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OpenAI for Countries
- agnishom 1y agoHow can it be "democratic AI" if the infrastructure is held privately?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- simonjgreen 1y agoI’m trying to remember the last time I saw an advertisement or product targeting entire nations…
- aduffy 1y agoEvery defense company. c.f. Anduril's "arsenal of democracy" campaign
- rambojohnson 1y agoblah blah blah.. anybody else fatigued by all this nonsense?
- paul7986 1y agosounds like you dont use GPT Many to numerous times a day too....
- jwrallie 1y ago> It’s clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development. Well, OpenAI, I think you are mixing up your own backend for economic growth with everyone’s!
- gooob 1y agoi'm wondering what's going to happen when AI tells us to stop pursuing "economic growth" and instead seek "health and sustainability"
- caseyy 1y agoJust tweak the system prompt until global domi... I mean democracy is achieved. /s
- tedivm 1y agoThey'll train a new version to fix the problem.
- cube00 1y agoThe eternal AI hype excuse, the next model will fix that, now we're seeing new models hallucinating more then ever.
- zmgsabst 1y agoWEF is already pitching that, so it would represent a pivot to be “on brand” for fascist elites.
- minimaxir 1y agoThe Stargate link is notable since that has received a large amount of backing from the United States government, who hasn’t been friendly with other countries lately.
- skywhopper 1y agoStargate has no US government funding. It was latched onto by Trump to pretend he was immediately making some “deals”. But the whole thing is an illusion of pre-existing projects and investments that pre-date the last election.
- nprateem 1y agoIt's not an illusion if he can threaten to disable access, etc. which of course he could, just like China.
- egorfine 1y ago> Partner with countries to help build in-country data center capacity. Except USA banned export of GPUs to like half of the European Union, let alone third-world countries.
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- andrewinardeer 1y agoAs long as banned GPUs are under USA control and know what data is being processed on them then perhaps it will be allowed.
- MegaButts 1y agoTrump has announced plans to change that (this is news from today). https://archive.is/2eLzj https://archive.is/2eLzj > The Trump administration plans to rescind Biden-era AI chip curbs as part of a broader effort to revise semiconductor trade restrictions that have drawn strong opposition from major tech companies and foreign governments, according to people familiar with the matter.
- egorfine 1y agoGiven any other US administration this would be a good news. This one? I genuinely have no idea.
- pornel 1y agoThis doesn't mean anything. He won't get enough likes on Xitter tomorrow and will flip-flop to 1000% tariffs or whatever else comes to his senile mind. This unstable circus of a government can't be trusted.
- egorfine 1y agoTrue. Unfortunately this is not a time to have a confidence in long-term business relationships with the US.
- skywhopper 1y agoThis is disturbing to read and wonder what other countries are going to want “democratic” AI developed in partnership with and “led by” the US and Trump.
- verdverm 1y agoProbably other "democratic" countries?
- kiernanmcgowan 1y ago> We want to help these countries, and in the process, spread democratic AI I'm reading this in the same voice as Helldivers 2 "managed democracy"
- Trasmatta 1y agoThey used the word "democratic" 8 times in that post. I'm not sure that word means what they think it means.
- krackers 1y agoAs opposed to those "unaligned" communist open-source models. As a proud freedom-loving citizen of the West you wouldn't want to support those now would you? I'm reminded of the first half of this wonderful short-story that was shared on HN a year back https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/
- dzhiurgis 1y agoWhat's an open source model?
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago"democratic" means "i can pay for anything i want, so i will"
- ASalazarMX 1y agoIt means "ChatGPT aligned with your government agenda".
- snihalani 1y agoI think it means they are blinking twice in front of their republic friends. Fortunately, no one is going to save them
- echelon 1y ago> spread democratic AI Open weights and code and models? That's the only way to ensure sovereignty. I think this company is a walking oxymoron.
- jMyles 1y ago...this is not AI for countries. This is AI for _governments_. Those two concepts are diametrically opposed to one another.
- stepanhruda 1y agoDiametrically opposed? They are distinct, but hardly opposed.
- notpushkin 1y agoIt really depends.
