Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

571–580 of 1001 posts

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

#571

A big problem is "U.S. government" muddies the conversation because of how undefinable and large that group is. Who is deciding who gets to use GPT-5.6? Which organizations? Which leaders? Focus on that to have a clearer conversation. Without doing this it's like jerking each other off to stroke our egos. You might as well as say "The World will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"

it would be one thing if congress passed a bunch of (probably inadequate) legislature that every AI company had to follow to operate in the US. it's another when it's a faceless/nameless group of people probably deciding arbitrarily based on mood and bribes.

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

#572

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.

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

#573
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That until it becomes illegal to have or use open source models without approval and licence from government. With more talks about on device scanning, this could be easily plumbed in. If OS detects there is open source model, it could brick your device or alert authorities. Then next step will be limiting what operating system you can install. Likely only those where you cannot remove client side scanning.

I wonder how you can reliably detect an open source model though. It can be stored in any binary format, and the weights can be modified slightly so that the float values are completely different while the network works the same. The binary that runs it can be obfuscated as well. Maybe the hardware could detect common LLM inference patterns at runtime? That would probably produce many false positives.

Antivirus companies have large expertise in this.

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

#575

> Only companies approved by the government will get access. There is no process for individual users to get access to the new model. I knew the time would come when individuals on personal subscriptions get the short end of the stick. Didn't think it would come so soon. I hope we're not too badly deprecated in the months to come. Looks like I've got to improve my DeepSeek workflows.

From the OpenAI press release: > We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default. It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them. We are taking this short-term step because we believe it is the strongest path to broader availability in the coming weeks, while we work with the Administration to develop the cybe…

You have to be very intentionally dishonest and ignorant to ever believe that increased government powers are "temporary".

That's how authoritarian governments become authoritarian.

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

#576

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.

This assumes the same reward ratio also continues, but that's not the case. A cutting edge LLM is something much more valuable than a cracked copy of Word. Just like the LLM providers themselves decided violating copyright was an acceptable risk, it entirely depends on how people see the tradeoffs, rather than being a categorical decision.

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

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the AI booster equivalent of "well it works on my machine." Works better for me != works great for everyone. I'm amazed how much people on HN seem to think that all coding is stupidly simple web apps.

In terms of startups, predicting tech, and all the things Hacker News is about, it mostly matters what the clever hacker can do, not whether the tool is ready for the mainstream. If a clever hacker can get 10x results with an LLM, they're gonna outcompete the 90% that can't figure out how to replicate that result, and they'll be able to get about as much work done without that 90% Factories, Agriculture, etc. - this…

So, I'm using AI both at work and for a personal greenfield project, and I have 20 years of pre-AI software development. Which isn't to say I'm amazing, just putting some context here of what my experience level is and the contexts I've used this tech in. First off, I doubt the "10x" number in general (I'm not seeing it personally or from other people), but lets say I pretend it's true for a second. 10x better/faster at what exactly? Like, if you have an unreleased greenfield app then sure, you can bang together features a lot faster. But what if you have an established app with real users? It's not just the time it takes to make the feature, you also have to consider documenting the feature, making sure it works well with the other features, making sure it's something customers actually want, making sure it's part of a larger coherent design, training customers, marketing the feature, etc. Like this notion of "we'll just go 10x faster!" falls apart really quickly when you're talking about making something that people will actually depend on and use.

I keep thinking about that (so far anonymous) company that blew 500 million dollars worth of tokens in a month, and what I desperately want to know is WHAT DID THEY BUILD WITH THAT?! Like, for that sort of money they should have created an earth shaking new business or something instead of becoming a cautionary tale that's rightfully too embarrassed to publicly own it.

The other thing with regard to factories/agriculture/whatever is, in revolutions with those things nobody needed to be convinced. Sure, people were (rightly!) concerned about the societal impact, but the utility of a factory was fairly obvious. And yet last year OpenAI spent more on their marketing budget than Coca Cola. The way this stuff is hyped and pushed has an air of extreme desperation. If it was so good people wouldn't need so much convincing!

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

#578
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most countries around the world corruption/bribes are necessary for doing business. Companies even account for it on their books. It was about time the US caught up.

In the US is already legal. It is called lobbying.

This is such an annoying attitude. Who is against the concept of an industry being able to say “are you aware this will decimate the jobs of tens of thousands”?

Catch phrases like this, I swear, are half the reason so many people have a mind an inch deep and a mile wide.

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

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the OpenAI press release: > We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default. It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them. We are taking this short-term step because we believe it is the strongest path to broader availability in the coming weeks, while we work with the Administration to develop the cybe…

You have to be very intentionally dishonest and ignorant to ever believe that increased government powers are "temporary". That's how authoritarian governments become authoritarian.

Nobody denies or even claimed that.

Just as a reminder, the claim (only two comments ago) was that it will never reach people and be limited only to certain government-approved companies.

The press release pretty clearly outlines the next steps that will eventually get it into people's hands.

That is the claim that is being refuted. Nothing about the obvious government overreach happening here. You are the one that decided to bring that in as a strawman.

Post reply on HN