Chamath Urges Open Source AI Adoption To Avoid US Economic And Military Ruin
Proprietary tokens could cost US firms 50 times more.
Entities: Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks
In a post on X, investor Chamath Palihapitiya argued that the U.S. should embrace open-source AI rather than restrict it, saying closed access would leave American companies paying "$26-56 per 1MM tokens" for AI while rivals abroad pay "$0.50-1" for similar capability. He cast that claimed gap as both an economic and military problem, and pointed to a David Sacks post on X making a similar case against trying to gatekeep advanced models.
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The future is open source. We need to embrace it and get on with it. Imagine if America closed the door on open source. We would explicitly be forcing American companies to pay $26-56 per 1MM tokens for the same intelligence their adversaries/competitors around the world would pay $0.50-1 for. This is economically unsustainable unless AI is bullshit. If it’s the supposed through line of all future economic activity that we’ve been told it is, we can’t handicap America at such a meaningful cost disadvantage. This can also be viewed thru a military lens and not just a simple economic one as well. Letting our adversaries attack us for $0.50 per 1MM tokens while we spend $26-56 per 1MM tokens to defend ourselves is equally ruinous. It’s the Cold War Soviet collapse in reverse.
This is *exactly* what I predicted would happen. I said Chinese models would have advanced cyber capabilities within a matter of months and the only thing to do about it was to use AI-powered cyberdefense to protect our systems. Trying to gatekeep models doesn’t work. https://twitter.com/scmallaby/status/2078133417812869624
Americans paying more for tokens just like they pay more for drugs
The future is open source. We need to embrace it and get on with it. Imagine if America closed the door on open source. We would explicitly be forcing American companies to pay $26-56 per 1MM tokens for the same intelligence their adversaries/competitors around the world would pay $0.50-1 for. This is economically unsustainable unless AI is bullshit. If it’s the supposed through line of all future economic activity that we’ve been told it is, we can’t handicap America at such a meaningful cost disadvantage. This can also be viewed thru a military lens and not just a simple economic one as well. Letting our adversaries attack us for $0.50 per 1MM tokens while we spend $26-56 per 1MM tokens to defend ourselves is equally ruinous. It’s the Cold War Soviet collapse in reverse.