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points by bethekidyouwant 4 days ago | 0 comments

How?

I think your question is rhetorical, in which case I agree with the sentiment.

The US absolutely could (and very well might) make Chinese models illegal, possibly open weight models in general, but all that will do is keep them out of the hands of law abiding US citizens.

Law breakers in the US and the entire rest of the world would still have access, and nothing in the US will be any safer. People who think regulation will solve the problem should be embarrassed by their ignorance.

[–] aktenlage 4 days ago

It may solve the problem of anthropic and open ai going out of business with all major consequences that would have for the rest of the US.

[–] holoduke 4 days ago

I don't get why people think Chinese models could bring openai and anthropic to their knees. There are zero signs of such a scenario. In fact the market is still growing at a gigantic pace. Quality of American models is still AAA. Chinese will have their place. But they are unmatched by their American rivals.

[–] bryanlarsen 4 days ago

"Bring them to their knees" is highly unlikely.

"Puncture expectations of a multi-trillion dollar valuation" OTOH seems quite likely to me.

[–] verdverm 4 days ago

> But they are unmatched by their American rivals.

Kimi K3.1 is top 5 on AA and half the price of Opus 5.5, Qwen4 is coming soon. There is near zero difference for most tasks, so it matters less today and even less as time goes on. Price is now the top concern for a reason.

https://artificialanalysis.ai/#intelligence

[–] xscott 4 days ago

If the capability keeps growing significantly, then I agree it's possible the US could hold their significant lead indefinitely.

However, capability could plateau or reach a point where most of the market can't tell the difference and isn't willing to pay a premium.

[–] xscott 4 days ago

Lol, that's funny in an awful way. Choose between popping the AI bubble or creating a duopoly, and still have all the cybersecurity and other risks.

[–] jonathanstrange 4 days ago

Banning open weight models in the US would provide the rest of the world with a huge business advantage since these models are much more cost-effective than US models.

[–] bethekidyouwant 4 days ago

“Ban open weight models” Lol how. How do you even prove a model that I’m hosting is open weights?

[–] xscott 4 days ago

There's a difference between something being illegal and being able to enforce that law.

[–] oefrha 4 days ago

OpenRouter and other inference providers won’t be able to openly host the models, for starters. That should cut most (or at least a significant share of) non-local inference, and local inference only works with smaller, less capable models, plus the hardware is hella expensive when you don’t have scale to saturate.

In addition, most companies don’t want to be in a position where a disgruntled employee can report them to authorities and rack up massive fines or worse, even if it’s hard to tell from the outside.

[–] eddythompson80 4 days ago

I don't know man. Marijuana is/was banned in most of the US. LOL, how do you ban a plant?

[–] cwillu 4 days ago

Given the general availability, the answer appears to be “you mostly don't.”

[–] ApolloFortyNine 4 days ago

If you are a legally operating company in the US just saying it's banned is enough, the threat of enforcement is enough pressure.

You and I obviously can just use a VPN, but 99% of usage is likely as part of a company.

[–] xscott 4 days ago

Presumably, legally operating companies aren't the dominant threat though. So banning open weight models doesn't solve anything.

[–] oefrha 4 days ago

Not if you realize the real threat to be solved is threat to shareholder value.

[–] teolandon 4 days ago

ding ding ding

[–] SahAssar 4 days ago

> If you are a legally operating company in the US just saying it's banned is enough, the threat of enforcement is enough pressure.

Is there precedent for the US actually "banning" software? I know for example the Kaspersky ban and tiktok ban, but both of those were either banning the sales or banning the service. IIRC neither made the actual software illegal.

What is an example of a specific software being illegal to possess? What is an example of a specific software being illegal to use if it is not used to break other laws (copyright, etc.) or talks to banned service providers?

Closest thing I can think of is restricting the export of cryptography in the 90's, but that was not even close to what you are suggesting.

[–] bethekidyouwant 4 days ago

Correct it’s 7% chance on kalshi, and those 7% of people are just wrong. I know everyone likes to larp that the US is some kind of dictatorship, but lol, lmao as they say. Also on the “how” side so far we have “they will just announce that “they” are banned, hilarious.