[biffles]

I’m surprised to not see more commentary on this one. Much as folks may dislike AI and/or frontier labs, this is not good for capitalism, or democracy for that matter (given the actions of the executive govt today).

Seems the writing is on the wall for increasing inequality not just financially but now intelligence and economic opportunity as a result.

This will be particularly painful for startups and early stage businesses / SMBs that will be perpetually a step behind (likely multiple steps behind over time) companies with connections (especially those that are not above paying for connections in the admin).

I’d suspect bans on open source models to follow, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it hits hardware as well to fully close the loop.

[Taikonerd]

> I’m surprised to not see more commentary on this one.

I agree -- this is big news, but the thread only has 21 comments?!

When the Trump admin kinda-sorta banned Fable a week ago, it seemed like it might be a one-off event: handicapping Anthropic because the administration has a grudge against them.

But today's news makes it seem like we're moving into a whole different world of AI regulation: each US model will have to be approved for release by regulators! And not only that, but the administration will whitelist who gets to use it "customer by customer." (Altman's words.)

[thewebguyd]

> And not only that, but the administration will whitelist who gets to use it

This is the more dangerous part we should be terrified of tbh. Not being allowed to release it at all is one thing, whatever, just means we're capped at current capabilities for a while and things settle out.

The government picking and choosing who gets to access frontier intelligence is a huge issue and is creating the economic underclass all of us "skeptics" have been yelling at the clouds about since the beginning.

Found a startup? Well sucks to be you, your bigger competitors have access to more powerful intelligence than you do.

What happens when only the government has access to the powerful models, it will be wielded against citizens and non-citizens alike.

It also means we, the public, are no longer benefitting from the big infrastructure build out. The gains are going to be privatized, and yet agian, we bear the losses with no return.

It's enormous government overreach. A democratic government must not pick winners and losers. If they want to regulate the powerful models, it needs to be all or nothing. Either they cannot be released full stop or they must be available to the general public.

[ChrisLTD]

Startups and early stage businesses have always had less intelligence (when intelligence would be measured by the number and quality of their employees) than larger businesses. That hasn't stopped them from succeeding before.

[ElevenLathe]

I think there is a good chance that this is the AI lobby discovering a trick they can use to paper over lack of capacity by using their bought-and-paid-for influence on the Trump admin (not to be partisan: they've bought plenty of Democratic influence too, it just happens that Trump is currently holding the pen). Could OpenAI meet all demand for 5.6 if they wanted to? If not, wouldn't it be convenient if they weren't even allowed to offer it widely? Is this the same situation as Mythos/Fable?

[4d4m]

Everyone is too busy switching to a less fussy less censored distilled model from another country

[standardUser]

AI and microchips should probably be treated like nuclear weapons and disease research. They all have profound non-military value, but powerful nations hoard them, build elaborate systems to deter proliferation, and reap most of the benefits. It's not exactly fair, but it's worked surprisingly well with some technologies over several generations.

But I don't see it happening soon, which probably means it will be too late. There's simply not enough competent political leadership in the world.