And therein lies the risk: research labs may become wholly dependent on companies whose agendas are fundamentally commercial. In exchange for access to compute and frontier models, labs may cede control over data, methods, and IP—letting private firms quietly extract value from publicly funded research. What begins as partnership can end in capture.
They already are. Who provides their computers and operating systems? Who provides their HR software? Who provides their expensive lab equipment?
Companies are not in some separate realm. They are how our society produces goods and services, including the most essential ones.
[0] https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/mister-gotcha-...
This is the intention of tech transfer. To have private-sector entities commercialize the R&D.
What is the alternative? National labs and universities can't commercialize in the same way, including due to legal restrictions at the state and sometimes federal level.
As long as the process and tech transfer agreements are fair and transparent -- and not concentrated in say OpenAI or with underhanded kickbacks to government -- commercialization will benefit productive applications of AI. All the software we're using right now to communicate sits on top of previous, successful, federally-funded tech transfer efforts which were then commercialized. This is how the system works, how we got to this level.
I think that's the crux of the guy you're responding to's point. He does not believe it will be done fairly and transparently, because these AI corporations will have broad control over the technology.
Having been in this world though, I didn't see a reluctance in federal labs to work with capable entrepreneurs with companies at any level of scale. From startup to OpenAI to defense primes, they're open to all. So part of the challenge here is simply engaging capable entrepreneurs to go license tech from federal labs, and go create competitors for the greedy VC-funded or defense prime incumbents.
My reluctance is when we talk about fraud, waste, and corruptions in government, this is where it happens.
The DoD's budget isn't $1T because they are spending $900B on the troops. It's $1T because $900B of that ends up in the hands of the likes of Lockhead martin and Raytheon to build equipment we don't need.
I frankly do not trust "entrepreneurs" to not be greedy pigs willing to 100x the cost of anything and everything. There are nearly no checks in place to stop that from happening.
You can hope that a defense company is doing the right things in terms of supply chain attacks, but that's a pretty lucrative corner to cut. They'd not even need to cut it all the time to reap benefits.
The only other alternative is frequent audits of the defense company which is expensive and wouldn't necessarily solve the problem.
1.https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2025/04/18/tariffs-tru... 2. https://www.xatakaon.com/materials/u-s-f-35-fighter-jets-and... 3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2025/04/16/silicon-v... 4. https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/03/the-navys-ford-class-120...
Reasonably there should be a two way exchange? It might be okay for companies to piggyback on research funds if that also means that more research insight enters public knowledge.
There’s zero acknowledgment or appreciation of public infra and research.
> “Why don’t we just let private industry build these giant engines for progress and science, and we’ll all reap the benefits?” The problem is that if we’re not careful, it could lead us to a very different country than the one we’ve been in.
This isn't about commercialization, it's about control. When access to frontier models and SOTA compute is gated by private interests, academics (and the public) risk getting locked out. Not because of merit, but because their work doesn't align with corporate priorities.
Sell assets like government real estate to themselves at super cheap rates and then set up as many dependencies as they can where the government has to buy services from them because they have nowhere else to turn.
To give an example this missile dome bullshit they are talking about building which is a terrible idea for a bunch of reasons.. but there is talks at the moment of having this run by a private company who will sell it as a subscription service. So in this scenario the US military can’t actually fire the missiles without the explicit permission of a private company.
This AI thing is the same scam.
If LLM/AI is critical to national security, then it should be funded solely via the Dep of Defense budget, with no IP or copy right derivatives allowed.
That said, I'm not very confident such a situation would happen in reality. I'm not confident current industry leaders can see past a quarter and nearly certain they can't see past 4. Current behavior already indicates that they are unwilling to maximize their own profits. A rising tide lifts all ships, but many will forgo the benefit this gives them to set out to explore for new and greater riches and instead are only able to envy the other ships rising with them. It can be easy to lose sight of what you have if you are too busy looking at others.
[0] Simplified example illustrated by Iterative Prisoner's Dilemma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur3Vf_ibHD0
[0.1] Can explain more if needed but I don't think this is hard to understand.
I want to interrogate AI optimist type people because even if AI is completely safe and harmless I literally see only downsides.
Is your perception that living in theorized extreme comfort correlates to "reward"?
It's mostly because the actual stated and actualized goal of real AI is clearly bad.
It's like if you approached me and said "I'm going to erase meaning from your life. You will want for nothing. The entire paradigm of reality will be changed: your entire evolutionary struggle, made meaningless. You will want for nothing: "be" nothing. Also this might potentially kill you or some rich person or more likely nation-state could enslave you."
The actual stated goals seem negative to me. I'm not very interested in erasing and surpassing human achievement in every way. It seems inherently bad. I don't think that's an absurd perspective.
I think the disconnect here is asked in "what is the purpose of life" and I don't think any reasonable interpretation of that is "be obscenely comfortable".
I'm kind of disappointed that their dashboard has been moved or offline or something for the past few years. https://b2510207.smushcdn.com/2510207/wp-content/uploads/202... is what it used to look like.