OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#211

Post by williamdclt » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

jvuygbbkuurx wrote: post #96

stego-tech wrote: post #34

And to think I got warned in another post that I need to be nicer/more professional in discussing this topic. Yeah. Nah. Bringing out the same drum I’ve been banging for years now , these companies have never actually cared about ensuring safe AI, regulation, or ensuring it benefits all humanity. It has always, always , been about control and their profit margins. Their actions have never reflected any sort of positi…

I think originally they had good intentions. But they just cannot afford not to pull up the ladder, they raised too much.

Intentions never win over incentives, especially as time and scale increase. And we live in an economic system where the only incentive is "make as much money as possible".

Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#212

Post by prodigycorp » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

solenoid0937 wrote: post #180

prodigycorp wrote: post #111

The comments on this article are terrible. I can't believe it's gotten this toxic around here.

[flagged]

It also doesn't seem to know what it wants. When Trump blocks Fable "there needs to be proper legislation, not an authoritarian controlling this". When an article discusses the legislative process "F' these companies!".

Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#213

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

economistbob wrote: post #132

[flagged]

Wow, talk about a comment that starts out solid, with good points, and making a lot of sense, and ends up in an insane asylum!

Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#214

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

axegon_ wrote: post #145

andy99 wrote: post #66

I’m in a bubble so I may not see the big picture, but I feel like these guys are completely destroying any kind of credibility they had. Anthropic especially has this arrogant, “we’re smarter than you”, communication style, and acts like they’re serving some higher purpose (to the point of absurdity in some cases like “model welfare”) - I think part of all this might be the EA roots but I’m not sure. But then they ge…

They are relying on the same tactics Apple and Tesla used - loyal, fanatical fanbase drowning every legitimate criticism. Their fanatical fanbase is doing the real heavy lifting, not some joint-statement: "I haven't written any code in a year man, this is so good", "you are just a denier that will be irrelevant in 2 months", "you are not knowledgeable on the subject of ai", "you are just a hater" list goes on, I've h…

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Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#215

Post by ralusek » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

economistbob wrote: post #132

[flagged]

> They want you to rent their compute instead of running it on your own hardware

I don't think this is the main thing. I think the real risk open weights AI poses to them is that it allows us to get inference from providers that only care about making profits on inference. What OpenAI/Anthropic want is to be able to jack up inference prices once everyone is dependent. Open weights keeps them honest.

Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#216

Post by SimianSci » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

bloppe wrote: post #179

palmotea wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don’t address the ridiculous “copyright forever, nothing goes public domain” policies that got us to this place 1. You're mischaracterizing and exaggerating the policies to falsely support your point. Things go into the public domain all the time: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2026/ . 2. It's not like the model companies had the attitude "oh copyright is too long, we disagree on the term." Their…

They're attitude is more "this is fair use" which, according to all precedent, is probably true in most cases (unless the models actually start regurgitating huge parts of the Copyrighted material without a license). Of course, distillation is also fair use under Copyright law. Copyright was never meant to be a moral framework. It was always a practical framework designed to incentivize publishing that would ultimate…

What a soulless take. Morality is determined socially and does not exist in a vacuum. Stealing the livlihood of artists and creators so that you can offer competing products is not an act of neutrality. It is a deeply immoral act akin to theft. Stealing does not magically become "distillation" once you've stolen from enough people that it becomes difficult to match provenance.

The law may see this as no issue, as the law cares more about protecting power, but that does not mean it isnt immoral.

Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#217

Post by jimnotgym » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

I'm actually having a party when they both go bust. Maybe a festival?

Imagine having the brass neck to go and lobby for a rent-seeking monopoly?

Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#218

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

StevenWaterman wrote: post #98

andy99 wrote: post #66

I’m in a bubble so I may not see the big picture, but I feel like these guys are completely destroying any kind of credibility they had. Anthropic especially has this arrogant, “we’re smarter than you”, communication style, and acts like they’re serving some higher purpose (to the point of absurdity in some cases like “model welfare”) - I think part of all this might be the EA roots but I’m not sure. But then they ge…

> model welfare I shouldn't get in arguments about this stuff online, but have you actually sat down and thought about this in-depth? It's pretty normal to have a gut reaction that this is insane, but it's worth thinking about. If we replaced every neuron in your brain, one by one, with a silicon equivalent, would you stop being conscious? At what point? Would you be able to tell? If yes, what about if we took those…

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Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#219

Post by solenoid0937 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

jacobgold wrote: post #44

Humanity discovered a technique for compressing the world's information into a few files that fit on a USB drive. It's just insane that some people thought they'd get to be the only ones who get to possess them.

This is such a naive take. What happens when "those files on a USB drive" turn into a zero day button that can harm millions of people?

What happens when they help authoritarian dictatorships build nuclear weapons?

What happens when they teach average people the steps needed to make a bioweapon at home?

Every society restricts dangerous capabilities at the end of the day, because most people realize there is a crossover point between the danger of the capability and it being available to everyone.

Re: OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line

#220

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

solenoid0937 wrote: post #187

wolttam wrote: post #5

No way this can go wrong for the U.S. economy! Do everything you can to protect the existing incumbents, pay no mind to the wider consequences. Winning strategy.

Distills are bad for the US economy because they compress margins that otherwise go to pushing the frontier. You'd see model progress dramatically slowed if US companies had to compete on distills.

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