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Comment by senordevnyc | Hacker News Reader

They literally have never promised anything like that. They have explicitly said repeatedly that they want regulation, oversight, nationalization, a global slowdown, etc. And then I have to read page after page of cynical comments about how that's all just hype and marketing and them wanting regulation to block their competition and blah blah blah.

You people would only be happy if they stopped all AI development, but you literally cannot do that in an arms race and survive. I cannot fathom what is so difficult to understand about this.

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> they want regulation, oversight, nationalization, a global slowdown, etc.

> that's all just hype and marketing and them wanting regulation to block their competition

I don't see how these two opinions have to be mutually exclusive. Everyone knows that OpenAI and Anthropic cannot IPO in their current state or the economy's current state. It makes perfect sense that they would lobby for a global slowdown to hamstring China, regulation that defers to them as experts, oversight by their own "experts" and nationalization to backstop both of their protectionist needs. Even if you think they're doing it for benevolent reasons, you have to admit that regulatory remediation only consolidates AI power.

We see extremely similar protectionist consolidation in FAANG from Google, Apple, Microsoft and Meta, all of whom receive political shielding for their "free speech" whenever another nation calls their product a monopoly, identifies a federal backdoor or boots them out of the market. Countries like Russia and China feel entirely justified for closing the door on American businesses and refusing to negotiate when they abuse good faith to promote an American hegemony.

Everyone knows that OpenAI and Anthropic cannot IPO in their current state or the economy's current state.

What? Everyone doesn't know that. I predict one or both of them will IPO before the end of 2026.

How would they achieve ROI? The current consensus is that neither are in black financially and both have a diminishing moat.

The reason they haven't IPO'd yet seems to be that they can't assure investors that it's not a fad stock. With market share lost to China, a shrinking frontier and a money fire of GPUs burning in the background, something major has to change to convince investors to treat them like Tesla or Apple. I think both of them want the government to give them a subsidy of some sort to justify their economics.

Haha, I disagree with every single statement you made! Wild how we can see it so differently.

I think the ROI these big labs are seeing is incredible, I think their moats are increasing, I think their reasons for not IPOing yet have nothing to do with it being a "fad stock", I don't think they've lost any market share to China, I don't think their frontier is shrinking, I don't think their investments in GPU is a money fire, I think investors will rain money down on them when they IPO, and I don't think they're seeking a subsidy from the government.

I guess we'll see!

Those are perfectly fine beliefs, but again - how will they achieve ROI?

If their finances are "incredible" while they're both in the red, their mediocre quarters will be devastating for investors. They either have to find a new revenue stream (likely from the federal government) or reduce their spending significantly. IPOing under the current condition would be a treadmill that neither company can recover from, even if retail investors shower them with cash.

However, I will push back on three of your beliefs. Objectively speaking, market share has been lost to China, the frontier is more competitive than it was 3 years ago, and the GPUs that OpenAI and Anthropic buy are almost never at MSRP. I get that you're bullish on American AI, but the writing is on the wall and economists generally aren't echoing your sentiment for a reason.

> ... They have explicitly said repeatedly that they want regulation, oversight, nationalization, a global slowdown, etc.

And yet they do the exact opposite of all of the above. They do everything to get regulation just to create a moat because one doesn't exist. They preach about wanting a slowdown, nationalization, a complete pause, whatever have you... And yet they aren't slowing down the development voluntarily now are they? If anything, they are doing everything imaginable to speed up development to pump out models as fast as possible. If these ex-risk and AI companies actually gave a damn about regulation, or oversight, or a moratorium on AI development altogether, they would actually demonstrate this by completely ceasing development of all models immediately. Instead, they take riskier and riskier actions to try to "win" this supposed "arms race". So please excuse a bunch of us if we find it impossible to take them seriously on literally anything like this. If you have substantial evidence that they are actually ceasing AI model development like they want everybody else to do (except them, of course), then, by all means, present it.

It's genuinely hilarious to me that you immediately proved my second paragraph correct.

Putting arms race in quotes doesn't make it any less real. It just means you wish it wasn't, but don't have any good evidence or arguments to make.

I mean no, not really... Your the one making the claims that these AI companies really, really want regulation, nationalization, a slowdown, or whatever, and that they genuinely care about AI safety and it not killing us all. It's up to you to prove it, not for me to just believe you implicitly. So, please, provide the evidence, we're all very curious to see it.

I didn't claim that's what they really want, I claimed that they've repeatedly said that's what they want. Their words and actions are perfectly consistent with each other if they believe they're locked in an arms race.

All you've provided is a shallow dismissal of the idea that they're in an arms race, and then from there declared that their actions and words don't match. Which I agree with, if there is no arms race.

Everything hinges on whether they're in an arms race. I think they are obviously locked in an arms race, both with each other, and especially with China. You're free to continue dismissing it in this shallow way, I don't really care, but I just found it humorous that I talked about how people can't seem to understand the dynamics of an arms race, and then you immediately jumped to an explanation of their words and actions that ignores the idea of an arms race.

Their words and actions are also perfectly consistent with fearmongering to force legislation. OpenAI and Anthropic have spent millions on influencers and lobbyists to repeat their scare lines. It makes a lot of sense that the "arms race" framing is a bad-faith negotiation tactic, especially since we haven't seen any real-world LLM superweapons even from Russia or China.

So I don't think it's unfair at all to dismiss your theory of an arms race, especially if you can't explain the dangers. Nobody in China is confirming America's super scary AI research, probably because they don't need leverage against the government and global economy. Since we can't see this "safety" research, skepticism is warranted wholly.

Going a step further even, OpenAI and Anthropic can't actually bargain for safety or a research cutoff. The federal government can continue LLM weapons research on their own hardware and employees without any interruption, the commercial outcry is not capable of preventing LLMs from being weaponized. There is no way to convince the CCP to stop closed-door research either. It's much too late to do what OpenAI and Anthropic are suggesting, the only possible side effect of regulation is consolidation (which expressly benefits the hegemons).

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