alt Hacker NewsU.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6
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This is regulatory capture in action. This will make it hard/impossible for new vendors to come into the market and only established companies will get to play, and charge, for LLMs. What does this mean for open source? Will it become illegal to download weights? What about train your own? Are we heading to a world where GPU use is regulated to ensure that illegal LLMs aren't being processed on your machine? More broadly though, how will this stop anyone but average people? Countries outside the us will completely ignore this and keep developing and moving ahead. Maybe Europe will adopt similar things but the genie is out. I can train insainly powerful models on my laptop. If you want to stop LLMs with legislation you can't do it like this.
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 conversations between the Executive Branch and AI companies.
The real reason, afaik, that the US is trying to restrict access to SOTA models is that a very large component of USA tailored access and surveillance relies on exploits and weaknesses that these models will easily detect. Thus, it really is an export control issue, but it has nothing to do with offensive capabilities. Offensive capabilities always exist, but pervasive defensibility would upset the asymmetric advantage that attackers, especially the USA, currently have.
There are now Asian models coming , optimized focused on cybersecurity defense at a high level, so I suspect this will be a relatively moot point soon.
LLMs are not great at creating exploits, but they are really good at detecting them. That asymmetry alone is enough to destroy the “offensive capabilities” narrative. Yes, mythos can find exploitable bugs, even write bench exploits. But real exploits require a good dose of human psychology, and most of the tools needed are off the shelf available anyway. You still need a real cybersecurity expert to effectively weaponize a zero day into a deployable exploit.
But an LLM can inspect payloads, packages, and blobs en masse and find those exploits in a way that was wholly impractical before, so the asymmetric attack advantage is dissolved by strong LLMs.
The USA is trying to protect its cyberwarfare advantage, not protect against attackers. The exact opposite, actually. Porous security is a huge advantage to technologically advanced state actors.
> 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.
Im not worried about this at all. The OpenAI, Anthropic and the US government can play this game all they want... They're just accelerating the development of open source models; and helping destroy the lead the US has built in AI, and their profit margins along with it.
This is like the battle between PostgreSQL and Oracle all over. Move up market, isolate yourself to enterprises, and watch while everyone else builds on PostgreSQL and erodes any technical advantage you had, until people just stop talking about you altogether.
Given how the WH operates these days, this is ripe for corruption. Imagine the WH dislikes the CEO of a biotech company, while appreciating the attitude of a competitor CEO. What is to stop them from stalling on giving acess for the latest model to the company they don't like?
The biggest concern is identifying "who". If the US government says only US citizens can access a model, how do they enforce that. Anthropic and OpenAI will use Persona (a company funded by Peter Thiel) to verify user identity. Verifying your identity with a government ID and linking that to AI is the dream of a surveillance state. Agents running on your computer, accessing your internet accounts, access to your personal conversations with AI, and accessible by the government is just wild.
I'm hoping this is a call to action for local AI.
Remember how China turned its tech industry into a smoking ruin - make making them all submit to political priorities:
Ant Group: China halted Ant’s IPO and forced a restructuring
Alibaba: China fined and politically disciplined Alibaba
Didi: China punished Didi after its US listing by removing its apps, freezing users, forcing delisting
Tutoring platforms: banned profit from core school-subject tutoring.
Tencent gaming: restricted youth gaming froze approvals
NetEase and gaming companies: licence freeze stopped game companies from shipping games.
Meituan: fined Meituan and forced changes to its labour and platform model.
Huya/DouYu: blocked Tencent’s game-streaming merger, stopping commercial consolidation in a major entertainment market.
Boss Zhipin / Full Truck Alliance: froze new users after listging in the US
Crypto companbies: banned crypto trading and mining, forcing exchanges offshore.
Think it's not happening to the US?
tourism - people afraid to visit
tariffs - wrecking ball to all businesses
defence - why would anyone buy US weapons after Greenland and Canada
internet clouds - Greenland made Europe decide that the US clouds can't be trusted, now sovereign computing matters and MS/AWS/Google are feeling it
finance - no one trusts the US not to turn people into "non members of global society" by banning them from visa and credit card and banking systems
Well I was expecting it but if it's not going to become available in this subscription cycle for me I will cancel oai subs as I did with claude ones months ago...
moving to open weight models is trivial now, with optimizations and stuff glm 5.2 is roughly the same price as the best models around from multiple vendors.
unless I could atleast try and see Sol perform like 10x better I don't really have a reason to switch back.
I used Fable for like what 2-3 days at most and didn't really feel it was so much better, only difference was I had to prompt it less, not to get what I want but to get to a working output. Code quality was still shit, still made bad plans and analysis and so on.
