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The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

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Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#91

Post by jm4 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #80
jm4 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EV’s do well in parts of the U.S. with good charging infrastructure. One of the challenges is this country is huge and there are large numbers of people in places where infrastructure or other factors make it difficult to drive an EV. Probably half the people in this country live in rural areas and smaller towns where the charging infrastructure doesn’t exist and doesn’t make much sense because no one drives an EV. I…

99% of the American population lives within 50 miles of an Interstate. All of the interstates have good fast charger coverage in 2026. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/dmmgl5/78_of_the_c... Edit: that link is awful. So my 99% claim is also likely off a bit too. But I bet it's not off by a lot.

For the most part, but who is going to get on the highway to charge their car if they weren’t already headed that way? And 50 miles is a long way to go. It’s unreasonable to expect anyone to drive 100 miles to charge (and waste all that range). Just get a gas car at that point.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#93

Post by decimalenough »

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE wrote: post #85
missedthecue wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree this will slow US development but what does "win the AI race" mean? What's the finish line? If there was a finish line, say a model that met some definition of general intelligence, wouldn't other labs eventually reach it too? Does getting there 6 months sooner actually mean anything in terms of say, the 5, 20, 50, 100 year view?

> Does getting there 6 months sooner actually mean anything in terms of say, the 5, 20, 50, 100 year view? You then use the power of AGI to keep everyone else down, economically and militarily. Billions of AGI-controlled drones patrolling the Earth and enforcing your supremacy. Yes, the future is grim and dystopian. If one thinks this is farfetched, they aren't paying attention to geopolitics.

Never mind geopolitics, how many people still believe that AGI is just around the corner and LLMs will get us there?

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#94

Post by OutOfHere »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #60
gonzalohm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, for me it's equally scary that the US government can do that. If I can't control the firmware then I don't really care for which government my car is spying for. It's all bad

If I was American, I'd be more worried about the American government & corporations spying on me because they're the one with the power over me. If I was Chinese, I'd be more worried about the Chinese government spying on me.

That's completely true, but it's not that simple, because technically we need to worry about both, one as an individual, and the other as a nation.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#95

Post by CamperBob2 »

WarmWash wrote: post #87
CamperBob2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its totally sensible that the US will keep strong AI to itself to boost its own industry. No, it isn't. What in the world would lead you to think that will be an option? Anything we develop can and will be duplicated elsewhere and distributed widely.

If I told you money gets disturbed widely, you would obviously balk. So what could possibly lead you to think power will be distributed widely?

Unlike money, when I send or receive model weights over a wire, it's not a zero-sum transfer. Nothing but brute force on an almost-unimaginable scale can prevent the spread of better and better models as time goes by. Other countries can and will continue to develop them no matter what the US does.

In fact, what the US is doing now incentivizes every other country on Earth to do just that.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#96

Post by robocat »

joe_mamba wrote: post #64
Animats wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EV-only companies build much better EVs than companies that also build ICE cars. It took Tesla to get EVs going in the US. It will be interesting to see if Slate's little electric pickup truck really ships at the promised price point. They're advertising and taking pre-orders. Delivery dates are vague. "Q4 2026" probably means "a few demo units". Maybe in 2027. Incidentally, the Donut Labs solid-state battery app…

>It took Tesla to get EVs going in the US. Tesla also helped shape the Chinese EV industry the same way how the first iPhone shaped all the other smartphone platforms.

Only if all your narritives revolve around the US. The Chinese EV industry was shaped by other things. Perhaps investigate the trajectory of battery manufacturers like CATL which were independent of Tesla.

For example in the 2010s in Shenzhen they increasingly switched to electric two-wheelers (in part due to historical bans on petrol powered motorbikes).

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#97

Post by bryanlarsen »

jm4 wrote: post #91
bryanlarsen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of the American population lives within 50 miles of an Interstate. All of the interstates have good fast charger coverage in 2026. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/dmmgl5/78_of_the_c... Edit: that link is awful. So my 99% claim is also likely off a bit too. But I bet it's not off by a lot.

For the most part, but who is going to get on the highway to charge their car if they weren’t already headed that way? And 50 miles is a long way to go. It’s unreasonable to expect anyone to drive 100 miles to charge (and waste all that range). Just get a gas car at that point.

2/3rds of Americans live in single family homes, more if you include row houses. Some apartments have 120V in their parking spot. None of them have to get on the highway to charge.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#98

Post by cromka »

rdtsc wrote: post #61
matheusmoreira wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US only loves free market if they're the winners.

Which free-market-loving country doesn't?

EU as a whole? Did you see the number of mutually beneficial trade agreements they signed in past 15 years to promote free trade on either ends?

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#99

Post by danmaz74 »

WarmWash wrote: post #89
danmaz74 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this logic, Taiwan should keep the most advanced chips to itself, the EU should keep the most advanced chip lithography machines to itself, etc etc.

I mean, yeah they could. But what they get back for exporting is more than it is worth to them alone. Taiwan has no use for huge amounts of silicon and Europe has no use for SOTA lithography. I don't see how that is the case with the US and leading edge AI. The US has a lot of use for that, and on balance, I cannot think of anything that is more valuable than super intelligent AI. It's basically the end game power fo…

What will happen is that the EU will start treating the US as a hostile nation, develop its own computer tech to replace American tech (probably together with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, UK, Canada, Australia) and THEN they will start denying ASML tech to the US. Bullies always think that there will be no consequences to their bullying... until they find out.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#100

Post by pickleRick243 »

pickleRick243 wrote: post #54

Journalists used to decry the use of LLMs. Now they use it freely to write their own articles.

I actually find it funny the downvoters can't tell this was definitely LLM-assisted writing.

I'll admit it's more subtle than usual and the writer put some real work in (it wasn't just a one-shot prompt to "write tech article"). I don't even mind LLM-assisted writing if it has real content (like this article). It is a bit hypocritical though given the typical anti-AI tone.

Some sample "LLMisms", although the "AI-ness" is really at a more abstract stylistic level (eventually strong enough LLMs will eliminate all simple "LLMisms" so that only the more abstract identifiers will remain)

"a potent visual reminder of the imbalance shaping the modern EV economy."

"Xiaomi did not simply impress him. It appeared to unsettle him."

"Simultaneously, people like me have a “Neo plugged into the Matrix like a battery” sense that they and their credit cards are exactly where US industry icons, notably Elon Musk, prefer them to be."

"It’s a strange inversion: China increasingly resembles the competitive capitalist system Americans were taught to admire, while the US appears to embrace the controlled “kickback” economy we were told to fear. "

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