Flagship LLM companies seem like the absolute worst possible companies to try and nationalize.
1. There would absolutely be mass resignations, especially at a company like Anthropic that has such an image (rightfully or wrongfully) of “the moral choice”.
2. No one talented will then go work for a government-run LLM building org. Both from a “not working in a bureaucracy” angle and a “top talent won’t accept meager government wages” angle (plus plenty of “won’t work for trump” angle)
3. With how fast things move, Anthropic would become irrelevant in like 3 months if they’re not pumping out next gen model updates.
Then one of the big American LLM companies would be gone from the scene, allowing for more opportunity for competition (including Chinese labs)
It would be the most shortsighted nationalization ever.
Makes me wonder how the engineers working for the "moral choice" company felt about it dealing with Palantir, a company perhaps the furthest away from anything moral.
>> No one talented will then go work for a government-run LLM building org.
I think you massively underestimate how many people would have no problem working for their government on this. Just look at the recent research into the Persona system for ID verification, where submitting your ID places you on a permanent government watchlist to check if you're not a terrorist. There's a whole list of engineers and PhDs and researchers present who have built this system.
>> “top talent won’t accept meager government wages” angle
Again, that's wishful thinking - plenty of people want to work in cybersecurity in AI research for the government agencies, even if the pay isn't anywhere close to the private sector. This isn't exclusive to the US either - in the UK MI5 pays peanuts compared to the private companies for IT specialists, yet they have plenty of people who want to work for them, either because of patriotism for their country and willingness to "help".
If you have more money than god, you no longer get to play the "I didn't know" game. You have the resources. If you don't know, you made a choice to not know.
Chinese models are developed by Chinese corporate. they are free and open weight because they are the underdog atm. they are not here for fun, they are here to compete.
The competition is good though, it will push down the prices for all of us. At some point being behind 5% won’t have much practical difference. Most people won’t even notice it.
I will gladly switch to that one if their CEO is less of sociopath than Altman and god forbid Amodei. In fact I use some of the new Chinese models at home and compared to Opus 4.6 AGI, the difference is getting less. Codex 5.3 xhigh is already better than opus anyway.
Would anyone pull a Pied Piper and choose to destroy the thing rather than let it be subverted? I know that's not exactly what PP did, but would a decision like that only ever happen in fiction?
It wouldn't need to. As sibling commenter pointed out... they'd have a massive exodus of talent, and they'd cease to make progress on new models and would be overtaken (arguably GPT 5.3 has already overtaken them).
Flagship LLM companies seem like the absolute worst possible companies to try and nationalize.
1. There would absolutely be mass resignations, especially at a company like Anthropic that has such an image (rightfully or wrongfully) of “the moral choice”. 2. No one talented will then go work for a government-run LLM building org. Both from a “not working in a bureaucracy” angle and a “top talent won’t accept meager government wages” angle (plus plenty of “won’t work for trump” angle) 3. With how fast things move, Anthropic would become irrelevant in like 3 months if they’re not pumping out next gen model updates.
Then one of the big American LLM companies would be gone from the scene, allowing for more opportunity for competition (including Chinese labs)
It would be the most shortsighted nationalization ever.
Makes me wonder how the engineers working for the "moral choice" company felt about it dealing with Palantir, a company perhaps the furthest away from anything moral.
Anthropic is giving huge bonuses and paying the most. This is the reason talent is there.
>> No one talented will then go work for a government-run LLM building org.
I think you massively underestimate how many people would have no problem working for their government on this. Just look at the recent research into the Persona system for ID verification, where submitting your ID places you on a permanent government watchlist to check if you're not a terrorist. There's a whole list of engineers and PhDs and researchers present who have built this system.
>> “top talent won’t accept meager government wages” angle
Again, that's wishful thinking - plenty of people want to work in cybersecurity in AI research for the government agencies, even if the pay isn't anywhere close to the private sector. This isn't exclusive to the US either - in the UK MI5 pays peanuts compared to the private companies for IT specialists, yet they have plenty of people who want to work for them, either because of patriotism for their country and willingness to "help".
Then maybe Dario will realize that the moral superiority that he bases his advocacy against Chinese open models is naive at best.
his against Chinese models is smoking screen for their resistance to DOW, they are not even pretending
Better naive than malicious.
At a certain level, ignorance IS malicious.
If you have more money than god, you no longer get to play the "I didn't know" game. You have the resources. If you don't know, you made a choice to not know.
You're saying that as if these two things are mutually exclusive.
Every day I hope the Chinese models get "good enough" to drop these corporate ones. I think we are heading towards it.
kid, time to grow up and face the reality
Chinese models are developed by Chinese corporate. they are free and open weight because they are the underdog atm. they are not here for fun, they are here to compete.
The competition is good though, it will push down the prices for all of us. At some point being behind 5% won’t have much practical difference. Most people won’t even notice it.
The moment the Chinese create a model that is "good enough" they won't open source it
I will gladly switch to that one if their CEO is less of sociopath than Altman and god forbid Amodei. In fact I use some of the new Chinese models at home and compared to Opus 4.6 AGI, the difference is getting less. Codex 5.3 xhigh is already better than opus anyway.
“I don’t need to win, I just need you to lose”
Would anyone pull a Pied Piper and choose to destroy the thing rather than let it be subverted? I know that's not exactly what PP did, but would a decision like that only ever happen in fiction?
It wouldn't need to. As sibling commenter pointed out... they'd have a massive exodus of talent, and they'd cease to make progress on new models and would be overtaken (arguably GPT 5.3 has already overtaken them).
But that's socialism.
Imagine the government trying to force AI researchers to advance, lmao