Comment by 15155
11 days ago
Ah, invoking Godwin. "First they came" in 1976 when ITAR was first passed, or maybe "first they came" in the 1940s when we didn't export Proximity Fuzes, right?
Countries are free to prevent exports of technology. Equating export controls with the Holocaust is disgusting.
The comparison to cryptography export restrictions is absolutely valid, but is that really favorable?
I'd argue that 70's cryptography export bans in hindsight look completely misguided, futile, burdensome and pointless in the end (which is why most of it was lifted/reverted over the last decades).
I don't see how AI-models are much different; it's certainly a better comparison than the fuzes, because we're both not at war right now and the underlying principle is already out of the bag.
Cryptography export restrictions absolutely worked until the internet became commonplace, and then they became futile and were removed.
Just like every other export restriction on technology: once the actual cat is out of the actual bag, they are often relaxed.
The "underlying principles" here are hundreds of billions of dollars in R&D - which is what is required to compete with the frontier models.
> not at war right now
We weren't technically at war during the Cold War, either.
I did not bring in Godwin, but I guess he's here now :D.
I'm more trying to invoke GRRM. This is a Game of Thrones: billionaire CEO's complain about each other to the government to get their competitors blocked/tripped up with acts of fiat, which is what happened with Fable 5.
And in the linked post, it says GPT-5.6 access decisions are supposedly just hand picked.
The stories about export controls are just songs they sing to the peasants.
There are claims that Chinese companies are mining + reselling Claude subscriptions like crazy anyway.
> I did not bring in Godwin
Who is the "They" in "First They Came" referring to exactly?
> There are claims that Chinese companies are mining + reselling Claude subscriptions like crazy anyway.
Which will become a felony with export-controlled models, which is why identity verification is becoming a thing.
Nobody was compared to the nazis, so Godwin's law is not yet relevant in this discussion.
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