What Alibaba left blank about Qwen4
Detailed summary
A company whose machines are trained to predict the next word has left one for us to supply. On Friday (November 6), Alibaba’s Qwen released a poster without a model name or a…
A company whose machines are trained to predict the next word has left one for us to supply. On Friday (November 6), Alibaba’s Qwen released a poster without a model name or a benchmark. Birds gather above a dark sea, their flock taking the shape of a fish.
Beneath them, one classical Chinese sentence stops short of its final character. Three English words accompany it: The becoming begins. The teaser invites speculation about Qwen4, but announces neither a release date nor a technical specification.
The answer is 鲲, Kun, a name familiar to readers of Zhuangzi’s Free and Easy Wandering. Kun is so vast that no one knows how many thousands of li it spans. It transforms into Peng, a bird whose wings stretch like clouds across the sky. The fish does not simply grow larger. It leaves the element in which it has always lived.
There is an older irony in the name.
Opening of the article, excerpted from Asia Times. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.
MarketNews shows the headline and summary published by the outlet. The full article is on the publisher's website. (asiatimes.com)
