Unfortunately, Europe should had made this conclusion at least 18 months ago, not now.

Watch out European politics procrastinate for at least one more year hoping that Trump will reverse. Then procrastinate more, because “elections soon, maybe Dems will win and reverse”.

I live in Europe and will never go to work in the US; but EU/UK inability to solve national security problems is beyond pathetic.

However, using this reason to induce censorship rules, word by word matching Russia/China playbook is making the goal less achievable if anything.

But the form of books … Yes, by some reason it collapses. I personally attribute it not to “people realise those guys are salesmen”, but with the fact that none of really good ideas were produced by such books for a while. Now anyone who really has a new angle or new idea to say — they go straight to YT/podcasts, bypassing writing a book altogether. Because of this, me personally, when I check bookshelves, do not see any really new or interesting idea published in the field.

In my mind, as recently as February, Anthropic was considered by far “the best” company on the planet, with an insane fanbase and praise left, right, and centre. The story around the DoD contract solidified them in the public eye as “the hero the city deserved.”

Then they fell into a classic monetisation trap. Unable to sustain growth at such a discount, they started nerfing models, removing caching, and doubling costs per token to make any money here.

The lack of transparency in that process cost them public perception. By early May, all the charm of the magical, ethical super-company was gone. The entire campaign around the Mythos release, intentional or not, landed on top of that new narrative and didn’t play well for them.

What is interesting to me here is the realisation that a good chunk of the hate the company received came simply because of their most recent hostile, for-profit actions. Had it happened in March, HN and the public reaction would have been vastly different. It took them just two months of “bad actions” to ruin quite a good margin of the public praise they so desperately needed now.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48526439

Points: 24

# Comments: 1

AI if anything is opposite. Extremely high bar to build, and every next increment requires at best linear scale of resources.

If we imagine that AI became semi-nationalized and heavy regulated, then we enter the world where governments select companies and people to have access to capabilities which vast outlast capabilities available on the market. Company A is in “access list” and can deploy ruthless AI agent capable of advanced combined cyber operations; company B is denied. Who will win?

If we add here polarization and already historic high inequality, it reads like a straight recipe from Cyberpunk sci-fi.

It is hard to count how many boxes were ticked yesterday:

A government shutting down an AI model it doesn’t like? A government revoking tens of billions of dollars in revenue from a barely profitable $1T startup whose entire trajectory, and in essence its survival, depends on the commercial success of that model? Access to an AI model being governed by citizenship, likely verified through rigorous ID checks?

Imagine that the model is made available again next week. Can we trust it, or trust the changes imposed by Anthropic to comply with the US? Likely not. Can we trust that the US government will not have access to the non-restricted model for its own cybersecurity operations? Likely not.

There is little doubt that China will start to follow suit. We already see Chinese companies slowly scaling back their openness, and there are rumors that this trend will continue. Now we can expect Chinese companies to start releasing redacted models or limiting access based on nationality or location.

It feels like the US government opened Pandora’s box yesterday and pushed us into the territory of a weaponized AI race, with more restrictions, control, and regulation of access. Even if, in the end, this is all another TACO story or a “marketing campaign” from Anthropic, the damage is very unlikely to be undone.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48519780

Points: 19

# Comments: 30

It is hard to count how many “red lines” were crossed last night. Government shutting down AI model it doesn’t like? Government shoots into barely profitable 1T startup, whose entire trajectory and, in essence, survival depends on commercial success of that model? Access to AI model being governed by citizenship, likely verified through rigor ID checks?

Very little doubt that China will follow this suit. Next US will pass their bills to ban Chinese open source and local models. Chinese will follow.

It doesn’t matter: US did just a vendetta; felt into “marketing hype” or there are legit security concerns of national security level. In the precedent-ish world of post-truth “whataboutism” we just crossed a big milestone mark which will hunt us for years.

Training best models is hella expensive. Anthropic spent fortune to train it, and it definitely plans to make a fortune with it either. This US decision, if not reversed, would cause Anthropic potentially tens of billions of dollars of revenue loss. When company heads to IPO, and burning cash faster than it generates it, such moment can change their entire trajectory, plans for the future, hiring, new models development, etc.

Alright, one might say that “US will fund it directly and LLMs will move from free market to controlled and funded by government assets”.

But even then. Training new models is expensive not only in terms of computer, and not only in terms of utilities, data centers, etc. But in terms of talent either. It is hard to retain top talents with you when they should just train special models for government. I am not sure we are in 1945 again and that top tier AI researches will agree to sit in silo and work for models which only privileged selected organizations might use. Whenever government steps into control, freedom and creativity is affected.

P.S. Where I agree, though, is that we witness the start of government censorship of AI models. Imagine soon Anthropic open back access to Fable. Can we know what they put inside and which capability limitations, derived based on ID/IP, they enforce? No, we can’t. Here I agree that at least the era of government censorship begins.

In books of the future, if we ever hold one, I think this will be studied a lot. We have seen before competitions and rivals, but they mostly were rivalry of craft. Here it is a rivalry of velocity and reach. Who can first target user with whatever they have ready to offer.