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Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

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Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#61

Post by lioeters »

black6 wrote: post #37
rglover wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China played the smart long game and took advantage of America's ignorance and short-sighted thinking. They already "won" in the sense that they outmaneuvered the U.S. because they relied on flaws in human nature (specifically, greed). Their moves around AI are just more of the same clever behavior. I don't agree with all of their means for getting here, but to accomplish what they have in ~30 or so years [1] should…

Unrestricted Warfare by Colonels Xiangsui and Liang is a must read. China's been on the path for quite a while.

> The English translation of the book was then published by a previously unknown Panamanian publisher, with the subtitle "China's Master Plan to Destroy America" and a picture of the burning World Trade Center on the cover.

Hmm, sounds awfully sensationalist, designed to fan the flames of Sinophobia and thinly veiled racism.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#62

Post by lioeters »

LiquidSky wrote: post #56
badsectoracula wrote: post #11

> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better models, and a crackdown on model distillation. You have to be the embodiment of hubris to believe the only reason a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people with several AI labs and government support can make competitive models is because they all d…

It's funny because this is EXACTLY how it played out with Japan in the mid-20th century. "Japan can only make cheap copies of our stuff!" They even joke about it in Back to the Future.

People joke how we live in Idiocracy now, but Back to the Future really nailed it with the dystopian world ruled by Biff the billionaire bully with no class or taste.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#63

Post by rglover »

altcognito wrote: post #55
rglover wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This framing of a zero sum game is counterproductive. I agree but that's not at all what I was getting at. Quite the opposite. The mistake America made, what made it vulnerable, was playing everything like a zero sum game. We're in the early days of that behavior coming to roost.

No, that is exactly what you were getting at: > China played the smart long game and took advantage of America's... Zero sum games imply that if there is a winner, there has to be a loser. That one country takes advantage of another.

That's not my framing, that's literally what happened/is happening.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#64

Post by overfeed »

rayiner wrote: post #36
toasty228 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have such a weird and outdated view of China, it's almost comical. It's like America's answer to everything bad coming to them is protectionism. They still think China is a third world country with a bunch of factories and polluting industries not able to do anything else other than manufacturing products for foreign companies

Your first point is correct, but your second point doesn't follow. Lack of protectionism is based on the notion that the U.S. will always be technologically one step ahead of China because China can only copy. That's what has gotten us to where we are. Note that China itself is a protectionist economy. So in some sense protectionism is recognizing that China has a pretty good industrial policy and copying it.

> Note that China itself is a protectionist economy. So in some sense protectionism is recognizing that China has a pretty good industrial policy and copying it.

China's protectionism is emplaced to support long-term goals. Amodei's policy suggestion is explicitly in support of short term goals (1-5 years), a time window he claims to be "critical" without evidence. A cynic may link that window to forthcoming AI IPO's, and allowing current CEOs to secure ridiculous golden parachutes before leaving the mess of how to deal with the unpaced Chinese frontier models to their successors and future US legislature.

Letting AI companies set your foreign policy (voluntarily ceding global primacy to maximize domestic[1] profits) may have awful higher-order effects for the US. What's hilarious is the shameless about-face: for years, the same companies have been declaring that it is vital American AI innovation not be encumbered by new laws. Until the Chinese models glided to the frontier.

1. Maybe they hope to browbeat Europe too, like how they pushed out Huawei equipment from Euro telecoms. An alternative reading is that the loss of primacy is involuntary, so they may as well spin the reality, and salvage a win by colluding to eliminate better, open-weight models from the markets in "democracies" with the excuse that they are unpaced and therefore dangerous. What will predictibly happen is there will be `Qwen-8.1` for RoW, and a lobotomized `Qwen-8.1-paced` for Americans.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#65

Post by lioeters »

emptybits wrote: post #54

Four ostensibly competing billionaires agree with each other and want worldwide government regulations around their moneymaking? o_O Chilling and suspicious. Of course, this will lead to a modicum of safety in some provable way to justify (in uncritical minds) the rest of the implications: fewer freedoms and more surveillance for everyone else.

Alignment for the good of humanity has completely failed. Now one of the most powerful technology of our time - and the reins of the (arguably) most powerful nation - is in the hands of sociopaths who want to rule the world and decide the evolutionary course of future generations.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#66

Post by Arcuru »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #49

All these companies are suddenly crying about "slowing down" after insisting on having no guardrails nor restrictions? All at once in lockstep? Who paid them to say this? These are all lies.

I can't find the reference right now, but I'm certain that Anthropic has been asking for a coordinated slowdown for at least 4 or 5 months. I think it was around their Mythos/Fable releases this spring.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#67

Post by rayiner »

overfeed wrote: post #64
rayiner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is correct, but your second point doesn't follow. Lack of protectionism is based on the notion that the U.S. will always be technologically one step ahead of China because China can only copy. That's what has gotten us to where we are. Note that China itself is a protectionist economy. So in some sense protectionism is recognizing that China has a pretty good industrial policy and copying it.

> Note that China itself is a protectionist economy. So in some sense protectionism is recognizing that China has a pretty good industrial policy and copying it. China's protectionism is emplaced to support long-term goals. Amodei's policy suggestion is explicitly in support of short term goals (1-5 years), a time window he claims to be "critical" without evidence. A cynic may link that window to forthcoming AI IPO's…

Yeah, I agree with you on that point.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#68

Post by lopsotronic »

mcshicks wrote: post #39

I think there is an obvious example in the FAA of a successful safety regulation of another potentially dangerous technology industry. A similar agency would seem to me like a logical starting point. I did some minor work a long time ago in commercial avionics software and while it was a very tedious process I did have confidence in it. Obviously a lot of things would have to be different but the basic structure of d…

"Giant Metal Things Hucked Through the Air Across Ocean" are of a quantitatively higher risk profile than "New Computer Thing", no matter how you slice that particular salami.

If you tossed the aviation regulatory framework out the window, you have maybe ten years before aviation reverts to high end hobbyists[1], due to the escalating risk profile.

[1] or proletarian desperation, of course.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#69

Post by ygjb »

amluto wrote: post #29
badsectoracula wrote: post #11

> Amodei, meanwhile, outlined some very specific things he wants from Washington: Stop selling Nvidia chips to China so its AI companies can’t build better models, and a crackdown on model distillation. You have to be the embodiment of hubris to believe the only reason a technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion people with several AI labs and government support can make competitive models is because they all d…

It’s not only hubris — I think it’s actively counterproductive. The US could choose to: (a) Sell many billions of dollars of fancy chips to China, thus bringing in billions of dollars of money and billions of dollars of trade balance improvement. And let China continue to build models quickly when they seem oddly happy to export the trained weights for free. Or (b) Decline to do so, thus reducing exports and very ver…

Don't forget that when they increase export restrictions under the current US regime they signal further that economic ties are on their terms not fair terms. The rest of the world will continue to steer towards alternatives to US tech.

Re: Big AI sets out its terms for regulatory capture

#70

Post by threecheese »

bix6 wrote: post #5
marcuskaz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenRouter or Fireworks are two of many that allow you to run numerous different models. You can use open code harnesses like Pi or Opencode that connect easily to these services. https://openrouter.ai/ https://fireworks.ai/ http://pi.dev/ https://opencode.ai/

Thank you! Is there one you’d recommend in particular when working with sensitive data?

Depending on what your threat model is, and how much you trust OpenRouter and their upstream providers, they offer zero data retention (googleable: ZDR) APIs which come at a higher cost. You can find other zdr providers as well.
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