This week on Uncanny Valley, our hosts break down the White House’s accusation that Chinese-owned Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable 5 to build its much talked about Kimi K3 model. The team discusses whether this is a repeat of the DeepSeek moment and what it means for the AI race between the US and China. They also get into how the US Army—and plenty of Silicon Valley companies—are having to cut back AI usage after burning through their tokens. Plus, we discuss why you should check if you have an alarm that could make your car easier to hack, and how OpenAI briefly lost control of two AI models during a security test.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- The White House Is Trying to Figure Out What to Do About Chinese AI
- OpenAI Models Escaped Containment and Hacked Hugging Face
- A Device Hidden in Cars Across the US Leaves Them Vulnerable to Hacking and Paralysis. Patch It Now
- System Update Newsletter: The Best of …
You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at [email protected].
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to …'s Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer, contributing editor.
Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor.
Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science.
Zoë Schiffer: Today on the show, we're taking a look at how Chinese AI has been leveling up in a major way. The latest model released by Moonshot AI, one of the most well known labs in China, has been drawing worldwide attention this past week because of the model's enormous capabilities. On Wednesday, White House director Michael Kratsios accused Moonshot of illegally distilling Anthropic's Fable 5 model to build its own. We'll discuss whether we might be seeing another DeepSeek moment, and what the AI race between the US and China actually means for users.
Leah Feiger: We'll also get into how the US Army has been burning through their AI usage tokens and now find themselves in a position where they need to limit use. They're far from alone in having to pare back, though. Companies like Meta and Uber are already rethinking their AI usage as well because surprise, surprise, it's really expensive to use all these models.
Brian Barrett: Who would have thought? Also, on the docket for today, your car could have a hidden device that makes it more vulnerable to hacking. We're going to talk you through how to identify it and why some dealerships added it in the first place. And later in the show, how OpenAI lost control of two of its AI models during a recent security test.
Zoë Schiffer: So this past Friday, the Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI released their latest model called Kimi K3. And this news made major waves, first because the model is super capable. It goes toe-to-toe with the leading frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic. And then today, White House director Michael Kratsios, like we said at the top, basically accused Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic's models to build their own. So now a major fight is breaking out. And this isn't the first time that Anthropic has accused a Chinese lab of distilling its models. I'm curious, Brian, Leah, what you think just right at the top.
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