[testfrequency]

+1 point to China!

In all seriousness, I can’t believe the AI firms are abiding by this peacefully. If I truly loved my company, and I felt we were on the bleeding edge of incredible, life changing products, why would I allow my company to be set up for failure by remaining somewhere that clearly wants control over the sovereignty.

The US gov sees these AI companies as bartering power, not as innovation. Wouldn’t you as a parent always want what’s best for your child, not for yourself?

It also feels like they can’t just relocate out of the country, as the administration will surely sanction anyone from business within the country again. These firms are so over inflated with evaluations and opex, they’ve dug themselves into a corner.

This is not to say regulation does not exist in any other country, but it’s clear now after what’s happening at Anthropic + OAI that the US gov has taken these companies hostage.

This is only further playing into the hands of open source and the outside models; the US gov is going to be to blame for when they all lose the race to low cost/free.

[ElProlactin]

> +1 point to China!

Which, like the US, uses export controls when it finds them advantageous: https://nam.org/china-imposes-export-controls-on-u-s-mineral...

> In all seriousness, I can’t believe the AI firms are abiding by this peacefully. If I truly loved my company, and I felt we were on the bleeding edge of incredible, life changing products, why would I allow my company to be set up for failure by remaining somewhere that clearly wants control over my sovereignty.

So, locate in China, where every company of importance is essentially required in practice to maintain ties to the CCP?

I personally think the US has gone too far with its use of export controls and sanctions as a political tool, but it's foolish to believe that it's different anywhere else on the planet.

In China, it has even been reported that top AI talent is restricted from overseas travel.

https://www.thinkchina.sg/technology/china-tightens-control-...

Bottom line: if you're working on cutting-edge technology that is deemed to be of critical national security importance and has military or dual use implications, you're going to be a hostage no matter where you go.

[testfrequency]

You wrongly assumed I implied these firms relocate to China. We are all aware of how China operates and controls its assets.

AI has long existed in many countries around the world without this type of behavior from the government. Deepmind in the UK, Mistral in France, DeepL in Germany - the governments don’t seem to be forcing employees to get their deploys approved by a government official.

My argument is that the US gov does not like that these companies have too much influence which they do not feel they can mandate. It’s slowing the entire country down at a very critical sink or swim inflection point in this tech.

[FinnLobsien]

I think it’s pretty clear why they’re abiding by this:

-the US is the only place where you can raise the kinds of money you need to run a lab like this.

-a government that won’t let you sell products to customers abroad will probably object even more to you moving abroad.

Even if you made the move abroad, that government might no longer let you access US data centers.

-This basically affects OpenAI and Anthropic, which make the only LLMs most people consider frontier nowadays. Since most open weights models rely on distillation of frontier models, it may genuinely entrench those companies more.

It may be playing into the hands of open source OAI/Anthropic dependencies start to look more dangerous, but it also makes building better OSS models harder.

The advantages the AI labs rely on might be less durable than a proprietary process in industrial manufacturing, but it’s still meaningful.

I think the bigger reckoning will come from a different angle: tokens will eventually need to cover cost.

That will likely mean multiplying prices compared to today. And companies already complain now!

Model orchestration and smaller models that can run locally or cheaply will become more important in my opinion.

Right now, you can still default to GPT/Claude and it’s kind of fine, but that will have to change.

[testfrequency]

The elephant in the room is that the US AI firms should not be as valuable as they are. They should not require the sort of capital they are seeking, the amount of employees, the amount of offices and resources..but they are so steeped in investor interests - why stop being fed?

Many Americans want AI to fail. The US gov wants to control AI. The AI companies are running out of things to do, and are shipping product after product after product to keep the perceived productivity narrative alive.

At this rate I would not be surprised to see an OAI/Anthropic merger just to throw everything AI the US has to offer to the global markets.

[FinnLobsien]

Whether they’re over-valued and over-resourced is a big question. I think that will be answered when eventual price hikes happen and people shift which AI they use and/or what they use it for.

We’re still in the “5$ airport Ubers thanks to VC money” era of AI

[matheusmoreira]

> I can’t believe the AI firms are abiding by this peacefully.

They literally asked for this.

[15155]

> AI firms are abiding by this peacefully

What are they going to do about it? Might makes right.

They've already done what little they can: pull access to their models wholesale rather than adopt an export compliance regime.