- jMyles 1y agoWell I guess the time scale is what determines the degree to which the distinction becomes opposition. AI is likely to persist for tens or hundreds of thousands of years in some form. Are any of today's nation states built to last that long? I think we all know the answer. If you have AI which is in the service of an entity which proclaims itself to be the sole franchise of government authority over a given landmass, it is strictly incorrect to say that this AI is "for the country", because it's perfectly plausible (and on sufficiently long time scales, inevitable) that the country will want to evolve, replace, or deprecate that entity.
- stepanhruda 1y agoI agree that “AI for governments” is much more accurate, just saying that diametrically opposed doesn’t really capture the relationship between the two concepts well
- mrcwinn 1y agoAnyone have something positive to say?
- Waterluvian 1y agoHonest > positive
- mrcwinn 1y agoWell, sure, but that’s irrelevant here. Most of the commentary is presuming to know something about OpenAI’s motivations. That’s not honesty; it’s just an opinion. So my question stands. Does anyone have a positive opinion? Here’s a take. For those of us who use their tools in our day to day, we might take for granted that we have the existing and new infrastructure to support that product. Is it more good than bad that other parts of the world could reach beyond their current grasp? I hope so. It might be.
- ClumsyPilot 1y ago> presuming to know something about OpenAI’s motivations To increase shareholder value?
- staticman2 1y agoI guess you were hoping that people wouldn't post opinions related to "democracy" in a discussion of a product offering "democratic AI rails." You worked very hard to offer an "opinion" that largely ignored the topic of discussion. The problem is your "opinion" in avoiding the topic of discussion says basically nothing.
- dbalatero 1y agoWhy should that be a requirement? Do you have anything positive to say?
- mrcwinn 1y agoIt’s not a requirement. If it’s just the culture of HN to dunk on certain companies or products, then it is. This place doesn’t belong to me any more than it belongs to you. I am hopeful though that we could encourage more diversity of opinion here. Otherwise it’s exhausting. And yes, I do, and it’s shared in a different comment. Search if you care to read it.
- greenavocado 1y agoThis is a genius move to lock in revenue from countries lacking the technological infrastructure and capital to develop and run their own "safe" (for the local junta) models. Doubly so that OpenAI are experts in censorship - I mean "alignment" - and can help local authorities impose a localized censorship regime. The logical next step is going hard on promoting "AI Safety" and legislating the use of certified approved censored models in each locale, and criminalizing the use and possession of unapproved models, the same way certain JPEG files carry multi year prison sentences or how possession of certain books in certain countries carries prison time.
- Leary 1y agoTranslation: You provide the capital and the data, we'll co-own the data centers share the models until Trump and the US government decide to shut it off as a bargaining chip.
- omneity 1y ago"And as a bonus we'll have the first pick on every little thing your citizens are thinking about."
- hoshikihao 1y agoWhy do you restrict people from Chinese Mainland from using ChatGPT?
- rany_ 1y agoIsn't it blocked by GFW not OpenAI?
- rikafurude21 1y agoI dont get the proposition, they want to build DCs in partnering countries to run GPT on? Who is this useful for, except for OpenAI to get lower latency connections to their customers?
- eldenring 1y agoI mean its useful to the customers who get lower latency too.
- eksu 1y agoNot latencies, think data privacy / keeping queries and data from leaving sovereign borders. This way, if there is some local instance / everything is local than the datacenter and service are subject to local laws and regulations (and alternatively you're not subject to foriegn the laws and regulations (and agencies).
- gerash 1y agolocality is good for resilience and latency but for privacy? how does it work? How can one audit that the bytes going from a DC in country A to a DC in the US is not the user queries but some telemetry data for example? Presumably you don't get to look at the unencrypted packets
- sReinwald 1y agoThat's not quite correct. The "sovereignty" pitch here is largely illusory when dealing with a US-based company like OpenAI. The US CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) explicitly gives US authorities the power to compel US-based companies to provide data stored on servers, regardless of where those servers are physically located. This effectively undermines any meaningful data sovereignty claims. Consider the actual arrangement being proposed: - OpenAI (US company) maintains control of the infrastructure - OpenAI controls the models and their development - OpenAI maintains the security protocols and access rights - The data merely sits physically within national borders This isn't sovereignty - it's a limited hosting arrangement that remains fully under US legal jurisdiction. US intelligence agencies can still access this data through legal mechanisms that bypass the host country's laws entirely.
