Comment by dcss_gardener
5 days ago
Anthropic specifically is clearly trying to get the US government to ban open weight models for anticompetitive reasons. So making LLMs seem (or be!) dangerous aligns with their interests very well.
5 days ago
Anthropic specifically is clearly trying to get the US government to ban open weight models for anticompetitive reasons. So making LLMs seem (or be!) dangerous aligns with their interests very well.
That's my view. The end goal is to become Too Big To Fail, the means is stifling the competition and getting military funding.
Yeah, maybe. But that doesn't quash gains by China's models. What's the endgame here? The USA "wins" and obliterates China? The ultimate goal seems to be stalemate, as with nuclear arms e.g.
This is just run-of-the-mill rent seeking behavior.
A huge chunk of their revenue comes from US-based enterprise customers. Earlier this year, in an effort to become profitable, they tried raising their rates. Those enterprise customers responded, in part, by ramping up efforts to migrate to open weight models. If those efforts are successful then OpenAI and Anthropic will lose their one remaining plausible path to profitability. The US banning open weight models arguably keeps that path open. I don't personally buy that story, but I do believe hedge funds and institutional investors would. That could be all that's needed for a successful IPO.
As for cybersecurity implications, long term impact on domestic AI industry or the US tech industry more broadly, geopolitics, etc., I don't think OpenAI's or Anthropic's leaders are any more worried about that than your average termite is about the structural integrity of the house it's eating.
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The endgame is systemic capture.
They stole the collective data of humanity as a whole and now sell it back to you in a rent scheme. Open source will be starved of data and compute.
You're supposed to become dependent on that "service" and slave away at paying for it, while being able to earn anything only in conjunction with it.
Note how difficult it already is to get any up-to-date documentation on anything capable of generating actual market value. A monopoly on competency ensures maximal profits.
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My 2c: Anthropic/OAI have taken 10s of billions of dollars of investment - and there needs to be a return on that investment at some point.
They make their money on token burn. They can’t do that if they’re competing with something that’s 80-90% as capable, but 1/10th of the cost (with the option of deploying it yourself for “free”).
No, the end goal is selling $200 of tokens for $200k out of taxpayers wallet. Via DoD contracts.
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> What's the endgame here?
They can blanket band USING chinese models for all US/EU companies -- that's what they really care, not about chinese companies using chinese models.
The goal is personal wealth - and scaring nations to the point of diverting even more wealth towards your coffers because of a perceived existential risk.
Wealth accumulation via scare tactics is a classic move of defense contractors and AI firms are quite capable of running the same playbook.
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US companies which seek to do any business with the government will be forbidden from using free Chinese models.
As is a 2000$ gaming laptop can a run a basic llm which is probably good enough for most basic programming.
Most companies are going to be forced to use “safe” LLMs and pay by the token. Maybe for half a million Anthro will let you host on site, but even this will face usage fees or caps.
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Its not gonna work.
At this moment in time, it seems frontier market needs regulation - market for open does not actually.
Oh.. they dont want regulation on that market? Boohoo!
Ban means what? That the entire world (ex USA) can use open-weight models? Not a win.
If the US declares LLM models munitions then it makes it much more difficult to easily use them. Illegal use of weapons of war can get you banned from SWIFT.
Other than China the rest of the world has dick for capacity to run models. Even China is at 1/10th the US is and is at to stay for a considerable amount of time.
Before the tariff spree and general unpredictability the US could likely have muscled most of the rest of the world into following suit - now, not so much.
I somewhat disagree, there are some real arguments about making high end LLMs classified as a dangerous and restricted product that will apply to all nations. They may not agree to the US rules, but almost everywhere will have restrictions sooner or later.
Don't get me wrong, I want a world of open models, but I don't see us living in that world in our current trajectory.
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How do you ban even ban them in America with the freedom of speech amendments in the constitution?
Cryptography, DeCSS ... we have a long history of trying to block things like this and it simply not working.
There is a long, convoluted set of legal arguments that are going to make the weights of a model "facts", rather than "code" making it even harder to "ban". Furthermore having them not be "facts" is going to open up a whole other legal argument about what they are and what the attribution is.
I suspect that they are fishing for a case, so a judge can set some precedent.
You're going about this backwards. They don't have to ban models. They ban the consolidation of compute without a license. This will be far easier and already has legal precedent.
> They ban the consolidation of compute without a license.
For export? Maybe but it wont last or hold - it's not the 90's any more.
Or is there some other scheem here that Im missing?
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I agree. I hope developers put their token budgets into open weight models rather than funding the banning of open weight models.
I've been using only open weight models since February. My OSS coding agent harness ( https://fluximp.org ) only supports open weight model providers.
Not supporting closed models was initially an ideological choice, but it became a technical choice as the context management approach I've implemented requires the full reasoning to be available. All of the closed models are now keeping the full reasoning server side only.
Fireworks is a good enterprise choice
OpenCode-go is a good personal subscription choice
I use both
I've been using OpenRouter, absolutely loving how cheap it is too.
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100% agree. I think OAI is too, but more subtly.
Both have taken huge amounts of investment money, and those shareholders will come knocking for their returns at some point.
They make money on token use, but that’s hard to do when China is launching models that are 80-90% as capable, cost 1/10th, and can be deployed for “free”.
I imagine they’re also pissed that most of the Chinese models are distilled from their own (the irony being that they scraped the entire internet to train their own ones).
This is wrong. https://www.anthropic.com/news/position-open-weights-models
You mean like Google's "Don't be evil" motto? ..
Why would anyone trust these rent seeking corporations? They are losing millions, they know their funds are at risk, Chinese models are catching up to them at lower costs and investors demand returns.
It only makes sense for them to go for regulatory capture. They'll probably advocate for severe handicaps on foreign and domestic models including open source (if not an outright ban).
Once they achieve monopoly, they can do as they please with little competition.
They might say that, but it's a bit of a fig leaf next to the implications of everything else they say. They incessantly complain about open weights models, framing them as dangerous and national security threats. The audience for national security rhetoric isn't HN or industry, it's government.
lol "We support open weight models!"
BUT!!!!!!
"We should not sell powerful chips or chipmaking equipment to China"
"We should crack down on industrial-scale distillation operations."
"All sufficiently capable models, open and closed, should go through mandatory safety testing."