OpenAI for Countries
openai.com
openai.com
I'm reading this in the same voice as Helldivers 2 "managed democracy"
I'm reminded of the first half of this wonderful short-story that was shared on HN a year back https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/
Open weights and code and models? That's the only way to ensure sovereignty.
I think this company is a walking oxymoron.
Synthetic training data sets, even robotically-acquired real world "synthetic" data, can rapidly create training sets. It's just a matter of coordinating these efforts and building high quality data.
I've made a few data sets using Unreal Engine, and I've been wanting to put various objects on turn tables and go out on backpack 3D scan adventures.
Someone will have to pay for it, though.
The only way it stops becoming a winning strategy is if we provide consequences, but that requires taking personal responsibility for the state of the world, which was a core American value, but doesn't seem to be anymore.
A rookie gangster shot a high-tier gangster — why is that a me problem? Gang-on-gang violence is a daily occurrence.
It's fairly obvious that much of what the more sociopathic corporations do today will be illegal in the future, but changes in social opinions tend to predate changes in the law by quite some time. For the obvious extreme there - slavery was completely legal. Society began to believe that such a thing was no longer fit for society, and consequently acting against it, long before it was outlawed.
Modern democracy mostly just doesn't seem to work how it ought.
People broadly agree that they dont like the status quo. They dont agree on what would be better. You cant have change without direction and detail.
And getting people elected is no different. Fewer and fewer people identify as either republican or democrat (with independents being the largest 'party' by far), yet lo and behold like 99.9% of politicians at all levels, high and low, are republican or democrat, with basically no independent representation because the system makes it unreasonably difficult to select an alternative. This is further confounded by an utterly worthless media system that further works to entrench the political establishment, and much more.
Regarding the party and representational system, I agree there is a lot of dysfunction. Same problem. Nobody can agree on alternatives. Even ranked choice, which I think is the tiniest step in the right direction is highly controversial. Ideas like expanding the house to 30,000 representatives [1], seem like a fantasy.
People hate change more than the status quo.
Regarding the media environment, the consumer is the problem. As long as people prefer and seek out garbage, there is no possible solution.
It's obviously not people hating change. People want these things, and many others to change. It's a completely broken political system that is happy to change, but only when it benefits corporations or political, especially geopolitical, interests. Ranked choice won't do anything. Australia has one of the most dysfunctional democracies in the world, and they have both universal voting, obviously 'Australian voting', and even a proportionally elected Senate.
Politicians can be voted out of office. The process is simple and foolproof. The problem is people are divided and can't agree.
If every voter next election had your claim denial law as their top priority, they could replace Congress entirely.
Instead, they will fight over the same issues.
And obviously you're straw manning things. The reason people screw over other people is because they expect there will be no consequences. Whether this is some thug mugging a guy for $20 on the street corner, or a guy in a suit developing ever more novel strategies to ultimately refuse healthcare to people - it's the exact same issue. When there are consequences, the entire calculus changes.
I agree consequences are a powerful incentive. If you reject updating the law, where does that leave you?
What exactly is your position? Should I go out and shoot people I disagree with or not? Are you going out and shooting people?
If I have to read "the tree of Liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots" one more time I'm going to claw my eyes out. It is a rhetorical copout when faced with genuinely difficult of how to enact reform. Spend a month in Syria, Libya, or Sudan and then tell me that you support civil war, let alone every generation. If internet posturing ever turns into reality, people will be in for a rude awakening.
You believe in the product of Locke's philosophy, but deny its requirements.
Tyranny is the result of consolidated power. Tyrants aren't going to respond to "please give up your power" or "please follow the law" peacefully. If you challenge power, power will respond. The freedom of speech exists precisely because saying something tyrants don't like will result in tyrants trying to punish you for your speech. Freedom of speech exists in order to protect speaking truth to power because power doesn't like truth spoken to it.
