Ask HN: Did we witness the "Trinity moment" for AI?
It is hard to count how many boxes were ticked yesterday:
A government shutting down an AI model it doesn’t like? A government revoking tens of billions of dollars in revenue from a barely profitable $1T startup whose entire trajectory, and in essence its survival, depends on the commercial success of that model? Access to an AI model being governed by citizenship, likely verified through rigorous ID checks?
Imagine that the model is made available again next week. Can we trust it, or trust the changes imposed by Anthropic to comply with the US? Likely not. Can we trust that the US government will not have access to the non-restricted model for its own cybersecurity operations? Likely not.
There is little doubt that China will start to follow suit. We already see Chinese companies slowly scaling back their openness, and there are rumors that this trend will continue. Now we can expect Chinese companies to start releasing redacted models or limiting access based on nationality or location.
It feels like the US government opened Pandora’s box yesterday and pushed us into the territory of a weaponized AI race, with more restrictions, control, and regulation of access. Even if, in the end, this is all another TACO story or a “marketing campaign” from Anthropic, the damage is very unlikely to be undone.
According to who? China loves picking up the slack that America drops. When America turns it's nose up at slave labor, China exports Xinjiang cotton. When Americans get iffy about manufacturing chemicals and refining rare earths, China does the dirty work at-cost. When Russians need weapons, China crosses the sanctions to deliver them.
My nearest estimation is that China will make some kind of announcement declaring no intention to limit AI exports. A lot of their leverage stems from undermining American control of AI research, which they can continue to escalate by offering no/low guidelines models to foreign customers. America's stance on this is overly politicized, which is a prime opportunity for China to look like the adult in the room (and get paid in the process).
My recommendation for them would be next time to create a profitable start-up or one that is valued at less than $1T.
The alternative is executive caprice and we're all seeing that play out right now.