alt Hacker NewsUS AI labs really rub me the wrong way, especially with the doom and scare tactics they use. Both Altman and Dario keep talking about how AI will replace workers and how we should regulate LLMs for national security, Dario’s main point.
LLMs are useful. We can all see that in agentic coding. But replacing everyone’s job? Hardly. And what’s with the scare tactic of trying to get the US government to ban foreign models?
LLMs are useful, and dare I say they’re on par with the internet. Making them cheaper and affordable is good for everyone. The fear mongering from Anthropic and OpenAI looks like an attempt to corner the US market into using only US models so they can keep the profits, especially since China has proven that LLMs are a commodity. US AI labs should work on making LLMs cheaper or better harness. Altman and Dario are not trustworthy.
Replies
If there are genuine society risks in a tech I don't want to discourage CEOs from talking about them. I feel like we've spent decades talking about how evil chemical companies (etc.) were about covering up issues in the 20th century. But yes, that's different to being a reason to ban external models.
Sam drank the "superintelligence" kool aid early on and said 30-40% of jobs could be impacted by AI, but recently admitted he was wrong
> “My scorecard, at the highest level, would be we’ve been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications” https://www.cxtoday.com/ai-automation-in-cx/sam-altman-softe...
I agree re: Dario quietly pushing for government control. He also said LLMs would replace a lot of entry-level information jobs, doubling the unemployment rate from 4-5% to 10%.
Yale did a study recently showing little impact on employment in high-AI exposed jobs https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/ai-probably-not-yet-reas...
You are right to feel that way about the frontier labs, especially Anthropic. From https://stratechery.com/2026/anthropics-safety-superpower/
> "Anthropic believes that they are the ones who should have final say over how Anthropic is used; given that they think only they should be developing leading edge AI, they by extension think that only they should have final say over AI generally. When you further combine this realization with the company’s pronouncements about AI’s ability to conduct all economic activity, you realize that Anthropic’s leadership effectively wants to have power over everything and everyone."