Reactions from ranked influencers
4 posts
KeyPoint! Making a move like this wouldn't just hurt US AI competitiveness, it would negatively impact every US company in every industry - because they would be forced to pay prices for AI that are drastically above market. It would hurt US competitiveness in every field!
The leading AI has already forked into two options. A: Closed source American that costs $26-56 per 1MM tokens. B: Open weight Chinese that costs $0.50-1 per 1MM tokens. If you force American companies to spend 50-100x more than their competitors abroad here is what will happen: 1. American companies spending 50-100x will at some point become financially impaired and the stock market will crater. This is the equivalent of the US Government saying we can only buy oil at $800/barrel even when the free market sells the same oil for $80/barrel. 2. In the short term, the revenues of the Closed American Labs may remain hi. But then their revenue will also crater because their customers in the US will be impaired and their customers abroad will have already flipped to cheaper solutions. This would be a terribly self-defeating form of intervention if it were to happen.
KeyPoint! Making a move like this wouldn't just hurt US AI competitiveness, it would negatively impact every US company in every industry - because they would be forced to pay prices for AI that are drastically above market. It would hurt US competitiveness in every field!
The leading AI has already forked into two options. A: Closed source American that costs $26-56 per 1MM tokens. B: Open weight Chinese that costs $0.50-1 per 1MM tokens. If you force American companies to spend 50-100x more than their competitors abroad here is what will happen: 1. American companies spending 50-100x will at some point become financially impaired and the stock market will crater. This is the equivalent of the US Government saying we can only buy oil at $800/barrel even when the free market sells the same oil for $80/barrel. 2. In the short term, the revenues of the Closed American Labs may remain hi. But then their revenue will also crater because their customers in the US will be impaired and their customers abroad will have already flipped to cheaper solutions. This would be a terribly self-defeating form of intervention if it were to happen.
At some point every technology is a cost curve. Fight the curve and you will lose. The protection doesn't even save the labs it's supposed to.
The leading AI has already forked into two options. A: Closed source American that costs $26-56 per 1MM tokens. B: Open weight Chinese that costs $0.50-1 per 1MM tokens. If you force American companies to spend 50-100x more than their competitors abroad here is what will happen: 1. American companies spending 50-100x will at some point become financially impaired and the stock market will crater. This is the equivalent of the US Government saying we can only buy oil at $800/barrel even when the free market sells the same oil for $80/barrel. 2. In the short term, the revenues of the Closed American Labs may remain hi. But then their revenue will also crater because their customers in the US will be impaired and their customers abroad will have already flipped to cheaper solutions. This would be a terribly self-defeating form of intervention if it were to happen.
Tricking the US Government to protect frontier labs’ business model by using a China boogeyman is a mistake. It is protecting the equity of 5,000 people who are investors in OAI and Ant at the sale of everyone else. This would be a terribly stupid decision. Let the market sort this out! The events of the past few weeks may simply mean that the frontier labs’ business model is not good and that their revenues aren’t sustainable. That’s ok. It’s ok to have a business model that worked for some time then all of a sudden didn’t (remember Groupon)! This still leaves a lot of value for a lot of other American companies: - CPUs - GPUs - hyperscalers - neoclouds - rack manufacturers - electricity and power - skilled trades - application layer AI None of this value goes away. In fact, if the model layers’ costs decrease by 10-100x, competition would accelerate and I would argue that the value to everyone else will go up more than what is lost. Let the free market sort this out vs allowing two companies whose stock is owned by less than 5,000 people decide this for America.