>OpenAI are trying to create the perception that their agents are independent thinking machines because their valuation depends on the world believing this.
Wouldn't the calls to slow the development of frontier AIs contradict this idea?
https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/
You aren't one of those "regulatory capture" people are you?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ai-safety-is-not-a-corporat...
Because it takes some mental gymnastics to both believe
"it's all a stunt to convince investors their AI is/will be hyper-capable"
and
"it's all a stunt to convince the government to regulate AI so it won't be hyper-capable"
Convincing the government to regulate their competition while lobbying for laxer requirements for the big guys who have government contracts and get/give kick-backs isn't a far fetched scenario at all considering it's literally happened over and over and over and over again.
It is a far-fetched scenario given the tremendous number of eyeballs on the AI industry.
"...classic regulatory capture takes time, it’s a process of erosion rather than a battle, it happens in the shadows, in the backrooms, away from the public’s eye. As Culpepper argues in Quiet Politics and Business Power, business power goes down as political salience goes up. Regulatory capture and lobbying does a good job explaining why roasting coffee beans was defined as “domestic manufacturing”, thereby lowering Starbuck’s tax rate by 2%. It does less well at explaining big cross-industry issues the public cares about such as environmental regulation or race and gender discrimination regulation."
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/wh...
A lot of these AI big shots were concerned about risk even before they started their current companies. Occam's Razor says they are expressing concern because they are still concerned.
It's not regulatory capture because look over here: I've invented a new term "classic regulatory capture" which involves only those historical incidents that are not like this.
This is by definition not "classic regulatory capture" a term that I have borrowed to cover things that are not this.
Whenever someone brings up "regulatory capture" I shall change the topic to "classic regulatory capture" which by definition cannot be this.
Very interesting quote.
Monty Python sketch:
"You, sir, are a duck."
"Classically, that would not be the case, my dear fellow. A classic duck would walk like a duck and talk like a duck. I regret to inform you that I do neither."
"Ah! A classic duck, you say? Well, that’s an entirely different bird, sir. Entirely different."
* * *
"AI politics is now loud–precisely the environment in which Culpepper predicts business power will be weakest. A mature industry can bend regulation to its purposes through revolving doors, longstanding relationships and obscure rulemaking. An industry under Sauron’s eye has much less power and faces much greater risk that politics will bend regulation to its purposes. Political actors are eager for an excuse to redistribute AI rents away from capitalists and toward favored groups..."
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/wh...
This blogpost was written by a big-shot economist btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Tabarrok
Usually he blogs from a libertarian point of view, so you would expect him to be fairly vigorous about denouncing regulatory capture, if that was truly the story here.
Wait, are you trying to argue that regulatory capture isn't real, or that the federal government is trustworthy enough to itself to give monopoly control over AI development to?
Regulatory capture is a real phenomenon, but I highly doubt these incidents were faked in order to advance regulatory capture.
This type of elaborate conspiracy is improbable a priori, and it gets even less probable here, since it's such a silly strategy. For regulatory capture, you want to tell a story about how you're uniquely capable of delivering a safe product. Not a story about how "Woops we screwed up big time! But a less-regulated product from a smaller industry player saved the day!"
As OpenAI's chief scientist put it:
"Currently I believe that no lab has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer. I expect and hope for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established. And I believe that international coordination on future AI development needs to become a top priority for governments around the world."
https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/
Announcing that "we have no idea WTF we are doing" is not exactly the move, if you want regulators to grant you privileged status. Realistically, it is more likely to e.g. create a harsher liability regime for you and your competitors, which is now being discussed by US senators.
As for the federal government trustworthiness point, that's a whole 'nother discussion. I'm usually quite pro-capitalism, but even I have to admit that this AI race is essentially a case of capitalism run amok. I wouldn't give the feds monopoly control though, I would tell the feds to shut it down or something along those lines at least.
[dead]
Calling for a slowdown backs up the idea that these are extremely powerful and dangerous.
Assuming they're concerned with their massive pile of liabilities as well, asking for a government mandated slow down is asking what could likely be used as a force majeure.
>liabilities
"Every single senator seemed to think it was obvious we needed both much harsher liability regimes for AI developers and also new legislation, both very quickly. This was the complete consensus; the difference basically being degree."
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-ai-preference-cascade-reac...
Again, these galaxy-brained theories just don't make a lot of sense.
