I saw an article about the latest model from Alibaba being about on a par with Anthropic and OpenAI. It was behind a paywall but linked to this blog post:
https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.8 So could you choose to use a Chinese model instead of a US model? Is it just a matter of signing up and buying some tokens? Would you choose based on who has the latest price? If you’re not doing anything super secret, would you care if it’s Chinese? I went to their website, it offered web or API access with prices in US dollars. I found the pricing confusing, tokens for this, tokens for that, seems like it would be difficult to know just how much it will cost to accomplish a given task, like Chuck writing his program. Are they all priced this way? From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Saturday, August 1, 2026 4:38 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT AI Claude Well Claude appeared very smart, insightful and helpful. I had the urge to thank it afterwards. _____ From: AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > on behalf of Mathew Howard <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: Saturday, August 1, 2026 2:42 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT AI Claude Good point. In my opinion, "artificial intelligence" really isn't a good description of these things, because it implies that there is actual intelligence there, and there isn't. "simulated intelligence" would be a more accurate name for what's really going on. On Sat, Aug 1, 2026, 3:01 PM Adam Moffett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: I have to give the standard disclaimer: LLM's produce output that statistically matches what a response to your input should look like. If you trained it with the specs for ANSI C it would not know how to write any C because it can't learn the spec and apply it. I have never used an ESP32, but for it to work that well there must be lots of documentation and discussion with working examples available to train it. I really don't think we should be calling these things "AI" because it sets the expectations too high, but I won't deny that it can produce useful outcomes. On Sat, Aug 1, 2026 at 2:37 PM [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Wrote (better, described a desired outcome) my first AI program today for an ESP32. Holy cow was that fast and easy and seemingly perfect. Have not tested it yet but looks good. So easy... wow! Best Regards, Chuck McCown McCown Technology Corporation 8401 N Commerce Dr <https://www.google.com/maps/search/8401+N+Commerce+Dr+%0D%0A+Lake+Point,+Utah+84074?entry=gmail&source=g> Lake Point, Utah 84074 <https://www.google.com/maps/search/8401+N+Commerce+Dr+%0D%0A+Lake+Point,+Utah+84074?entry=gmail&source=g> 801-250-9503 Office 435-830-4306 Cell www.mccowntech.com <http://www.mccowntech.com/> www.microtrench.pro <http://www.microtrench.pro/> www.terabitnetworks.com <http://www.terabitnetworks.com/> -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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