[verdverm]

Or we use the models to work on fixing vulns and stop over-blowing the doom scenarios. Gotta save the kids and kill the terrorists though!

I'm for making software better instead of banning it based on what the rich and powerful claim.

I suspect the real fear is that open weight models undermine the financials and token prices they thought were going to pay off their ludicrous spending because they have all raced and raised hardware prices.

[hadlock]

> making software better instead of banning it

We're still in the middle of the cambrian explosion.

If Anthropic was capable of developing Opus 4.49-4.5 2H 2025.... then any company with a research team capable of reading all the papers and press releases will be capable of producing Opus 4.8 by the end of 2027, either raw model competency, or in a harness like claude code (or better with both). I guess what I am trying to say is that Opus 4.5 does not represent the edge of agentic capability, merely somewhere in the thick meaty layer of "functional and achievable".

We can draw the line at Sonnet 4.6 in the US but much like encryption export restrictions in the 1980s, the line drawn will be laughably low within a few years and simply unthinkable in a decade.

[solenoid0937]

> making software better instead of banning it

That would be the rational thing to do.

> financials and token prices

I do not think the government thinks this deeply. Market manipulation might be a rational, if unethical reason to ban open source models.

But this admin banned Anthropic models to "own the libs." They will continue to ban what they want for whatever reason they want. I don't think those reasons will be particularly coherent.

[verdverm]

Yeah, the current admin is reactionary, they appear to put little thought in, or at least disregard input they dislike. I don't think Ant's ban was about "owning the libs" as much as it was asserting dominance over someone who spoke up counter to the admin's aims and claims. They do listen to money, which is where I see Big Ai paying for executive orders (because the admin forgot what it means to compromise as part of legislating for all americans).