you with espionage charges and throw you in jail. Look, the groundwork is already in the NYTimes."
Makes me wonder what the next headline is going to be, probably some deal between NVidia and the federal government over export restrictions or something.
[–] peri-cl 8 hours ago
[–] ShinyLeftPad 7 hours ago
That's likely new coming PRC sanctions on exporting LLMs, not something Nvidia did. https://sanctionsnews.bakermckenzie.com/china-proposes-expan...
[–] ActionHank 8 hours ago
The models are still on AA, not sure what you mean
[–] peri-cl 8 hours ago
They're not? They are no longer benchmarked, and not available on any of the charts (not even manually).
Their benchmarks have been replaced with "N/A" for several days now,
[–] ActionHank 8 hours ago
Oh I see, sorry, I just went as far as checking they were still on the site, didn't check the details.
That is really weird given how widely used they are.
[–] timmmmmmay 6 hours ago
AA updated their benchmark a few days ago and haven't retested every model yet, you can scroll down the page and see those in the old benchmarks
[–] peri-cl 6 hours ago
I'm pretty sure that's not it. They had 30+ models benchmarked and ready at launch, for a seamless transition. We're talking about the charts that're the hero images on their landing page.
These comparison charts missing two of the most popular models are defective.
(Also, these two happen to be "flash" models, which are among the fastest and cheapest to run benchmarks on. Pennies per task).
[–] contingencies 8 hours ago
Gee that's pretty much an antitrust case right there. Sell NVidia while you can.
[–] pixl97 7 hours ago
Um, lol, no.
For one, the US doesn't do anti-trust these days, just pay off uncle-trump to get your way.
Two, there are tons of model providers.
[–] contingencies 7 hours ago
"These days" are ending. Nothing about the current geopolitical climate, global supply chain, energy price, or socioeconomic reality of inter-generational quality of life chasm is stable. Taking a trillion dollar bite out of a bubble beneficiary is a clear opening move for a novel government with restored oversight and an eye on the books.
[–] jdale27 7 hours ago
So they leaked a story about Nvidia violating export restrictions in order to “blackmail” Nvidia into… obeying export restrictions? Wow, that’s some good old fashioned Trumpian 44D chess right there.
[–] UncleOxidant 8 hours ago
What about this part: "President Trump was briefed and took no action." ?
[–] nostrademons 8 hours ago
It's implicitly "President Trump was briefed and took no action yet."
You don't write about it in the NYTimes unless there's a purpose. That purpose is leverage. If you're negotiating, you don't blow all your leverage upfront; you subtly let the other party know you have it, and then wait to see if they play ball. If they don't, that's when you apply pressure.
[–] petre 8 hours ago
It's not the NYT but the NY Post, Rupert Murdoch tabloid media.
[–] UncleOxidant 8 hours ago
It's also in the NYTimes.
[–] freejazz 7 hours ago
So you're saying it might actually be news??
[–] apical_dendrite 8 hours ago
Another interpretation is that someone in the intelligence community felt that since Trump was ignoring what they perceived to be a serious threat to security, their best recourse was to use the media to raise an alarm.
[–] nostrademons 7 hours ago
Hmm, that's a possible read on it. I'd initially assumed an administration leak because the article seems more pro-Trump than the facts warrant (eg. "Mr. Huang, one of the most powerful figures in the A.I. revolution as well as an influential ally of President Trump’s" => Jensen Huang seems neutral/Democratic to me, though primarily concerned with the survival of his business, the picture of the White House luncheon with tech leaders => look at how he's projecting power and the support of the tech community, "People who have watched the two men interact say Mr. Trump has been won over by the lavish praise Mr. Huang has given the president in public" => look at how much lavish praise Mr. Trump gets!). But on a second read, all of those could be interpreted as the CIA complaining about how the close relationship between Trump & Huang is jeopardizing national security, and a few other comments in the article (eg. the sentences about how the Biden administration moved to clamp down on AI exports to China before Trump took over, and how this investigation started under the Biden administration) would support that read.
[–] ActionHank 8 hours ago
Needs to check in with daddy putin first.
Chinese models disappearing from HuggingFace (recently acquired by Nvidia).
GLM-flash and Qwen-next disappeared from ArtificialAnalysis (the top benchmark site) a few days ago; I was wondering if that was a prelude to something greater. Testing the waters.