Are these models still relevant for people outside the US? I get the impression we're stuck on GPT 5.5 and Opus 4.8 pretty much permanently now, and relying on Chinese models in future.
This is a real head scratcher. Unless this is a very short term action it seems to have only downsides for everybody:
- people pay much more for US models than Chinese models because right now they're the best. Once they're no longer the best (since you don't get access to them) why would anyone pay several times as much for the same result?
- once you get a high amount of tokens flowing into China instead of US companies, they will train on those chats and their rate of improvement will only accelerate, making US models even less attractive over time
- the sky-high IPO are dead in the water, since their story of "we will replace a good chunk of all knowledge work in the world, capturing a few % of total global spend relating to it" turns into "we will make a bunch of money out of a few dozen S&P 500 paying for the best, and some pocket money out of whoever uses our overpriced models that are as good as Chinese models" - far less money overall. Losing access to untold billions of investor money certainly won't improve performance for the US labs
- all the non-US people start asking themselves why they're funneling money to US corporations who barely share any of the secret sauce compared to Chinese corporations who share plenty when it comes to LLM, including the models themselves (at least for now)
- Chinese models have significantly less guardrails, making for better end-user experience
- there is a small but non-zero chance Euros get off their asses and invest into AI, making something halfway decent and further fracturing the market which cuts into US profits
So what's the benefit here? I thought the Mythos situation was the current admin taking revenge on Antrophic for not kissing the ring, or simply looking for a bribe, but no matter which way I look at it it's a self-own. The only way this would make any sense is if AGI is imminent, which I don't think even the boosters are arguing at this point.
Theoretically US could outlaw Chinese models, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to accomplish as the rest of the world certainly won't, especially as long as they release open weights models that you can run without phoning home.
US citizens to remain nonviolent at any cost, issue strongly worded internet comments, and find themselves a little less free every day.
Pretty happy for anything that will throw some sand into the gears of AI development, given all the negative externalities that are becoming apparent, even if the admin is doing it for the usual dumbass reasons.
Reminds of the TikTok ban for security and safety only for it to be sold to a fellow crony. Can't help but see this play going down again. Threaten / Ban / Control / Pressure a technology+company, then get your cronies a seat at the board.
The cynic in me suspects they were salivating so much over the Spacex IPO they wanted a finger in anthropics 2026 IPO. Banning fable ~1 day after.
What are they basing their right to do so upon?
In the early days of the LLM era, there was lots of talk about how big incumbents, in particular google would be disadvantaged relative to “startups” like OpenAI because of their valuable legacy businesses that could be destroyed if something went wrong. Mainly people thought about big lawsuits but government action is similar.
Now OpenAI and Anthropic are big incumbents with Trillion dollar valuations at stake, so they can’t take any risks. Unlike google they don’t really have a thriving primary business to protect though, so without being able to continue to take risks and ignore regulation startup-style, it’s going to be a lot harder for them to stay relevant.
It's entertaining watching the whole world take steps to reduce reliance on the US and the US throwing arguments for it out like it's candy
I asked this question in another thread [1] but I'll ask it in a different way here:
If the US continues to limit advanced AI to it's own domestic companies, US companies will have a large unfair advantage over foreign competitors who will no longer able to compete.
Wouldn't it then make sense for governments around the world to start banning or tariffing US products and services to protect their industries?
This was coming for a while. For years now there have been job postings for ai safety and not really what people expect. Jobs in places like RAND, funded off DOD grants, exploring the feasibility of building a bioweapon with off the shelf tooling and measuring how far along these tools are. Maybe they figured out it was too easy now, and this is the clamping down we are seeing in response.
So them banning Fable for only non-Americans is what we non-Americans should expect to be the norm going forward? Way to build even more resentment abroad.
I'm very pro-west, but at this point okay, I guess the rest of us have to side with China, not because we remotely like it, but because they don't try to be quite so antagonistic to us in everything they do.
> Organizations interested in model access may join the GPT 5.6 waitlist line, hosted at OpenAI's official Palm Spring satellite campus. Line begins at rear entrance with expedited VIP waitlist line options for holders of partnering cryptocurrency tokens. Application fee required for access to venue; waivers available for select US corporations.
/s, maybe
So the frontier will just decisively shift to open Chinese models in the near future, and once that happens, there will be no catching up.
This administration banned states from legislating AI, then turns around and does draconian measures like this.
None of them care about states rights, they just want to control things directly.
Here’s to hoping that Alibaba (and other Chinese labs) have collected some really good distilled data.