- 867-5309 1y agoseeking cheap land, electricity and labour. this stunt is bound to backfire
- stego-tech 1y agoSo let me get this straight: countries fund the infrastructure, shoulder the risk, dole out taxpayer money to the for-profit arm of OpenAI, weaken privacy laws, and hand over taxpayer data for…nothing? It just reads like a “hey gullible suckers, give us your land/money/data and we’ll let you slap our logo on stuff until it’s no longer economically convenient for us to do so, at which point we’ll demand you subsidize us because we can claim we’re indispensable/too big to fail” grift to me, unless I’m missing something.
- bnjms 1y agoThis is the leader pg admires?
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- light_hue_1 1y agoSo they're running out of large enough companies as customers. Now they want governments to pay them.
- blibble 1y ago> These secure data centers will help support the sovereignty of a country’s data there is no data sovereignty if there's a US entity at the top
- fakedang 1y agoI honestly wonder if American companies are so dense that they think foreign governments don't know of the Cloud Act.
- I_am_tiberius 1y agoAs a consumer, this makes me afraid.
- maartenscholl 1y agoDemocratic AI is non-negotiable
- Sol- 1y agoComes with a free US government backdoor to all of the foreign citizens' data and AI usage. Though of course this is already the status quo for all US companies abroad, so you have to give props to OpenAI for spelling it out explicitly: Give up what remains of your digital sovereignty to the US government and you get a small piece of the AGI pie.
- tuyguntn 1y agoadditionally, anytime you oppose US government ideas, data centers in your country gets shutdown.
- _bin_ 1y agoThe pattern for basically every small nation is "choose of which superpower you wish to be a client." From that patron you get some level of benefit. Not aligning with any either doesn't work (you get attacked) or means you get no benefit (and eventually get pushed into obscurity and instability.) You can make a lot of complaints about America but we have, looking back on history, been nicer than any other patron. Other good evidence includes the fact that europe is still standing (paying to rebuild) and her extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending.
- delusional 1y agoI agree with most of what you said. America has been a great ally, mostly by allowing her allies to flourish independently of herself. The US did whatever she wanted to do, and so did her allies. This was a great benefit to all involved. > subsidized largely by American defense spending. This part is in my opinion ahistoric. US wars have not been popular in Europe. We did not want a war in Afghanistan or Iraq, we supported an ally calling for defense from terror. American war machine spending is rooted in her own desire for hard power, not pleas from her allies. All of this is coming to an end. Not because the US is retracting. I think most of the west would accept a more nationally interested US, but because the US is starting to see her allies as vassals that she should control. She is realigning as a traditional power, like the USSR. We are not vassals, we are independent nations seeking our own happiness.
- animanoir 1y ago[dead]
- H8crilA 1y agoSo that's just (or "just") locating the inference infrastructure inside the user's country? All operations, deployment, all training, tuning and development, contract negotiations remain the same?
- koakuma-chan 1y ago[flagged]
- siquick 1y agoThis sounds like the sales pitch for the AI Prime Ministers in Ray Naylers excellent new book, Where The Axe is Buried. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374615369/wheretheaxeisburied/ https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374615369/wheretheaxeisbu...
- hlava 1y agoLooks like OpenAI is trying to set the narrative, literally.
- marviel 1y agoevery day the culture grows nearer
- estebarb 1y agoIn the post-truth era, with fascism gaining adepts all across the world... who would want to give a government editorial powers on generative AI? I'm deeply pessimistic.
- Y_Y 1y agoHey sama, ballsy move! Have you considered that this proposition is even too ridiculous for current reality?
- philip1209 1y agoI guess Norway as first customer.
- cheriot 1y ago"We will trade control for datacenter subsidies" Brilliant in a Bond villain way
- jsnell 1y ago> Through formalized infrastructure collaborations, and in coordination with the US government, OpenAI will: > Partner countries also would invest in expanding the global Stargate Project—and thus in continued US-led AI leadership and a global, growing network effect for democratic AI. Yeah, good luck with that pitch... I have to assume that the target market for this page is not other countries, but the US leadership.
- stevage 1y agoI sure did not expect to see Trump's name used in a positive way when talking about supporting democracy.
- neilv 1y agoThey mention a good point (which probably most countries already realized), but the obvious answer is to invest in lowercase open AI, not uppercase OpenAI.
