[spelk]

One wonders if this might be a net positive for the world if Anthropic is forced to terminate it's non-US citizen employees.

I would hope they return to their home countries with their expertise and start or join new competing frontier labs, similar to how Taiwan's homegrown semiconductor industry arose from US companies enforcing a bamboo ceiling on their Asian engineers. Taiwan was able to repatriate their nationals and make incredible compounding leaps in the semiconductor industry, to the loss and chagrin of the US. [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/10/07/1127595393/taiwan-miracle-sem...

[swader999]

I can't imagine how you'd restrict access to these models to USA nationals only. Every company in the USA would have to verify the id of every employee's model use. What do you do about programmatic AI workflows? How does Anthropic even continue to function internally right now on this Mythos and the future model development?

[ifwinterco]

Indeed, forcing Europeans to stay in Europe might be the only thing that could revive the moribund European AI scene

[khalic]

The brain drain goes in the other direction champ. Scientists and engineers are already leaving the US en masse because of the current situation

[bflesch]

Nothing of value is lost for Europe because we mostly work with natural intelligence. The malinvestment bubble happens in the US, and hardware prices will come down.

We're all dependent on Taiwan but others also depend on ASML which is located in Europe. Available AI services are good enough, and we sit and watch while US leadership and population is beta testing AI mass surveillance for us.

In terms of AI-based warfare Ukraine is very much ahead and they are also European for which we are very thankful.

So feel free to keep your AI scene and AI hustlers in the US, we don't need them.

[ifwinterco]

I am British and have no love for the US right now but in terms of talent it’s notable how many prominent researchers at the top US labs are originally European, and the contrast with the top European labs (of which there are ~none).

Does this actually matter as much as some people think? Probably not because LLMs won’t lead to AGI, but it is indicative of a broader problem

[bflesch]

US startups are trying to do a commercialization of AI, but their marketing is about being a "lab" and doing "research" - which they are not. They're trying to commercialize the hell out of the LLM approach, while fundamental research is still happening at universities.

[ifwinterco]

Fair point, but the issue I’m getting at is all too often from a European perspective the pipeline is:

Expensive publicly funded European education for 25 years -> high paid job in the US.

Costs are all paid by Europe, tax revenue and job creation all accrue to the US.

If we’re not careful it ends up being a straight transfer of value from ordinary European taxpayers to the US government which seems… suboptimal.

If the US can short circuit that process by shooting themselves in the foot, Europe will benefit

[bflesch]

Fully agree but it is still a risk for the US, because if the clever immigrants notice they can't get as rich as their American-born peers and on top of that US leadership publicly antagonizes their country of origin, those foreign-born engineers can quickly become foreign agents.

[inglor_cz]

"In terms of AI-based warfare Ukraine is very much ahead and they are also European for which we are very thankful."

Note that the Hornet drones which are now devastating Russian logistics behind the lines are US manufactured.

[bflesch]

Source? Even if this is true it is not noteworthy, because the damage done by US to their allies far outweighs such small "help".

[inglor_cz]

https://militarnyi.com/en/articles/american-hornet-destroyin...

Here right from a Ukrainian military server.

"it is not noteworthy"

From a peaceful office in Germany, it might not be. For a country fighting for survival, the perspective is different. I don't think you could persuade them to give up Hornets right now, in the name of abstractly getting back at the US in general. (With whom they have a lot of bad blood!)

[inglor_cz]

Someone like Saudi Arabia may attract them with untaxed high salaries instead.