Freedom is solidarity. Solidarity is its price. The word solidarity itself is important to reflect on, because it is solidarity against a force that seeks to break the solidarity by harming individuals acting in solidarity. Labor rights and protection for freedoms were hard won, many individuals were harmed earning them. This country that you enjoy was the result of a revolutionary and civil war.
This is the language the country was literally founded on. This is where the rights you enjoy being protected come from:
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but "to bind us in all cases whatsoever" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth.
> Spend a month in Syria, Libya, or Sudan and then tell me that you support civil war
What do you think makes people fight in a war? Why are Ukrainians fighting in what, if you accept Putin's framing, is a civil war?
Here's a quiz for understanding: what did Jefferson think of the 'revolutionaries' of whose actions he's directly defending?
It is funny to say this as if every other modern democracy hasn't solved the specific problem that you have given. The issue isn't democracy, it is the American democracy (or republic if you want to be pedantic).
Specifically, the combination of our expansive freedom of speech protections (which make campaign financing restrictions near impossible) and first past the post voting system make it easy for corporations and the rich to shape the government however they want.
The only place it seems to be really working is in Switzerland and in the Scandinavian micronations (notably Sweden is trending more towards the patterns of Europe than Scandinavia).
I wonder if someone could put together a Time series data on some benchmarks like the government cost to put up a stop sign.
It’s a bit like using Big Mac index for estimating PPP.
They addressed by rationing and limiting access. Of course their systems are generally much more efficient cost wise. However Europe isn’t some Utopian wonderland.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...
The problem with your judgement is that it presumes that law is a limit rather than weapon, that it protects rather than attacks, and that the law can interpret and enforce itself. This is a form of privilege because you grew up under conditions where those were mostly true because those in power generally followed the law, so you've never had to question many of your base assumptions about what law is, how it is enforced, or what legitimacy/illegitimacy means. Decisions made have mostly been decisions you can tolerate even if you disagree. You've probably never taken the time to understand America's founding philosophy, which states there is truth that supersedes law, specifically that rights are even more fundamental than law and completely supersede it. You owe yourself a reading of the declaration of independence.
You likely haven't been on the receiving end of blatantly unjust law or "law" enforcement nor do you likely identify with those who have been on the receiving end. You've probably never had to bribe a police officer, something that happens on this planet. You probably haven't experienced law enforcers robbing you of your dignity with the force of courts behind them. You've probably never been subject to law that says you are someone else's property.
Unfortunately for your argument, law can be used to consolidate power to update the law. You can update the law so that only you are able to update the law. When the system of legitimacy for the use of force becomes a tool for power consolidation, "consensus" becomes irrelevant. Consent becomes irrelevant. This is in many ways communicated by OP's managed democracy. What happens when you disagree with management? What does it mean for democracy to be managed. It obviously is because politicians ask for money, not time, not votes, but money. That implies that those with money can influence election results loosely proportional to their money.
You should really read about political philosophy, specifically the "state of nature" which even conservative NYT columnist David Brooks has said we are in. Generally when people say that it means that we are effectively lawless and subject only to systems of power. There is no law to follow because it is arbitrary and unpredictable or everything is criminalized to the point where everyone is guilty allowing enforcement to punish who they choose while technically enforcing the law.
How do you get people who have consolidated systems of power to the negotiating table? How should Ukraine get Russia to the negotiating table? Russia is claiming it is Ukraine's government and therefore Ukrainians are "protected" by Russian law. Gazans are "protected" by Israeli law too. China claims that it's laws "protect" Hong Kong citizens and Taiwanese. Their militaries are technically acting as police if you accept their framing.
Multiple second in commands of the US military have said trump is trying to divide and conquer America. Think about that. Think about what it means for a president to divide the country. It means that they see themselves as president of only half of the people. What does that mean for the other half, do they actually have a government? Are they protected by law?
This country was founded on the philosophy of John Locke, and it's not clear you've read it or understand it, because it doesn't say shoot whoever you disagree with (although that is something that happens in the state of nature), but it also doesn't rely on magical thinking about "building consensus to update the law" which is something that makes sense to think about under a constitutional democratic government, but doesn't make any sense in a monarchy or government aspiring to have a "unitary executive."
