U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6 • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#591

Post by Culonavirus » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

Sol- wrote: post #348

pixelpoet wrote: post #133

Are these models still relevant for people outside the US? I get the impression we're stuck on GPT 5.5 and Opus 4.8 pretty much permanently now, and relying on Chinese models in future.

If the US really cracks down on frontier model access, you'll see them make Chinese open models illegal. You might say "oh well, let them try", but they will just put direct and secondary sanctions on every company whose systems have used Chinese models in some way. They just have to make an example out of a few international companies and no one will dare to use Chinese frontier models, at least commercially.

> If the US really cracks down on frontier model access, you'll see them make Chinese open models illegal.

We don't give a fuck about US laws - respectfully, the rest of the planet.

We're already sick of your shit and this will only add to it. Just look at the Iran shit show. What a joke. Ooooooo wooooooo sanctionzzz scary. Sanctions only work if they're enforceable.

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#592

Post by Daishiman » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

utilize1808 wrote: post #568

pixelpoet wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then all they do is drive the usage of open models underground (copyright infringement is illegal too, and still common), stifle US companies operating legally, and accelerate the rest of the world decoupling from the US. I hope they do it! It will have a positive long-term effect just like the Iran war footgun accelerates renewable energy transition.

Have you seen legitimate corporates use cracked software? If you do, then your competitors will report you; your employees will blackmail you. The risk is too great.

Then they'll outsource dev work to agencies that have no frills with it and move along.

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#593

Post by petcat » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

derwiki wrote: post #534

pluc wrote: post #408

It's entertaining watching the whole world take steps to reduce reliance on the US and the US throwing arguments for it out like it's candy

What concrete steps have been taken?

[flagged]

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#594

Post by jliptzin » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

amunozo wrote: post #535

jliptzin wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea not sure who would put money into an OpenAI or Anthropic IPO at this point. After this episode I promptly bought the hardware I needed to run local models (~$25k) and am extremely impressed. The price tag alone is worth the peace of mind knowing I will always have a locally running LLM that nobody can take away. I don't need Mythos-level intelligence to do 99% of my day to day work; Opus 4.8 was more than enough…

Can I ask what did you buy? I don't have that money now but I wouldn't knpw what to buy anyway.

Blackwell 96gb + 128gb system ram. Not powerful enough for GLM 5.2 but I may upgrade.

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#595

Post by petcat » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

khurs wrote: post #579

"All publicity is good publicity" Whilst this policy is driving countries around the world to develop new AI strategies as USA cannot be relied upon, on the plus side for OpenAI, the publicity of this will help drive customer sales.

China seems to be handling themselves just fine.

> driving countries around the world to develop new AI strategies

Unfortunately Europe is completely incapable of doing anything whatsoever to counter this.

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#596

Post by girvo » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

bashtoni wrote: post #572

razighter777 wrote: post #135

I hope this doesn't become the new norm where government becomes the bottleneck for innovation in the AI space. It's worrying that with no formal and transparent policy framework that the government will be picking winners and losers and stifling innovation. There's been no public policy, executive order, legislation, or otherwise on this, I wonder if anyone has filed FOIA requests for these decisions or the conversa…

I don't see how you can make a case for a $700bn+ IPO when the government might not even let you sell your product. America is ceding the lead in the AI race. The winners here will be the Chinese AI companies. If the Chinese models remain predominantly open source then it would probably be for the best. Unfortunately I'm not convinced they will, with examples like Qwen Max showing what could happen.

Z.ai and MoonShot (and StepFun and some others who are another six months behind or targeting smaller use cases) are still open, surprisingly enough.

Alibaba making Qwen close up shop for its best models isn’t that surprising, though sad.

The worry is that if the US models are locked up like this, then there’s less reason for China to commodify its complement through open weights…

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#597

Post by ai_fry_ur_brain » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

guywithahat wrote: post #416

aristocrazy wrote: post #312

Given how the WH operates these days, this is ripe for corruption. Imagine the WH dislikes the CEO of a biotech company, while appreciating the attitude of a competitor CEO. What is to stop them from stalling on giving acess for the latest model to the company they don't like?

The tragedy is the Trump admin is setting the precedent and creating the framework which will be abused in the future. For all the complains he made about the deep state, he's just creating a new avenue for them to abuse power

He always was the "deep state...."

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#598

Post by matthest » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

razighter777 wrote: post #135

I hope this doesn't become the new norm where government becomes the bottleneck for innovation in the AI space. It's worrying that with no formal and transparent policy framework that the government will be picking winners and losers and stifling innovation. There's been no public policy, executive order, legislation, or otherwise on this, I wonder if anyone has filed FOIA requests for these decisions or the conversa…

The precedent for this is terrible.

MAGA is bad enough. Imagine if the current batch of US progressives, who have 0 idea how any of this works, wins the presidency and gets to decide who gets to use it.

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#599

Post by jmyeet » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

It's fascinating to watch the US government paint China as the new bogeyman and utterly fail in it's policy of containment.

The first obvious conclusion is that China has been utterly vindicated to keep US tech giants out of China. Some have a token presence but it's clear that the Chinese government will never let a US tech government "win" in any domestic market. It will always be a Chinese company. Obligatory Silicon Valley [1].

The second is that, to that end, IMHO the US government made an error blocking the sale of high-end chips (particularly NVidia) to China. Why? Because it's created a captive market for Chinese chip manufacturing. Huawei now has billions in potential sales that might've otherwise gone to chips produced in Taiwan and South Korea.

Third, the US can somehow ban a Dutch company (ASML) from selling EUV to China. This has forced China to replicate it and they will within a few years. The interesting part of this is that all it really takes is throwing money at a few key researchers and engineers who worked for ASML. It really is using the mechanics of the Western economic system against itself.

Last, the US government will try and make US tech giants "own" or "win" AI. And they will fail because the Chinese government will make sure they fail. How? By releasing ever-better open models for free. I believe China considers this a matter of national security to not be beholden to US tech giants (and thus the US government).

The ironic thing to me is that the US is doing what the West accuses China of doing with corporate control. I'd say the actual difference is that Chinese companies are beholden to the state whereas the US government is basically 5 companies in a trenchcoat. The US wants to mint trillionaires at the expense of literally everybody else. China believes society should benefit from something they collectively make possible.

Anyway, we've been here before. Remember the crypto export ban of the 1990s and 2000s? Did that prevent higher-quality encryption from being used overseas? No. This won't help either.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km5XQxRrQvw

Re: U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6

#600

Post by Daishiman » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

sajithdilshan wrote: post #543

hgoel wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has no reason to do that. The US is freely handing them the international market for AI.

Are they though? I see this as a precautious method by US to maintain AI model superiority so the Chinese companies cannot distill from the US frontier models. Let's see how fast Chinese models would improve without access to latest US models and if they keep on releasing open models

> Let's see how fast Chinese models would improve without access to latest US models and if they keep on releasing open models

Chinese tech has been on an exponential growth trajectory. If they see the need for AI superiority then there's really no moat for AI companies.