No one trusts the US government. I’ve been warning of this sovereign risk for years.
This will tank the market.
See you all on the other side!
"government needs to step in and regulate ai"
"wait, not like that"
This is the last wake up call for EU. After China starts controlling their models, in 5 years EU would be left with archaic technology compared to other major economies
Why do I get the feeling the administration is doing this to buy a position in the AI companies before they go public.
If non US citizens shouldn't have the models - wouldn't that cause both Anthropic and OAI to fire non-citizens?
"U.S. government will decide who will switch to deepseek"
Or, as a European, thanx for letting Mistral catch-up, I was looking for a reason to use it... A foreign gov deciding what I can use or being able to suddenly pull the plug on my tool makes it easier to choose the lesser quality. (And now I hope my own leaders won't start pulling models :p)
Sooo both OpenAI and Anthropic going bankrupt soon?
If they can’t freely sell access to their models and Chinese models catch up to Opus 4.8/GPT 5.5 in 6-8 months - then why pay OAI/Anthropic at all?
> 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.
I'm very glad to see them say this explicitly and prominently.
I feel this could turn into a patronage system.
Want frontier intelligence? Better not defy the current administration, or your competitors will have access to a better model you could never use.
"We believe in broad access, and we plan to make GPT‑5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna generally available in the coming weeks. As part of our ongoing engagement with the U.S. government, we previewed our plans and the models’ capabilities ahead of today’s launch. At their request, we are starting with a limited preview for a small group of trusted partners whose participation has been shared with the government, before releasing more broadly. During this preview, we will continue testing and coordinating closely with partners as we work toward broader availability. 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 cyber Executive Order framework and a repeatable process for future model releases."
This amount of courting the current administration is pretty scary imo.
So I'm guessing as a result of this, FAANG and similar companies are going to have free access while the little guy will be left out.
Is there any concrete information on whether this would be an application process or perhaps for companies that meet certain criteria?
This type of things is what frustates the people around, its like they are already trying to control an supposed to be open-source model and just for their own benefit. this is why CHINA will eventually rule the tech space.
Brilliant strategy if the goal is to make sure the next major breakthrough happens anywhere but in the US.
US will ban Chinese models and try to get their allies to do the same. Just like they did with Huawei. Alternatively, they'll put up legal roadblocks that open models are unlikely to jump over due to costs or other reasons.
Otherwise they're putting US frontier labs at a huge disadvantage by preventing them from recouping costs on their biggest models.
How much more will OpenAI and Anthropic models cost when they're the only AI you can legally use?
I believe OpenAI actually wanted their next model to be seen as a potential cybersecurity threat because they were jealous that Mythos got that label
Regulation at the state level (which is what Sacks and the toadies were so against) is far superior to this bc it is local and bad ideas only affect those in one state!
Bad Federal regulation has a much larger blast radius.
Let’s hope Chinese models save us from this. BYD is trying to save us from Elon but 100% tariffs are welfare keeping Elon afloat.
This will limit a lot how much they can invest in a model. Because of it is better than the current it will have less and less users until only the government can use it.
Job Interviews in 2026:
My biggest quality? I am an American citizen and a trusted partner.
Worst quality? I am on a waitlist for Mythos preview
Yes I’m looking forward to tokenmaxxing together and looking forward for your answer!
Last year Tim Cook gifted Trump a custom, one-of-a-kind glass plaque with a 24-karat gold base [1]. (Cook needed a policy outcome that would protect Apple's supply chain costs and avoid a costly 100% tariff on certain chips and components.)
You may have to make similar offerings if you want to use the latest version of ChatGPT.
Meanwhile china treats this as just another tech, among many. They might release better models without any fanfare. Difference between a state ran by civil engineers vs financial engineers
While purely speculation, I believe the same thing would have happened, albeit even sooner, under a Harris administration. Government intervention was inevitable and it will have to be worked out through the law.
LLMs have two avenues. One is the realm of self improvement in fields with verifiable output like programming and math. The other is natural language where they can't generalize super well, and therefore need a lot of new training data. Today new data means interactions with an LLM, which is what only the leading chat providers have. In both cases they will continue to improve and slowly replace white collar jobs. The biggest bottleneck currently is lack of hearing and seeing capabilities which isolates LLM training data input to entered text mostly. Once they start interacting with people by observing their behavior, almost all knowledge will be trained on. Then they will become adept lawyers and psychologists. Behavioural understanding can be only 5 years away. After that they will be limited by their navigation , i.e., robotics.
All: for comments on the technical side please go to the related thread:
Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48689028