GOP bill proposes 20 years in jail for anyone who downloads a Chinese AI models [pdf]

Not any kind of strike against China. A strike against the American people.

Not supporting any kind of open-software-at-any-price kind of agenda. The law is to put Americans into jail. No other interpretation than a law to punish our own people.

The cringing tragedy is, the folks creating the law imagine themselves some kind of super-patriots. When in fact they're running around causing damage among our own people, operating in fact as agents for the perceived enemy by doing their work for them.

With something like this, we basically have elevation of current and near-term AI to basically ITAR levels - the maximum penalties for ITAR violations is also up to 20 years in jail.

The challenge with these bans is that well... PRC has shown themselves to be pretty competent at pilfering ITAR/Top Secret information, say nothing about merely "company sensitive". .

While on one hand, it's a perhaps a shrewd admission that no one really knows how to evaluate these AI models, and therefore we have no idea how to measure or contain PRC sourced AI models for potential negative impacts, most likely this will also setup a distinctly asymmetric information environment. PRC seemingly has a habit of pulling "bad" (for the US) surprises out of situations.

Specific text banning downloading in US:

> "On and after the date that is 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the importation into the United States of artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence technology or intellectual property developed or produced in the People’s Republic of China is prohibited."

FYI, the next paragraph says the same thing banning the US from exporting / allowing Chinese people to use their software/models.

Ahhh the free market. In which we make sure to protect OpenAI’s profits.

Earlier:

Proposed bill to make it a crime to download DeepSeek in the US

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904838

Many Democrats in Congress would vote for this. It's so important to see past the false illusion that is ideology. On the most important issues facing the people, Democrat and Republican elected officials agree on policy that disempower Americans.

Another point to really clarify who's who in this. Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley neocons are the force within the GOP that push this garbage. We need more Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, RFK Jr types running the GOP.

This is what happens when the electorate gets lazy and lets politicians lie to them and then believe those lies also when those same voters become so angry and insulated to think they don’t need trade or immigrants.

So in the next day 25 years when I’ll be retiring … what’s going to be the next super power? I could very much see America falling behind to such a degree that it stops being the world reserve currency, Silicon Valley moves out, and some other nation rises to the top of the GDP charts. I’m hoping it’s not China but it may well be. I’m guessing / hoping it’s Europe though.

this is what authoritarian fascism looks like.