While he’s at it, he should also make cryptography and math illegal too.
US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
21–30 of 335 posts
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#22On the one hand Hawley proposes a lot of things that don't ever get close to becoming law. On the other hand, we did ban TikTok (which is currently unavailable on the app stores because of the ban). I can think of few ways to more effectively destroy any US advantage in AI compared with the sheer efficiency of making it illegal to learn from what competing countries have achieved. From the article, it sounds like the…
Not sure it’s even worth speculating on a bill that’s merely been proposed. This one sounds DOA. But yeah TikTok ban was a very bad precedent, mostly because it was based on speculative risks, not hard proof of existing behaviour (TikTok not engaging didn't help at all either). Regardless of the merits I too hope it doesn’t have a ripple effect. National security is such a huge brush you could paint anything you want.
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#23That would disincentive this type of research, for example:
"DeepSeek's Hidden Bias: How We Cut It by 76% Without Performance Loss" (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42868271
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42891042
TIL about BBQ: Bias Benchmark for QA
"BBQ: A Hand-Built Bias Benchmark for Question Answering" (2021) https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08193
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#24these people are majestically stupid
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#25As if they could enforce this. The model is out there and the number of spinoffs is insane. We will have so many different AI's available that there is no way they will know if it was DeepSeek at all.
They likely can't enforce it against the people they "need" to, but that won't stop it from stifling innovation.
It mirrors what we saw in other industries that they basically had zero effective enforcement for, such as Cannabis sale and usage. It did not stop the sale or usage of Cannabis at all, it was very common for people to purchase and consume while illegal. But, it was "effective" at ensuring if anyone who wanted to explore that space or improve it essentially had to be a criminal and market forces were absent or distorted at best.
Fast forward and look at areas that have passed recreational sale and usage laws and they are flourishing in this respect. They have innovated the market, reduced cost, created a safer and better product, etc. In every measurable way it has improved the situation for everyone involved, including people who are basically uninvolved but benefit from the massive tax revenue that often gets redirected to schools and other social programs.
Banning DeepSeek and any other model ensures that when a kid comes up with something cool that using one of those models, he has to either make sure to keep it on a secret GitLab account or run `sed s/deepseek/muricahai/i *.py` before he shares it anywhere that might come back to him.
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#26I'm just amused that when Chinese products were hurting the average manufacturer in US, and the majority of goods on Amazon, Walmart, Temu, Shein are "Made in China" it is good and capitalism. When Hollywood movies or music are pirated- its just kids having fun. But dare you try to hurt tech/software companies investments or revenue streams, and politicians suddenly get patriotic and want to send you to jail for 20 years!
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#27I know a bunch of people that voted for Trump because they were worried government overreach had gone too far.
They are going to protect our freedom of speech by banning the little blobs of bits we use in this new method of speech. It's the most complex newspaper ever built that can talk back to you. Any attempt to describe it will almost instantly use the word "speech" or "talk" or "chat" or something else so adjacent how could you not realize this my brain is actively fighting against continuing to type this
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#28As if they could enforce this. The model is out there and the number of spinoffs is insane. We will have so many different AI's available that there is no way they will know if it was DeepSeek at all.
They don't care about banning it, hell they'll be fine with you downloading it... until you get caught and hung and quartered in front of your peers.
This is about instilling commercial fear, and stopping any US open source distributions to depend on it.
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#29The cat is out of the bag. Latest gen chips are all the "moat" USA has left, and even that's gonna be cracked by China in a few years.
Hopefully Europe will start closer bilateral dealing with China, and not hang itself to the future hermit kingdom of america.
Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek
#30Can you just... download it before it becomes illegal? The wording suggests it's the importing that's illegal, not the possession. And once I possess it, I can... give it to a few of my closest friends? Without crossing any borders of course.