- mooreds 1y agoOn several of Tyler Cowen's recent podcasts, he has said essentially "there are really only two countries that have AI, China and the USA. Does this mean that other countries (like Peru) won't really have a functioning, powerful government when AI runs everything". See https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/chris-dixon/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/chris-dixon/ > As you know, not many countries have serious AI companies, and even those in Europe may or may not last. They’re not obviously mega profitable. Let’s say you’re the government of Peru, and you can turn over your education system to some foreign, maybe American, AIs. You can turn over how your treasury is managed to the AIs. You can turn over your national defense to the AIs. None of these are Peruvian companies most likely. In the final analysis, are we even left with the government of Peru? Or has it, in some sense, been pseudo privatized to the companies that are running the structures, and indeed to the AI itself? Interesting to have OpenAI offer up AI infra so other countries are not at quite as large a disadvantage. Also really good for their business.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago> when AI runs everything You can't be seriously considering fancy autocomplete word guessers are replacing governments when Musk can't even get Grok to stop telling Twitter users what a moron he is.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 1y agoFancy autocomplete is, today, killing people in at least two wars. We must stop dismissing the technical nightmare now at our doorstep.
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- apwell23 1y agollms are killing ppl ? care to share any references ?
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- fancyfredbot 1y agoThis is simultaneously why most people desperately want to invest in OpenAI and at the same time why all the best gen AI researchers want to work for anthropic. The less you understand the more impressive this seems. Conversley the more you understand the more embarrassing this seems.
- gizmodo59 1y agoCan you give more detail on this? Or this is a vibe comment? Who do you consider as “best”?
- hayst4ck 1y ago[flagged]
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- lm28469 1y ago> It’s clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development lmao, is there a single soul at openai who truly believe this bullshit? Are they so high on their own supply they can't even tell they're becoming a parody of a black mirror evil corp?
- grafmax 1y agoThey are claiming that free markets are an expression of democratic principles. Free markets concentrate wealth and power. Concentration of wealth and power is antithetical to democracy.
- ClumsyPilot 1y agoSee, you just don’t get it, we will only be free when we get rid of politicians and have referendums on all legislation. But you can sell options on your family’s votes. Once someone sells a vote, they are in vote debt, and can default by voting a different person than they agreed. So now you have to have a credit rating, but for voters. Then you need to have Voter Default swaps, which can be Bundled into Voter Default Obligations, Of VDO’s. And then you can have Synthetic Voter Default Swaps and ahead of a major election you can do a Big Short.
- n_ary 1y agoHmm, the cynic in me reads this as move fast and capture market(+regulation) before new regulation is setup to thwart the likes of GDPR and other privacy acts. When something is new and regulators are having hard time understanding the consequences and future risks, it is most efficient and cheap to capture the market. Once the fallouts start, regulations strike but by then the early players are too big and well established to deal with anything, while the new and smaller players get crushed under compliance and consequences of the early big players’ shenanigans.
- morkalork 1y agoHow is this different from NGOs flooding poor countries with food aid and causing prices to crash, local farmers to go bankrupt and then become dependent on that same aid? There are 2nd and 3rd order effects on innocent partnerships everywhere.
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- ljouhet 1y ago[flagged]
- globalnode 1y agoHow can a glorified NLP app be equated with being the backbone of economic development and a path to AGI ? So many people have been fooled by marketing. Honestly though, we have a much bigger issue with climate change in the medium to long run and it doesn't really matter what our governments and companies do with stats and spyware. If anyone thinks we can stop and deal with the climate when it becomes a bigger problem, just take a look at our track record so far. (only mentioning climate change to offer perspective)
- n_ary 1y ago> How can a glorified NLP app be equated with being the backbone of economic development and a path to AGI ? So many people have been fooled by marketing. Regulators are still figuring out this “AI” and oAI must move into as many market to sustain their valuation and future before regulations start to close many open doors. Also, when entire EU comission makes “AI” a core focus, all other governments are having a FOMO, which is the most fertile opportunity to entrench oneself quickly before everyone realises the smoke and mirror of “productivity gain” song means just making another layer of middleman mandatory for everything(see Apple pushing towards modifying Safari to be AI first). Also what climate change? Everyone was being shamed into indignation recently for their carbon footprints, only to wake up to massive power infra expansion and Nvidia/Amazon/Msft announcing that everything is on the table including burning more fossil fuel to power the energy demand(utilities are usually often govt controlled and hence a social cost overall).
