alt Hacker NewsMarketing stunt by who dude? Do you really think Anthropic would really go this far? This whole situation is completely absurd. The federal government is arbitrarily restricting AI models without really providing any reasoning. This is not a clear and transparent government and it just feels like gears are moving behind the scenes that have lead this out of character restriction of private and extremely wealthy (at least on paper) companies without much media or presence of any kind from the fed's side.
Replies
Yeah, what better marketing than the US government thinks it is too powerful?
[edit: don’t forget my previous tin foil hat note, I’m not overly serious about this]
It could be that the us govt doesn't want china to execute distillation attacks and narrow the gap.
why not? they have been sued for 1.5Billion, with a B. do you think you get that because you play fair or are such great guys...? how much money do they spend on lobbying? if you count it you will see it. if not then perhaps do some homework and open your eyes.
Anthropic is successfully burning bridges behind them and making the path to profitability impossible for anyone coming from behind. If your model is “allowed by US administration” it’s an implicit admission that it’s either underperforming or undermined.
Thanks to these big guys the odds are stacking against any fresh competition. Data sources have dried up and training material is harder to get, regulation is controlling any advanced model, prices are inaccessible now, and they’re seeking that courts cut off the rest of the avenues, including the ones they used to get where they are.
While I also regard the "doom from the companies themselves is just a marketing stunt" arguments as conspiracy-theory territory (especially since neither OpenAI nor Anthropic* changed their tune since before they were rich enough for meaningful lobbying):
This particular specific doom is from the USG, Trump has a history of kayfabe, and there's a stink of market manipulation coming from the White House.
* Musk, however, you can totally have: "With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon" in 2014 to "if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future?" in 2025.
[dead]
I can see a limited way this benefits Anthropic. They've been having issues with one or more Chinese companies using Anthropic models' outputs at high scale to train their own models. By restricting Fable and Mythos temporarily and then rolling out to their most important customers first, then requiring identity verification, they may be able to slow that behavior significantly.