How many people has UHC killed? I don’t know, it’s really hard to measure. Besides the people killed because they didn’t receive funding for care, there’s also the plethora of practices insurers enforce. Some, maybe most, of those practices are non-optimal, so some subset of people are dying that shouldn’t. Oh well.
Massively increasing inequality and giving too much political power to corporate robber barons has its costs. If nobody is willing to keep them in check the appearance of some sort of “vigilantism” seems hard to avoid. Not implying that its a good thing or that political violence really ever led to positive change historically..
Beyond the obvious moral decay of cheering on murder at all, and the fact you’re in the privileged class of the richest nation on earth, the idea of targeting the replaceable middle managers of said system is so silly. As if committing random acts of terrorism will somehow force Americans to democratically design a better system? Fear is just another recipe for more ballooning costs (see the TSA).
I guess I find this so amusing because leftists love to fetishize European healthcare without understanding in European countries the government is much more aggressive about denying care than any US insurer. They actually have to keep costs sane for their system to continue existing.
That is also the case for US insurers. The only difference is if the government denies life saving treatments, people protest. If private insurers do so, people have no recourse.
US healthcare is one of the most complicated systems of adverse incentives and tangled byzantine public/private spiderwebs ever created. To kill random people involved at 15 layers of abstraction away from the actual root causes thinking that will somehow make it better is probably the dumbest idea I've ever heard.
The privileged class is significantly higher up than this. I've clawed every bit of everything I have from this world despite many efforts to keep me down.
I don't find your comment genuine at all. You're just trying to be dismissive.
All economic systems must contend with resource scarcity. Part of dealing with that is rationing resources which can take the form of higher prices, longer waiting lines, by need, countless other metrics, or some combination of metrics. While the current healthcare system in the US is a byzantine disaster that only a bureaucrat could love, I think far too many think there is a "solution" that somehow leads to a system without resource constraints. This imagined system isn't an economic system though, it's just a utopia.
“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.” -- Thomas Sowell
We have a consent based government, that's plainly stated in the founding document. Now this government is doing things no person of good conscience can consent to, such as talking about wars of aggression against Greenland, Panama, and Canada, denying due process in clear violation of the constitution we were taught in school regardless of what any judge rules (and they are ruling it is a constitutional violation), and sending people to death camps in foreign countries. The leader said "I wish I had Hitler's generals".
I am being ordered to deny the evidence of my eyes and ears daily.
Unfortunately there aren't very many lessons about what withdrawing consent for a consent based government looks like.
Calling us rich benefactors is accusing us of not having morals, values, or red lines we hold in higher esteem than money. If our values are violated but we can't be bribed by our privileged position in a corrupt society then that's Bolshevism? It's having a conscience. It's having integrity. We are getting the society we deserve right now, one where money is the only thing that matters, one where integrity is punished and even judged as "endlessly funny".
There was nothing random at all about the actions being referenced, that's why you find so much support online and even more support with virtually every city dwelling person who is not a boomer in person.
I don't think it's the best way to promote change, but he did start a conversation about justice and its relationship to the judicial system that needs to be had.
"Smaht"[1] people learn to game the system and scam others for momentary benefit.
The worse side that is that we're all guilty of that system, to some degree, even if only by enabling it.
I'm also 100% sure that this is what drives civilizations to the ground.
1. Smaht is a term I use to describe people who think they're smart but they're actually extremely stupid. A lot of smaht people have degrees and diplomas which further fuels their delusion of intelligence.
Sam Altman should receive the same treatment as Aaron Swartz. Actually, he should be punished much more severely since the scope of his copyright infringement makes Aaron's seem like child's play.
In order to change the game theoretic outcomes, we‘d need a systemic change that affects the rewards, not a personal attitude change that will become a losing strategy in the game.