- nyc_data_geek1 1y agoThe climate change that, if left unchecked, will almost certainly lead to the death of much of humanity, and the majority of life on Earth. Hundreds of millions of climate refugees knocking at your door.
- soared 1y ago> It’s clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development Source?
- nprateem 1y agoThey mean for themselves.
- dimaulupov 1y agoEvery interested country gets 5% discount on tariffs?
- drivingmenuts 1y agoNot sorry, I don't trust anything with Trump's name attached to it. I have to live here, but I don't have to like it, or trust him or anyone attached to him.
- Ericson2314 1y agoThis is for the Gulf states.
- stogot 1y agoThis is so tone deaf that it’s embarrassing. And to liken OpenAI as democratic is beyond ignorant, it’s deceitful
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- 3np 1y agoReminds me of Meta mobile data partnerships in Myanmar. Same arguments and similar playbook. That did not go well for people in Myanmar. https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
- martythemaniak 1y ago> We’ve heard from many countries asking for help in building out similar AI infrastructure—that they want their own Stargates and similar projects. Who is this for exactly? The thing about reneging on your agreements and treaties and threatening and demonizing everyone around you is that they learn not to trust you. US-led AI sounds terrible, it would never pass muster in Canada. Neither in the EU, China, India, Brazil... Like, you Cannot entrust your governments functioning on the US anymore, you can just get cut off at any point for no reason. So who's this for?
- vitorgrs 1y agoBrazil it's actually building a project to give tax breaks and change/simplify a few regulation for datacenter projects. Import tariffs will also be 0 for them... Finance Minister it's in the California trying to bring investments from the big techs... He met with Jensen Huang already. I wouldn't doubt if Brazil might be interested. TikTok is also interested in building a datacenter in Ceará, Brazil, as part of this project.
- goshx 1y ago> We want to help these countries, and in the process, spread democratic AI, which means the development, use and deployment of AI that protects and incorporates long-standing democratic principles (…) Likewise, we believe that partnering closely with the US government is the best way to advance democratic AI. The current US government? To protect “long-standing democratic principles”? Give me a break.
- paradite 1y agoI'm getting so much sci-fi vibes from this post. I've read so many sci-fi stories where big tech corporations have similar control over people as countries. Now we are actually heading there. I'm both excited and a bit worried about the future.
- nicbou 1y agoHeading there? Facebook has been a kingmaker for a decade. Musk runs DOGE. Most big companies can bully smaller administrations when they feel the need.
- mupuff1234 1y agoEvery 4 years people elect a new system prompt?
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- notrealyme123 1y agoThe wording gives me the heebie-jeebies. Every bit if private/secret data will be 100% used to train their global cash cow models.
- blitzar 1y agoThe wording feels like it was written by Ai.
- dev1ycan 1y agoDude I'm reading 1984 at the moment and it's really crazy, George Orwell could only dream...
- gloosx 1y agoIs it really clear to everyone that this kind of infrastructure will be the backbone of future economic growth and national development? Helping people do more? Scaling our ability to create and produce? Sadly, none of these things ever made us happier as humans.
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- akomtu 1y agoThat's how AI is going to fuse countries together. People will be gradually outsourcing various functions of their governments to a few AIs, until one day they will realise that nearly everything on the planet is managed by AI, using the same principles. National govs will become a fiction at this point. Problem is, this process won't stop there. AI will be given the right to monitor and manage human behavior, in the name of safety, of course, and those who disagree to hand their will to AI like that will be declared enemies of the people and will be reeducated with very creative methods. It will be a perfect inhuman civilization with the AI as its king.
- nico 1y agoTo a certain degree, this is already the case Our attention is dictated or at least influenced in big part, by AI, not LLMs, but the algorithms behind Google, Meta/Insta, TikTok, et al And our attention is what ends up controlling our actions (this is kinda the core of meditation and Buddhist-style practices)
- botanical 1y agoAs if Western-backed companies are some type of beacon of light. If news of your company has Trump and Oracle linked to it, you aren't the good guys. This is just the American way of "consolidating power", by "spreading democracy." Also, it's not like OpenAI responses aren't censored when it comes to "sensitive" topics.