[rgbrenner]

Im not worried about this at all. The OpenAI, Anthropic and the US government can play this game all they want... They're just accelerating the development of open source models; and helping destroy the lead the US has built in AI, and their profit margins along with it.

This is like the battle between PostgreSQL and Oracle all over. Move up market, isolate yourself to enterprises, and watch while everyone else builds on PostgreSQL and erodes any technical advantage you had, until people just stop talking about you altogether.

[junto]

Encryption is a better example. The USG tried exactly the same tactic in the 90’s. The NSA tried to shove the Clipper chip down everyone’s throats. The USG put export controls on encryption and people went as far as to tattoo the algorithms on their body.

But like you said, they will try to control it and fail. Like they always do.

[epsteingpt]

I can't wait for the first person to tattoo model weights on their body!

[hn_throwaway_99]

Hmm, finally an honorable excuse to get really, really fat.

[4k93n2]

or just use a 4pt font and find a tattoo artist with a steady hand

[jqbd]

Prison Break Fat Edition

[varispeed]

That until it becomes illegal to have or use open source models without approval and licence from government. With more talks about on device scanning, this could be easily plumbed in. If OS detects there is open source model, it could brick your device or alert authorities. Then next step will be limiting what operating system you can install. Likely only those where you cannot remove client side scanning.

[asadotzler]

It can't easily be plumbed in, though. I can spin up my own Linux build with none of that plumbing and do what I want with it. I can grab China's best models and use them or distilled versions on my own terms because OSS allows for that. Until hardware comes fully locked down and the models cannot be run on old hardware, both a long ways off, OSS is a way out.

[microgpt]

Linux will be an illegal operating system in 2027 because it doesn't do age verification.

[anthk]

Good joke. The whole US industry would collapse before even destroying one of the main pillars of AWS, Google and whatnot. It would be funny if all the billion-sized corpos suing the judges en masse for trillions of dollars in losses. Lots of them would even ask for bodyguards because for sure the bribed ones would dissapear in really "weird" ways.

[microgpt]

They'd just break the law with impunity, but you and I couldn't.

[utilize1808]

In the not so distant future, all your coding edits (for work anyway) will be through centralized gateways. Think remote desktop environment where pasting from the client is disabled.

[varispeed]

Many workplaces already to this.

[varispeed]

Politicians can act very quickly if there is good enough "incentive".

[kgeist]

I wonder how you can reliably detect an open source model though. It can be stored in any binary format, and the weights can be modified slightly so that the float values are completely different while the network works the same. The binary that runs it can be obfuscated as well. Maybe the hardware could detect common LLM inference patterns at runtime? That would probably produce many false positives.

[Larrikin]

It's been illegal forever to run a pirated copy of Windows or Photoshop. Even 30 years ago people weren't worried that their pirated copies would tattle on them, businesses did not use pirated copies because vendors would report them/not work on their systems, legal discovery could find them, etc and then they would get ridiculous fines.

It's one thing to get a copy of "illegal" software and use it yourself. The stakes are basically zero and you almost certainly will not get caught

It's a completely different thing to run a business on it with dozens of employees and requiring the employees to break the law to do their job.

[microgpt]

Completely different to run a business on massive copyright infringement. A business like... OpenAI.

[notatoad]

You don’t need to detect it, you just need to incentivize employees and competitors to snitch on companies using unapproved models.

[grim_io]

You don't need a blacklist.

Maintaining a blessed whitelist is the way to go.

[codedokode]

Antivirus companies have large expertise in this.

[Daishiman]

Not gonna happen; the incentives for bypassing this are too high.

[matheusmoreira]

This is getting terrifying pretty quick...

[blueblisters]

Eh probably easier ways to do this. Just sanction all entities that release open weight models for "illegal distillation". Enough to cross the risk threshold for most businesses in the west, and reduce future monetization opportunities.

[rdbl27]

I generally agree, but it's a bit overstated to say "nobody talks about Oracle now" -- they made a profit of about $17 billion dollars in 2025.

[OrangeDelonge]

Just goes to show how profitable rent seeking is even after you’ve become irrelevant.

[dboreham]

The battle was between Oracle and MySQL (and PostgreSQL won).

