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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

#131
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?

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…

"it's just physically impossible for this to go on for long"

I mean, my uneducated guess is that it's probably within the laws of physics for us to have at least 100x as much compute in the world as there is now. There would be a lot of engineering challenges, but I think it's physically possible. If so, OAI could double for at least a few more years.

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

#132

I guess what they really want is to limit sale of AI models to compliant vendors and then raise the bar to compliance just high enough so they can pass it but smaller labs can’t. There’s no moat, it’s an efficient market that drives margins to zero right now, of course they don’t want that, collusion of the big vendors is the next logical step.

Yeah it's either that or the scientists are right about their field of study. Absolutely shocking and depressing how many people are willing to trust this Capitalist Realism hunch over the world in front of their eyes.

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

#133

I guess what they really want is to limit sale of AI models to compliant vendors and then raise the bar to compliance just high enough so they can pass it but smaller labs can’t. There’s no moat, it’s an efficient market that drives margins to zero right now, of course they don’t want that, collusion of the big vendors is the next logical step.

Bingo. The goal is positioning a duopoly / cartel as the only “safe” and “moral” path and then that cartel sets pace and price.

Source? Just "that's a plausible motivation"? Cause that's pretty terrible proof.

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

#135

You know what rubs me is that in Darios blog post he talks about "abundance", but what he really means is that Anthropic will bath in endless pools of hard curreny while the rest of the world will try to stay just barely afloat/alive.

Here's the context for the "abundance" reference, for those curious:

> I believe that AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years, greatly accelerate economic growth rates, create a world of abundance and empowerment, and usher in a renaissance of democracy and freedom.

Whether that matches your description of it, I'll leave for folks to decide for themselves.

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

#136

Make it easy for these companies by passing a law that any AI model a company offers to the public (non-government) has to be released as open weights. This is how we deflate the bubble safely and completely, without having to introduce a government regulator that is likely to go either too far or not far enough. This resolves the coordination problem among these potentially good actors.

If Astra is open-weight, black hats can download it, remove guardrails, and go on an automated hacking spree.

So? If the models are open more people can use it to improve their security too.

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone will likely come up with some clever way to make AI use less electricity. There's probably something in how you design the models or chips or some other thing that will be figured out over the next 5 - 10 years to make these use dramatically less electricity.

True, but maybe they can use 50% less power or something. Maybe 90% if we're really lucky. But the growth in the scope and usage of AI is poised to grow exponentially, assuming this isn't a bubble.

I dunno, why is 90% the limit? Maybe they can set something up in the chips to use 1/10th the power and set something up in the model design to use 1/10th the power and so we use 99% less power than today.

After all GPUs were not really designed with AI efficiency in mind, and current AI architecture was not really designed with efficiency in mind, so there's probably some things that can be done. Over 5-10 years, who knows how much more efficient things could get?

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

#138
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, his takes on the Ukraine war from the covid days have aged very well, and were contrarian to mainstream narratives at the time.

I was trying to avoid that topic on HN, but DS' takes on the Ukraine ware were the MOST atrocious, amoral, and just plain wrong, basically suggesting Ukraine should just give up because Russia would win anyway. Nevermind that any decent person would support a people's right to live and determine their own future without a neighboring despot using all his nation's might to literally eliminate them as a people. Quite t…

So to clarify...your position is that: it's better that Ukraine has been completely decimated and half a million have died fighting an un-winnable war...instead of taking lesser concessions upfront than they will ultimately have to make for this thing to end?

Russia was clearly in the wrong here, and I wish Ukraine could win, but reality exists, and we kind of have to anchor our decisions based on it or suffer the consequences.

I get it, realism is emotionally upsetting. But if you actually care about Ukraine, the only approach that can get the best outcome is realism.

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

#139

You know what rubs me is that in Darios blog post he talks about "abundance", but what he really means is that Anthropic will bath in endless pools of hard curreny while the rest of the world will try to stay just barely afloat/alive.

It's an obnoxious form of discourse when someone says X and the response is "obviously you're lying and you really mean Y, which is terrible". By all accounts Dario sincerely believes that AI has the potential to substantially improve the lives of everyone; that's my view as well. And it might be wrong! In which case you should offer evidence against it, rather than making empty claims that your opponent is a lying l…

Which AI CEO hasn't been gyrating between scaremongering and selling the shining city on a hill?

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

#140
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. Better yet: the AI labs get straight up nationalized.

I don’t trust Altman at all, but still he’s 100000000x better than trump administration.

Trump will be gone soon. CEOs won't.
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