Also, do you remember how tobacco companies were invited to the table to discuss whether smoking is bad for you? Were those the days of personal responsibility or was it even before that?
As the AI leaders themselves admit [1], they are doing what they're doing (i.e. capability-maxxing without caring deeply about actual risks this opens up for humanity) because they can and because the other guy's doing it, so why should they be left behind?
They're asking for some external force to bring the morality that they agree on paper ought to exist. There is a segment among them that are even okay with millions of people dying before the risk of AI gets taken seriously. [2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrESBnPYoZU, seek to 2:45 [2] same as above, seek to 3:25
Quite often this dystopian 'fiction' is just a biography with the names and place rewritten. A scary number of people are rather anti-human.
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
(@AlexBlechman on twitter)
Tech adjacent blogger: Hey guys here me out I love that we're building "starships" but it would also be spiffy if we end democracy and appoint a God Emperor!
Tech companies only care about growth. They only care about anything else insofar as it supports growth.
https://chatgpt.com/share/681c31e8-67f8-8011-a4b0-2bed9d4da7...
As someone who is both expected to keep creating information to train AI while being stripped from the fruit of my labour by it, I find it sickening.
Well, OpenAI, I think you are mixing up your own backend for economic growth with everyone’s!
there is no data sovereignty if there's a US entity at the top
Though of course this is already the status quo for all US companies abroad, so you have to give props to OpenAI for spelling it out explicitly: Give up what remains of your digital sovereignty to the US government and you get a small piece of the AGI pie.
You can make a lot of complaints about America but we have, looking back on history, been nicer than any other patron. Other good evidence includes the fact that europe is still standing (paying to rebuild) and her extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending.
> subsidized largely by American defense spending.
This part is in my opinion ahistoric. US wars have not been popular in Europe. We did not want a war in Afghanistan or Iraq, we supported an ally calling for defense from terror. American war machine spending is rooted in her own desire for hard power, not pleas from her allies.
All of this is coming to an end. Not because the US is retracting. I think most of the west would accept a more nationally interested US, but because the US is starting to see her allies as vassals that she should control. She is realigning as a traditional power, like the USSR.
We are not vassals, we are independent nations seeking our own happiness.
This is straight up Russian mentality.
> extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending
This sounds to me like a US partisan narrative rather than anything else. It’s a nice story, because it strokes the American ego, but I’ve yet seen it backed up by serious analysis. Most likely it’s just a story.
I don't know how you can look at nearly a century of US imperialism in Latin America and the Middle East and conclude that client states is a Russian thing.
There was actually a really good article in the FT of all places on this subject: https://www.ft.com/content/37053b2b-ccda-4ce3-a25d-f1d0f82e7...
The fact that the FT is picking this up should tell us something given its typical perspective. There are two big groups of countries in this situation concerned with keeping russia in check: America and the Euros. The former has less of a direct concern but more ability to do something about it; the former have more concerns but less ability. So we settled on a compromise where each country would contribute a proportion of GDP rather than a dollar figure. This is fair-ish; it's still a huge benefit to the euros, but pretty fair. Yet for decades, they have consistently failed to meet their proportional obligations, instead directing those funds to things like "free healthcare".
Other major reasons they can do this include not having debt from having to finance the rebuilding of their continent themselves.
The US is spending more of its GDP percentage-wise on healthcare than any European country. How you can consider the European spending "extravagant" is inexplicable, you have to be deep deep in the ideological rabbit hole, and unable to admit new information.
Healthcare is one part of the profligate safety net europe has maintained for decades, not the whole thing. Europe has more pensions, more unemployment, more retirement benefits, more childcare, more socialized housing, more of almost every flavor of welfare. They pay for this by shifting the burden of defending themselves to America.
Here's a good and more in-depth analysis: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/04/europe-military-welfare...
It's a hell of a lot more useful than one graph. Please read it.
They have much better healthcare outcomes, so it sounds like they’re way more efficient with their spending.
They also have lower GDP which means that they spend way less in absolute terms.
