The problem is that there are network effects at play - the more people you have using your models, the more training and fine-tuning data you're accumulating, so the faster you can develop the next frontier model. Not to mention the fact that more users means more revenue to fund your next-gen model training.

Perhaps the US administration is gambling that US citizens on their own provide enough of a training data and revenue flywheel for them to keep their AI development edge.

The next interesting question will be - will the US share this capability with her traditional strategic allies (e.g. five-eyes countries), or is it truly America First (or, 'America Alone')?

But is that really the concern of the US Administration? This looks more to me like they are viewing frontier models as a strategic asset which they want to keep for US-exclusive use. I can see the logic - if frontier models generally accelerate a society's technological development, then a country looking to retain or increase its strategic edge over other countries would try and keep this sort of multiplier for themselves.

I'm guessing Anthropic shut of access for everyone because currently they have no reliable way to know whether a user is or is not a US citizen. In the near future we might be in a situation where you need to prove your US citizenship before Anthropic / Open AI will allow you to use their current frontier model.

The next interesting question will be - will the US share this capability with her traditional strategic allies (e.g. five-eyes countries), or is it truly America First (or, 'America Alone')?

This press release is odd - it says that the export control was imposed to stop foreign nationals from using Fable / Mythos, and then goes on to talk about supposed concerns about jailbreaking the model.

But is that really the concern of the US Administration? This looks more to me like they are viewing frontier models as a strategic asset which they want to keep for US-exclusive use. I can see the logic - if frontier models generally accelerate a society's technological development, then a country looking to retain or increase its strategic edge over other countries would try and keep this sort of multiplier for themselves.

I'm guessing Anthropic shut of access for everyone because currently they have no reliable way to know whether a user is or is not a US citizen. In the near future we might be in a situation where you need to prove your US citizenship before Anthropic / Open AI will allow you to use their current frontier model.

1. Set a monthly quota (for argument's sake, 5000 a month).

2. Each month the government holds an auction, and businesses that believe they need to bring in foreign labour can bid for however many visas they want.

3. The highest bidding companies get the visas.

This way the government can control how many foreign workers come in to the country each year, and the economic rents from bringing in these foreign workers accrues to the public as additional government revenue, rather than as additional profit for corporations.

It also means that the limited number of available H1B visas are put towards their highest value use. The company that wants to bring in a highly skilled foreign worker that's worth $500,000 in additional profit to them will be willing to bid up to $499,999 for their visa. The company that wants to bring in another Tim Hortons worker won't be able to outbid them.

I wonder if this trend is due, in part, to college degree holders becoming disproportionately female over time, and women having lower midlife mortality rates? https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/degrees-1.png

I somewhat regret my expensive switch from Linux to MacOS. MacOS is just so weird, it doesn't make any sense to me. For the first time in my life I feel like some tech-illiterate grandpa trying to figure out how to make his blasted computer do stuff.

If TSMC has effectively transferred their technology to Intel, doesn't this remove a reason for the US to defend Taiwan?

The US reserve currency system allows the US to tax the world, whenever they print more dollars, via oil price inflation. Anyone without sufficient military power who tries to stop denominating their oil exports in US dollars ends up with freedom and democracy being brought to their country. Saddam Hussein switched to denominating Iraqi oil exports in Euros. Gaddafi tried to establish a pan-African gold-back dinar to denominate African oil exports in. And look how it turned out for them.

It’s a stealth tribute system. If you stop paying your tribute, the empire responds accordingly.

The US can effectively tax the world as long as they use their military power to ensure oil producing countries denominate their oil exports in US dollars.

The reserve currency system is a stealth tribute system.

Personally, my money is on semi-conductors. It’s currently sitting at #4 in total international trade value, behind automobiles (which are increasingly reliant on semi-conductor inputs), refined oil, and crude oil.

Certainly casts a new light on contention over Taiwan.

Although there are other ways to limit corruption risk, namely process and transparency. In the Australian government you can pay someone higher than standard pay through an Individual Flexibility Agreement (IFA). But in order to do so there’s a whole process the manager has to go through where they have to justify the higher salary on a limited set of grounds (e.g. higher market value of role) and then get it all signed off by someone higher up the chain.

That’s the process side. On the transparency side you could publish everyone’s salaries and then it becomes obvious when a manger is paying their second cousin way above normal for some strange reason.