It’s looking very fragile from a legal point of view. Ownership of compute and software freedom will be next k the chopping block after control of networks that’s occurring at the moment.
This isn't going to save you unless you're ok being a criminal. There is nothing stopping the government from making open source versions of these models equally controlled.
And given how willy-nilly they are operating I see no reason they won't clamp down on open source. All it takes is someone with connections/political contributions wakes up one day and realizes that open source is a threat to their power or bottom line and it will be declared an imminent threat with no oversight or debate.
They'll just make it a crime to run the models unless they authorize you (classifying it as a munition, like they tried to do with encryption), and if your power bill is suspicious you'll find yourself in jail.
Any company providing the models will be deemed a threat to national security.
Citizens were and are free to use the technology (cryptography and every other export-controlled item); your "power bill is suspicious, go to jail" FUD doesn't really track with history.
> Any company providing the models will be deemed a threat to national security.
Any company providing specifically-controlled models to foreigners would hypothetically be prosecuted.
There's a famous poem called "First They Came" about how slippery this slope can be in a heated political climate.
I don't believe for a second this ends with "foreigners", this is about setting up infrastructure for controlling the technology. Foreigners are just the current excuse.
Note that TFA mentions they are supposedly hand-picking access to whoever they want, based on whatever criteria they want, already.
Ah, invoking Godwin. "First they came" in 1976 when ITAR was first passed, or maybe "first they came" in the 1940s when we didn't export Proximity Fuzes, right?
Countries are free to prevent exports of technology. Equating export controls with the Holocaust is disgusting.
I did not bring in Godwin, but I guess he's here now :D.
I'm more trying to invoke GRRM. This is a Game of Thrones: billionaire CEO's complain about each other to the government to get their competitors blocked/tripped up with acts of fiat, which is what happened with Fable 5.
And in the linked post, it says GPT-5.6 access decisions are supposedly just hand picked.
The stories about export controls are just songs they sing to the peasants.
There are claims that Chinese companies are mining + reselling Claude subscriptions like crazy anyway.
That’s not true at all. While not as good as proprietary models they are still very good and can do A LOT, certainly more than their cost would make it seem.
It’s only a matter of time before companies start to acknowledge the huge cost of tokens and look for a cheaper alternative with basic cost-benefit analysis.
My F500 company is getting local infrastructure going to host open models and I’m sure many will just switch to bedrock + the best open models.
It’s foolish for companies to let three companies dictate the price of tokens, I just don’t think they are aware of this now by and large.