Of course there’s an article somewhere to back up every opinion that you have. That doesn’t say much.
How you defend your opinions (pointing to other opinions that agree with you and unsubstantiated claims) says a lot though, and is indicative of confirmation bias.
Not sure what the heck you want in terms of validation if not "analysis that supports my point". Are you now criticizing that I've read on this and have data and analysis that agrees? I'm sure if I didn't, you'd come after me for not having that. Double bind sounding ass.
Honestly though, we have a much bigger issue with climate change in the medium to long run and it doesn't really matter what our governments and companies do with stats and spyware. If anyone thinks we can stop and deal with the climate when it becomes a bigger problem, just take a look at our track record so far.
(only mentioning climate change to offer perspective)
Regulators are still figuring out this “AI” and oAI must move into as many market to sustain their valuation and future before regulations start to close many open doors.
Also, when entire EU comission makes “AI” a core focus, all other governments are having a FOMO, which is the most fertile opportunity to entrench oneself quickly before everyone realises the smoke and mirror of “productivity gain” song means just making another layer of middleman mandatory for everything(see Apple pushing towards modifying Safari to be AI first).
Also what climate change? Everyone was being shamed into indignation recently for their carbon footprints, only to wake up to massive power infra expansion and Nvidia/Amazon/Msft announcing that everything is on the table including burning more fossil fuel to power the energy demand(utilities are usually often govt controlled and hence a social cost overall).
Except USA banned export of GPUs to like half of the European Union, let alone third-world countries.
> The Trump administration plans to rescind Biden-era AI chip curbs as part of a broader effort to revise semiconductor trade restrictions that have drawn strong opposition from major tech companies and foreign governments, according to people familiar with the matter.
This unstable circus of a government can't be trusted.
See https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/chris-dixon/
> As you know, not many countries have serious AI companies, and even those in Europe may or may not last. They’re not obviously mega profitable. Let’s say you’re the government of Peru, and you can turn over your education system to some foreign, maybe American, AIs. You can turn over how your treasury is managed to the AIs. You can turn over your national defense to the AIs. None of these are Peruvian companies most likely. In the final analysis, are we even left with the government of Peru? Or has it, in some sense, been pseudo privatized to the companies that are running the structures, and indeed to the AI itself?
Interesting to have OpenAI offer up AI infra so other countries are not at quite as large a disadvantage. Also really good for their business.
You can't be seriously considering fancy autocomplete word guessers are replacing governments when Musk can't even get Grok to stop telling Twitter users what a moron he is.
UK has had them in government since 2022, or maybe since Brexit/ Teresa May with her nickname Maybot.
The decline in quality of governance has been so severe, that I’d wager you would not see a difference. Both sides of the isle seem to be full of unintelligent or inexperienced people that do not believe in anything or have a vision
what an oxymoron.
this is testament how good grok is.
Folks, this has already been happening for decades, western consultancies and think tanks have been pushing for privatisation and outsourcing to American firms and as a result many governments, like UK, have been hollowed. In many cases they haven’t got a grip and the country is running on autopilot.
As the consultancies replace employees with AI, the outcome you talk about will be achieved, in about 5 years. No far fetched future required
In this hypothetical world where AI runs the treasury, is the US now in a massively better position to make treasury related decisions? Maybe? Does the US gov have a remote chance of abiding by these decisions? Etc.
I can see Peru being disadvantaged if they don’t use AI, but if they contract out and set up their own stuff that they didn’t actually build - how’s that really worse? I feel like they let the US spend hundreds of billions in development costs and can now reap the rewards.
You don’t see the difference between a self-contained product, and a foreign subscription service with no influence over what it is delivering and the privacy and data sovereignty implications? Let alone the vast array of subtle manipulation possibilities in responses?
How can one audit that the bytes going from a DC in country A to a DC in the US is not the user queries but some telemetry data for example? Presumably you don't get to look at the unencrypted packets
The US CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) explicitly gives US authorities the power to compel US-based companies to provide data stored on servers, regardless of where those servers are physically located. This effectively undermines any meaningful data sovereignty claims.
