OpenAI to Stagger Release of GPT 5.6 at Request of U.S. Government | Hacker News Reader

OpenAI to Stagger Release of GPT 5.6 at Request of U.S. Government

velo.xyz

74 points21726 comments

So the trend here is government slowdown of AI releases to the public. No discussion around monetary incentives either.

I expect a negative response from markets as this basically means that the party bus just got pulled over.

I’m surprised to not see more commentary on this one. Much as folks may dislike AI and/or frontier labs, this is not good for capitalism, or democracy for that matter (given the actions of the executive govt today).

Seems the writing is on the wall for increasing inequality not just financially but now intelligence and economic opportunity as a result.

This will be particularly painful for startups and early stage businesses / SMBs that will be perpetually a step behind (likely multiple steps behind over time) companies with connections (especially those that are not above paying for connections in the admin).

I’d suspect bans on open source models to follow, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it hits hardware as well to fully close the loop.

> I’m surprised to not see more commentary on this one.

I agree -- this is big news, but the thread only has 21 comments?!

When the Trump admin kinda-sorta banned Fable a week ago, it seemed like it might be a one-off event: handicapping Anthropic because the administration has a grudge against them.

But today's news makes it seem like we're moving into a whole different world of AI regulation: each US model will have to be approved for release by regulators! And not only that, but the administration will whitelist who gets to use it "customer by customer." (Altman's words.)

> And not only that, but the administration will whitelist who gets to use it

This is the more dangerous part we should be terrified of tbh. Not being allowed to release it at all is one thing, whatever, just means we're capped at current capabilities for a while and things settle out.

The government picking and choosing who gets to access frontier intelligence is a huge issue and is creating the economic underclass all of us "skeptics" have been yelling at the clouds about since the beginning.

Found a startup? Well sucks to be you, your bigger competitors have access to more powerful intelligence than you do.

What happens when only the government has access to the powerful models, it will be wielded against citizens and non-citizens alike.

It also means we, the public, are no longer benefitting from the big infrastructure build out. The gains are going to be privatized, and yet agian, we bear the losses with no return.

It's enormous government overreach. A democratic government must not pick winners and losers. If they want to regulate the powerful models, it needs to be all or nothing. Either they cannot be released full stop or they must be available to the general public.

Startups and early stage businesses have always had less intelligence (when intelligence would be measured by the number and quality of their employees) than larger businesses. That hasn't stopped them from succeeding before.

I think there is a good chance that this is the AI lobby discovering a trick they can use to paper over lack of capacity by using their bought-and-paid-for influence on the Trump admin (not to be partisan: they've bought plenty of Democratic influence too, it just happens that Trump is currently holding the pen). Could OpenAI meet all demand for 5.6 if they wanted to? If not, wouldn't it be convenient if they weren't even allowed to offer it widely? Is this the same situation as Mythos/Fable?

Everyone is too busy switching to a less fussy less censored distilled model from another country

AI and microchips should probably be treated like nuclear weapons and disease research. They all have profound non-military value, but powerful nations hoard them, build elaborate systems to deter proliferation, and reap most of the benefits. It's not exactly fair, but it's worked surprisingly well with some technologies over several generations.

But I don't see it happening soon, which probably means it will be too late. There's simply not enough competent political leadership in the world.

Ban on Chinese models is coming on pretty soon. Seems unlikely they're going to shut down openAI and anthropic, but not foreign models.

This will be a fun watch, because other countries won't rush to ban Chinese models. Fun times, fun times.

Wonder how long before the gov. drops the banhammer on Chinese models.

I don't know how effective it might be though given that they would be open-weights.

Could US theoretically ban the weights from running on its own soil, I suppose this would just put investment more within other datacenter within Europe,India,Australia and if not, then models could be ran within China itself and even at the worst case scenarios you could use a VPN to access them and VPN nowadays are using Quic/http3 so it would be indistinguishable for the most part from other normal internet traffic.

So suffice to say I am unsure what might really happen to be honest.

Pretty soon I suspect, otherwise Chinese models are going to have free reign to develop brand goodwill. Question is how this impacts the international posture.

They already did and a ban is practically difficult if not impossible to enforce. People resell tokens and compute.

  - [ ] transformers have hit a scaling wall
  - [x] llms are so good they're illegal now

Let's build the best AI infrastructure in the world, to serve yesterday's technology.

At this point the stupidity is expected, not surprising.

https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-administration-asks-o...

OpenAI Leans Toward Waiting Until Next Year for IPO

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48678873

Is polymarket the best source for when the actual release happens?

Slightly sarcastic, but also ample evidence and charges for insider trading in the US government this year

I believe the initial reporting comes from 'The Information' which is highly respected. They have a substantial paywall however, so it won't likely be linked here. (https://www.theinformation.com/articles/trump-administration...)

China, PLEASE save us!

I’m fine with this as long as they immediately approve me in particular.

man.

How are people getting so upset over this? OpenAI asked for regulation to validate their scaremongering. Now they've allied with the government, just like they said they would.

It's 2026 now, you can't pin your hopes and dreams on a random business that treats you like exit liquidity. When you pray to the cannibal king, you get what you ask for.

not sure if its fully real, the source is twitter and this weird paywalled website, but if it is, fuck.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/trump-administration...

The information is highly respected in this space.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com