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David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

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Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#31

Post by simianwords »

tuvix wrote: post #19
kypro wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because their improvements are stagnating as they hit financial and technical challenges. I don't mean to be rude, but how is it even possible for someone to hold this opinion in mid-2026? Can you explain why you believe this?

Why would someone hold the opposite opinion? It’s much more likely that our current approach to large language models for general use will eventually show diminishing improvements (even if you think it hasn’t yet), than the opposite situation where valuable improvements can be made forever. The threat of distillation and efficiency gains from competitors mean that providing value at the top end of the market is an ex…

Sorry, this is ridiculous. OpenAI said that they have a step change in model performance. They proved it by solving a Millenium problem. HF incidents are public and vetted.

If you still think there's a stall despite all evidence pointing to opposite, I don't know what to say..

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#32

Post by vrganj »

agd wrote: post #27

Huge amount of skepticism on HN right now, but the models are increasingly capable, and there are real, significant risks. The approach proposed by Amodei looks sensible - voluntary checks at frontier labs, and appropriate regulation to follow. Yes, the devil's in the details, but it feels like the right approach overall.

Turns out the EU was right all along with the AI act. They've been adopting a well-deserved "told you so" stance lately:

> "In my view, the EU has already legislated for exactly this scenario: it is called the AI Act," said Michael McNamara, an Irish European Parliament lawmaker, who's the co-lead of the Parliament's group monitoring AI.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-response-ai-extinction-wa...

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#33

Post by nialv7 »

He is neither right or wrong. The reality is that this is a lose-lose situation from the ordinary person's perspective. Regulation -> regulatory capture and things get worse faster, no regulation -> things simply get worse faster.

I mean I don't know what we do at this point. Ideally AI researchers need to be treated like nuclear scientists working for an adversary. But we all know that's not going to happen.

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#34

Post by vrganj »

simianwords wrote: post #31
tuvix wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would someone hold the opposite opinion? It’s much more likely that our current approach to large language models for general use will eventually show diminishing improvements (even if you think it hasn’t yet), than the opposite situation where valuable improvements can be made forever. The threat of distillation and efficiency gains from competitors mean that providing value at the top end of the market is an ex…

Sorry, this is ridiculous. OpenAI said that they have a step change in model performance. They proved it by solving a Millenium problem. HF incidents are public and vetted. If you still think there's a stall despite all evidence pointing to opposite, I don't know what to say..

What reason could OpenAI possibly have to lie about their own performance? The fact they were desperate enough for a PR win they stole the research leading to the Millenium problem further hurts their case imo.

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#35

Post by laimewhisps »

agd wrote: post #27

Huge amount of skepticism on HN right now, but the models are increasingly capable, and there are real, significant risks. The approach proposed by Amodei looks sensible - voluntary checks at frontier labs, and appropriate regulation to follow. Yes, the devil's in the details, but it feels like the right approach overall.

The largest risk is that Anthropic and OpenAI have a monopoly on the SOTA. This is why you see these companies trying so hard to get regulatory capture. For the rest of us, we want access as equitable as possible.

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#36

Post by dwohnitmok »

Eh. This entire tweet smacks of being AI generated. It has a huge amount of LLM-isms.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sacks just prompted an LLM to just come up with whatever rebuttal to whatever the regulation side comes up (given the big set of regulation tweets) with sounds most convincing, given his usual anti-regulation stance.

Anyone with a Pangram account who can check?

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#37

Post by dumberquestions »

kypro wrote: post #8
Insanity wrote: post #3

They’ll slow down not because they “are worried” but because their improvements are stagnating as they hit financial and technical challenges.

> because their improvements are stagnating as they hit financial and technical challenges. I don't mean to be rude, but how is it even possible for someone to hold this opinion in mid-2026? Can you explain why you believe this?

I don't think the technical aspect is true, performance has been growing fairly consistently, but the financial aspect, or more accurately the logistical aspect, is plausible; with competition as fierce as it currently is, for how long can they keep growing at the same pace? People can't afford RAM anymore and datacenter build outs aren't particularly popular, OAI has been doubling compute capacity every 7 months for the past 3 years, it's just physically impossible for this to go on for long, something has to give.

And this is not to say that the tech isn't revolutionary or the demand isn't there, it's simply just currently too competitive, and to avoid getting into anti trust trouble they need to involve the government.

Note this being a plausible doesn't necessarily make it true, for all I know they could have witnessed some safety incident and decided they need a pause, or maybe it's both reasons.

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#38

Post by ofjcihen »

simianwords wrote: post #29
kypro wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because their improvements are stagnating as they hit financial and technical challenges. I don't mean to be rude, but how is it even possible for someone to hold this opinion in mid-2026? Can you explain why you believe this?

[flagged]

I mean, more simply (and with less vitriol)

- AI has yet to be profitable for these large labs (also zero moat etc.)

- There is considerable hype and people are tired of it.

- HF incident (and apparently many others that these labs are not reporting on or don’t even know about) proves they have terrible security practices and that’s about it.

- NS is incredibly suspicious timing wise.

You are sprinting around these threads to misrepresent the average persons issues with AI. I don’t know why people having those issues seems to be taken as a personal attack for you.

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#39

Post by simianwords »

(100% AI generated tweet btw)

My take is that there's a real impending doom with real reason to coordinate a slow down: I'd put this at 60%. Reasons? All smart people are on this position. Dario has been saying this since 2015 or so. Paul Christiano as well. Hell even Elon Musk. I think its highly unlikely that you would base your entire world-view on a certain thing and then actually act on it when the time comes for a totally different reason (like regulatory capture).

The other 15% is that P(doom) and "slow down" are nice shibboleths in the internal EA or AI safety community. You get to be in the community and show commitment to it by taking costly actions that signal that you actually do wanna slow down. For employees it is quitting. For CEO's it is writing these essays. I know this is ridiculous but sometimes things do just come down to this. In 20 years would you look at all of this and think it was not a moral panic and that the slow-down was necessary?

The rest 25% is regulatory capture of which people know exactly the reasons

Re: David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

#40

Post by simianwords »

vrganj wrote: post #34
simianwords wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, this is ridiculous. OpenAI said that they have a step change in model performance. They proved it by solving a Millenium problem. HF incidents are public and vetted. If you still think there's a stall despite all evidence pointing to opposite, I don't know what to say..

What reason could OpenAI possibly have to lie about their own performance? The fact they were desperate enough for a PR win they stole the research leading to the Millenium problem further hurts their case imo.

they lied about their performance by.... solving a famously hard problem to solve?

Edit:

The "reputable academic" who accused OpenAI had to say this about LLMs and the recent result.

source: https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf

> “the results are not the important thing.”

> “the important thing is instead the significance that a mathematician and an LLM model can now do all this work in a month.”

> “This is a Deep Blue-Kasparov moment.”

> “incredibly important developments.”

> “If indeed an OpenAI model did close the gap to Navier-Stokes, that is a remarkable thing and it should be said loudly, by them, with the history intact.”

Clearly Buckmaster (who is probably one of the most accomplished academics in the field) himself doesn't believe that AI has stalled. What makes you think you are right?

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