Consider the actual arrangement being proposed:
- OpenAI (US company) maintains control of the infrastructure
- OpenAI controls the models and their development
- OpenAI maintains the security protocols and access rights
- The data merely sits physically within national borders
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374615369/wheretheaxeisbu...
Source?
Have you considered that this proposition is even too ridiculous for current reality?
Free markets concentrate wealth and power.
Concentration of wealth and power is antithetical to democracy.
But you can sell options on your family’s votes.
Once someone sells a vote, they are in vote debt, and can default by voting a different person than they agreed.
So now you have to have a credit rating, but for voters. Then you need to have Voter Default swaps, which can be Bundled into Voter Default Obligations, Of VDO’s. And then you can have Synthetic Voter Default Swaps and ahead of a major election you can do a Big Short.
I've read so many sci-fi stories where big tech corporations have similar control over people as countries. Now we are actually heading there.
I'm both excited and a bit worried about the future.
Who is this for exactly? The thing about reneging on your agreements and treaties and threatening and demonizing everyone around you is that they learn not to trust you. US-led AI sounds terrible, it would never pass muster in Canada. Neither in the EU, China, India, Brazil... Like, you Cannot entrust your governments functioning on the US anymore, you can just get cut off at any point for no reason.
So who's this for?
Finance Minister it's in the California trying to bring investments from the big techs... He met with Jensen Huang already.
I wouldn't doubt if Brazil might be interested.
TikTok is also interested in building a datacenter in Ceará, Brazil, as part of this project.
Brilliant in a Bond villain way
I'm deeply pessimistic.
Most of the commentary is presuming to know something about OpenAI’s motivations. That’s not honesty; it’s just an opinion. So my question stands. Does anyone have a positive opinion?
Here’s a take. For those of us who use their tools in our day to day, we might take for granted that we have the existing and new infrastructure to support that product. Is it more good than bad that other parts of the world could reach beyond their current grasp? I hope so. It might be.
To increase shareholder value?
You worked very hard to offer an "opinion" that largely ignored the topic of discussion.
The problem is your "opinion" in avoiding the topic of discussion says basically nothing.
And yes, I do, and it’s shared in a different comment. Search if you care to read it.
Companies and governments have been concerned about data and AI sovereignty, and chip (processing) access. The new risks imposed by the USA are increasing this concern / push.
So, it’s hardly surprising that Sama is getting a lot of calls for local instances.
However, if the data etc. moves back to the USA this is exactly the opposite of the control companies and governments are looking for.
So, fair proposal, wrong execution.
Helping people do more? Scaling our ability to create and produce?
Sadly, none of these things ever made us happier as humans.
Our attention is dictated or at least influenced in big part, by AI, not LLMs, but the algorithms behind Google, Meta/Insta, TikTok, et al
And our attention is what ends up controlling our actions (this is kinda the core of meditation and Buddhist-style practices)
lmao, is there a single soul at openai who truly believe this bullshit?
Are they so high on their own supply they can't even tell they're becoming a parody of a black mirror evil corp?
You provide the capital and the data, we'll co-own the data centers share the models until Trump and the US government decide to shut it off as a bargaining chip.
Also, it's not like OpenAI responses aren't censored when it comes to "sensitive" topics.
> Partner countries also would invest in expanding the global Stargate Project—and thus in continued US-led AI leadership and a global, growing network effect for democratic AI.
Yeah, good luck with that pitch... I have to assume that the target market for this page is not other countries, but the US leadership.
If you have AI which is in the service of an entity which proclaims itself to be the sole franchise of government authority over a given landmass, it is strictly incorrect to say that this AI is "for the country", because it's perfectly plausible (and on sufficiently long time scales, inevitable) that the country will want to evolve, replace, or deprecate that entity.
The current US government? To protect “long-standing democratic principles”? Give me a break.