I was referring to financial liabilities, aka their debts, not legal liability for how the tools are used.
My point was that if the government steps in and says these companies must slow down, they have an excuse to fail to repay some of their debts.
it's a stunt to convince the government that only they can be trusted to operate it and that their competition/small local deployments cannot.
Imagine thinking that repeatedly demonstrating your inability to control your own models is "a stunt to convince the government that only they can be trusted to operate it"
Truly spectacular gymnastics. I'll give it an 8/10.
It's so scary and dangerous that to run LLMs you need to be from this country, have a government license and spend at least $100M a year on 'safety'. We know this first-hand and are leaders in the field of "safety" now that we learned from our mistakes.
And, bam, competition eliminated.
No one is confused about how regulatory capture works. We're confused by the allegations that labs are deliberately producing safety problems in order to achieve regulatory capture.
Repeatedly blowing up your own munitions factory is not a good way to prevent other people, but not yourself, from running a munitions factory. Obviously.
Obviously the far better solution is to blow up other people's factories, or make allegations of unsafe conditions at other factories, and repeatedly demonstrate excellence and safety within your own.
Here, gymnasts are alleging that they're simply choosing not to do that, and instead choosing to blow up their own factories. Believing such astounding bullshit is a testament to the power of motivated reasoning and the conspiratorial mindrot that now plagues our civilization.
I'd say it's even closer to a 9/10 -- there has to be enough of a perception of a general threat to gain support for regulation, and making your own organization appear to need to be regulated, but also be willing and able to comply with regulation that your competitors can't, is exactly the way to thread the needle on this sort of thing.
Well that would explain why HuggingFace announced that the use of an open-weight model was critical to their investigation of the incident :-)
And why hugging face didn't turn into a large criminal investigation. If you don't think they can control it, no one may be willing to press charges.
HF is in business of selling inference for open-weight models. Setting the precedent of "Your business needs to only use approved safety-certified models from trusted providers or you could get sued for what the models do!" wouldn't exactly benefit them. And contrary to what you may believe, nvidia as a whole would also rather not have the entire demand for their products depending on two big companies.
I don't think it takes mental gymnastics to believe that corporations want the government to believe one thing and investors another. You see the same thing in a number of other areas.
So I'm supposed to believe that the intent of publicly announcing e.g. the HuggingFace incident was to simultaneously persuade investors that the technology will rocket ahead, and also to persuade governments that it needs to be thwarted?
Why wouldn't it do the reverse? Persuade investors that the technology will be thwarted (and is thus a poor investment), while also persuading the government that the technology needs to rocket ahead with no regulation (to boost the economy)?
Most of these HN conspiracy theories seem like galaxy-brained just-so-stories to me.
OpenAI only confirmed the RubyGems incident when it was discovered by external researchers: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/openai-agents-attac...
"@OpenAI this is the third time you've dumped these incidents late on a Friday. The first time this happened, I asked people around me if it might be intentional to burry it, and they assured me OpenAI had too much integrity to try to do that.
Perhaps one of your researchers can confirm that the unfortunate timing is a coincidence?"
https://x.com/SydneyVonArx/status/2108783466451984737
Two birds with one stone.
They would be convincing the government these tools are extremely powerful, the government reads that as a potential weapon. They're also convincing the government its so dangerous the industry needs heavy regulation.
Investors read that as (a) the government would be a huge customer and (b) the government would be regulation in a way that prevents further competition and may deem the companies too big to fail, both making these safer investments rather than riskier ones.
>So I'm supposed to believe that the intent of publicly announcing e.g. the HuggingFace incident was to simultaneously persuade investors that the technology will rocket ahead, and also to persuade governments that it needs to be thwarted?
No, you're not "supposed to believe" anything. I was responding to your point about it being difficult to believe (i.e. requiring mental gymnastics) that companies would try to spin a story differently for investors and the government. They do that all the time.
That's not the claim above.
The claim is that the exact same evidence is (allegedly) deliberately produced in order to portray opposite, mutually incompatible things to different people.
And these are mutually incompatible in the "second order chaos" sense, where the very act of convincing one party actually effectuates the opposite behavior in the other party.
If they "do that all the time," surely you can provide some concrete examples?
If they had the choice (i.e. this is all just a ruse), can you explain why they wouldn't just directly demonstrate that open weight models are unsafe (e.g. by pointing to a market forming for abliterated models) and separately demonstrate that their own models are safe?