[utilize1808]

The government will just claim that unsanctioned models have the potential to deliberately introduce security vulnerabilities when working on IT projects (e.g. be trained to strongly yet covertly favoring introducing compromised dependencies when you are not looking).

Then laws will be made to forbid organizations who use models other than those from the sanctioned labs to participate in critical projects on national security concerns.

All of a sudden, no business would risk using open source models anymore.

[pixelpoet]

Then all they do is drive the usage of open models underground (copyright infringement is illegal too, and still common), stifle US companies operating legally, and accelerate the rest of the world decoupling from the US.

I hope they do it! It will have a positive long-term effect just like the Iran war footgun accelerates renewable energy transition.

[utilize1808]

Have you seen legitimate corporates use cracked software? If you do, then your competitors will report you; your employees will blackmail you. The risk is too great.

[0x3f]

This assumes the same reward ratio also continues, but that's not the case. A cutting edge LLM is something much more valuable than a cracked copy of Word. Just like the LLM providers themselves decided violating copyright was an acceptable risk, it entirely depends on how people see the tradeoffs, rather than being a categorical decision.

[utilize1808]

While that might be true, it is unlikely that open source models' capability will ever surpass frontier models --- if you have the best model (by some margin), then people will want to access it, even if it means going through compliance.

[gizzlon]

> it is unlikely that open source models' capability will ever surpass frontier models

Sure about that? Would you invest in products almost no-one can buy?

otoh, maybe China stop releasing their best models

[microgpt]

I've seen "legitimate companies" commit piracy on a scale that well exceeds all cracked software piracy combined.

[tokai]

Microsoft shipped windows for years with files signed by a warez group because Microsoft developers had used a piece of pirated software. Nothing happened.

[Daishiman]

Then they'll outsource dev work to agencies that have no frills with it and move along.

[utilize1808]

As a company it is your responsibility to ensure your contractors are compliant. So won't work.

[civet_java]

I see your comments scattered across this thread with most converging on this thesis: "The US govt will regulate away the ability of US corporations and individuals to use unsanctioned AI models."

Which is a fair thesis. I've seen you counter people's predictions of how they think things will pan as a consequence. But what I'd really like to hear is what you think happens (in the US and internationally) as a consequence of such regulations?

[jauco]

He said copyright infringement. The company tfa is about literally trained its models using massive copyright infringement.

[sfifs]

And companies from outside the US will outcompete those from the US forcing more protectionism, higher prices in US etc. I think there have been several cycles of several industries that have gone through this cycle (cars, shipping?), and mostly forced to roll back.

[jesse_dot_id]

Streisand effect

[s3p]

>The OpenAI, Anthropic and the US government can play this game all they want...

OpenAI and Anthropic did not call for the US Government to limit who Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 could be rolled out to.

[werrett]

> Frontier AI models, like airplanes, should be required to go through technical testing and auditing, and their release should be blocked or reversed as a threat to public safety if they do not meet high standards of safety

Amodei. June 2026 https://darioamodei.com/post/policy-on-the-ai-exponential

> We're proposing stronger regulation of the technology, proposing giving the government the ability to, again, in a narrow way, block deployment of unsafe technology

Amodei. June 2026 https://abcnews.com/Business/exclusive-anthropic-ceo-calls-s...

> This is not to suggest that we won't need any regulation or safeguards. We obviously do, urgently, like we have for other powerful technologies

Altman. Feb 2026 https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-openai-altman-world-urge...

> He gave several suggestions for how a new agency in the US could regulate the industry - including "a combination of licensing and testing requirements" for AI companies, which he said could be used to regulate the "development and release of AI models above a threshold of capabilities".

Altman. May 2023 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65616866

etc. etc.

[epolanski]

Indeed, it's like people don't understand this is a cataclysm for US AI competitiveness.

You cannot justify such a capex on AI anymore. This will drag down the us financial markets and economy too.

[nullbio]

What is this Oracle you speak of? Never heard of it.

[aenis]

From what I recall they were big in the extortion business back in the day, and these days I think they are into construction or waste disposal, maybe both.

[LastTrain]

> and their profit margins along with It

lol that’s a good one.