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> My overall point is, don't let their motivations, nor your cynical conclusions based on those obvious motivations, blind you to your own point of view. Very fair point, taken. So, setting aside Anthropic & Co's motivations: trying to restrict this is pointless without planetwide cooperation - I don't see China complying - and likely to just result in dividing people into haves and have-nots. Furthermore, allowing this access, nay, power, into the hands of the very crappy stewards around at the moment doesn't really protect anyone, just makes them richer. I'd stomach their endless lust for more money if it was just a side effect of making the world secure, but I don't see that happening either. What do you realistically do when China keeps advancing the SOTA? And really, all the other nations I mentioned - they're one leak (and a few H200s) away from acquiring the ability anyway. They don't need the ability to serve 250 million concurrent users to be dangerous, just a handful of instances in the hands of their government officers. Who are we withholding the knowledge from, at that point? For what benefit? I won't even touch the point that this is.... ultimately, knowledge acquired by scraping the internet, so it should belong to everyone - and now they're even pissed off someone is "stealing it back" by distillation - nice discussion for another time. Furthermore - this approach worked for nuclear weapons for a while as the material is really hard to source, supercomputers weren't available, centrifuges are hard, and good nuclear scientists were so few that they could be individually monitored or assassinated if they helped the wrong party (really). Fast forward to present day when there's no practical way to prevent NK or Iran from advancing their knowledge. We're trying the same obsolete approach, but it applies even less thanks to the Internet.
Also, even then, a couple leaks in the 50s gave the soviet union parity - any parallels to our scenario? I really appreciate your points, I agree with the danger, but I don't see any approach really fixing the situation, and those guys' proposal is just a get even richer quick scheme. Finally, of all people, finally a day came where I find myself in full agreement with Zuck (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/technology/mark-zuckerber...). Obviously his motivation is also not lost on me - this is bad only because it's not him this time, but still, even a (morally) broken Zuck is occasionally right. |
Yes, that can make the whole debate pointless. But seems like in that situation, might as well just speak your mind freely. Maybe things with China aren't as hopeless as you make out. I have a much less firm opinion on what China will do. They (meaning Xi) might unilaterally decide they don't like open-weights, and they'd just roll out that new policy. They might decide to keep releasing them.
They might decide to negotiate something. Honestly I agree, the first two are the most likely options. Not just because China govt isn't much for negotiating here, but neither is the US either. The combination leads to low probability.
The cynic in me says, there really isn't any point in writing anything, other than for PR reasons then. And given that the support open-weight models version plays better for PR reasons, if I'm going to believe one group is doing this for PR reasons, the case is worst for Anthropic's version. It doesn't get them a ban, it doesn't get a change in China policy. It just pisses off people who react on vibes.
The optimist says, might as well write something you support, because even if change is unlikely, the writing is more likely to accomplish something than do harm.