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Sanders: Government should break up OpenAI
- techblueberry 1y agoI don’t know who this Sanders guy is, but he sounds like one sharp cookie. Maybe he should run for president!
- bdangubic 1y agoI think he is a senator from one of them small states north of new york city
- monerozcash 1y agoCanada? I thought they have a King there now.
- gaindustries 1y ago[dead]
- bigyabai 1y agoThey should have broken up Google and Apple too. These businesses are too deeply-entwined with the federal government to properly (let alone fairly) prosecuted.
- wslh 1y agoHas Sanders worked on that?
- bigyabai 1y agoConstantly: https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-sanders-wyden-blumenthal-merkley-question-youtube-google-on-potential-quid-pro-quo-settlement-with-trump-administration https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...
- lazide 1y agoWhy would the government break up an entity that is incredibly useful to them as-is?
- bigyabai 1y agoIdeally, social unrest would force antitrust action before their monopoly efforts were usable for censorship or surveillance.
- pelorat 1y agoBreak up into what? They have one product.
- nickff 1y agoAnd the one product is made up of two components (training and inference) which are each extremely competitive, undifferentiated, and losing money.
- gaindustries 1y ago[dead]
- kronicum2025 1y agoBreak it off from Microsoft definitely. Same with Github I think.
- pinnochio 1y agoNo, they don't? Sora is a separate product, and they're working on a social media platform. And that thing with Jony Ive. Other things, too, that I'm sure I'm forgetting. At any rate, this looks like they made a headline out of a passing comment. I wouldn't read too much into it. Edit: lol at the AI bros downvoting facts.
- mattlutze 1y agoBell also "just" provided telephone service, but had a nation-wide practical monopoly, and so was broken up into different regional operators. The US has since gotten bad at dealing with companies like this. A company like Google or Amazon could/should be broken up into a few parts and would likely result in those parts together being worth more than when it was just the one company, and more competition in each industry. Too early and the break-up can kill innovation. Too late and the company will have been a rent-seeking operation for so long that it chokes out dynamism. It might be too early for OpenAI, but we shouldn't wait until they own all of the next Internet in the way Facebook, Google and Amazon ended up.
- tptacek 1y ago
- meowface 1y agoUnpopular opinion here but I don't see any benefit in breaking up goliaths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, OpenAI. OpenAI (optically) came out of nowhere and took over everything in a few years. A future company also could. We should punish violation of regulations and the law when it occurs. We don't need to be interfering just because we feel a company is too good at being a company. If OpenAI violated anything with the recent non-profit stuff, sue or charge them.
- IshKebab 1y agoI agree. Consumer-friendly regulation is much more valuable. Also it remains to be seen how long OpenAI will even survive. They are losing a ton of money and don't really have much of a moat.
- smt88 1y agoThe other companies you mentioned are making more money from AI than OpenAI is. And Microsoft owns a huge chunk of OpenAI too.
- bix6 1y agoYou don’t see a single benefit? You think monopoly power is worthwhile?
- pedalpete 1y agoDon't know why you are getting downvoted, it is a legitimate question. Yes, monopoly power is worthwhile. It's abusing monopoly power which is illegal. I don't see OpenAI abusing a monopoly. If Sanders is looking to the future and saying "they may do that one day", well, that's like saying someone might commit murder one day, so we should put them in jail now. It doesn't work that way. Just to be clear, I'm actually a fan of Bernie Sanders. Though, I'm not American, so it doesn't really matter.
- meowface 1y agoAs long as it's not a monopoly that is effectively impossible to beat: yes, I do. I broadly consider myself left-wing but I think the libertarians are kind of right on that point.
- spicyusername 1y agoUgh, this is why liberals are struggling. Nothing but weak policy proposals and unlikable personalities. What even is this as a platform? Yes, wealth inequality is bad, but what exactly does this do to solve it...?
- HanClinto 1y agoHarrison Bergeron, maybe?
- rs186 1y agoSanders has always like this. In fact his policy is quite different from the "mainstream" Domocrats and always has been. "Liberals are struggling" "this as a platform" if you try to conclude what the "platform" is from Sanders' opinions you'll be quite far from the truth.
- aegypti 1y agoBernie Sanders is not a democrat or liberal, he is a democratic socialist who specifically runs as an independent. That normal liberals are so deeply associated with his ilk by the national electorate to the point Harris was considered more radical than Trump is a whole can of worms in itself.
- TimorousBestie 1y agoCalling Sanders a liberal has never been accurate, identifying him with Democrats is a sign of political color-blindness.
- rvz 1y agoReality: We need to reach AGI first (which means IPO at $1T and then sell our shares on the public market) before we can have discussions about a break up.
- Der_Einzige 1y agoAnd just like that, I’m no longer a Bernie bro. Tech ludditism is the death drive externalized. Andrew Yang is all we have left for a pro tech left wing - and #Math isn’t going to win elections.
- lyu07282 1y agoAndrew Yang isn't left-wing wtf. People think Obama is left-wing too, people are so politically confused
- Der_Einzige 1y agoGo look at his campaign website circa 2020 issues page and tell me again he’s not left wing.
- whatpeoplewant 1y ago[flagged]
- ford 1y agoIMO the only concentration OpenAI has is brand. Anthropic & Gemini both have roughly equivalent models. This could change quickly since success compounds, but for now I am actually somewhat surprised at how competitive LLM labs are with each other.
- nradov 1y agoThat might make sense to mandate years from now but the industry is still evolving way too rapidly for standards based interoperability to be practical. Let's maybe take a look at that in 10 years.
- ford 1y agoThe argument sounds like he believes AI (+ robotics) will take jobs, and breaking up OpenAI could slow it down Historically the most productive countries are the most prosperous - I think there is a big landscape of local maxima/minima in how healthy & happy a country/economy is, but shunning new technology has never been the path to Quality of Life. The only future where the US maintains its relative success involves American leadership in AI and robotics, with humans supporting them
- BrenBarn 1y agoThat doesn't mean that technology has to be shoveled out to the public by the truckload. A country can have a productive pharmaceutical industry without being full of drug addicts. Also, there can be technological advances without having them concentrated in a small number of companies.
- idiotsecant 1y agoThe most productive countries are the most prosperous for the owner class. Ask a random citizen from West Virginia how much they've benefited from the market share of Nvidia increasing
- DarkNova6 1y ago> The only future where the US maintains its relative success involves American leadership in AI and robotics, with humans supporting them I never understood this take. It strikes me more as "faith in our lord and savior AI" without actual evidence to support this.
- CamperBob2 1y agoAlmost every advantage we have over every other country, we owe to technology. (Well, that and a couple of oceans, I suppose.) Historically, Americans have been better at taking every possible advantage of automation, computation, and tech in general than anyone else. Do you expect that to change, and if so, how?
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- NedF 1y ago[dead]
- sothatsit 1y agoBreak ups are for monopolies, not for startups. This makes no sense. If Bernie just wants to slow down automation then breaking up OpenAI is not the way to do it.
- conception 1y ago“Startup”.
- tptacek 1y agoWhat's your point? What do you think Sanders thinks we should break OpenAI into? What N new companies do you think he thinks we should create?
- DarkNova6 1y agoIt is quite preposterous to claim that "OpenAI" is a "startup". Neither is it "Open" while we are at it.
- tptacek 1y agoI don't think the word "startup" is especially apt either, but that imprecision doesn't change the validity of the argument.
- bix6 1y agoWell let’s see the Amodei siblings left and we got Anthropic. Ilya left and we got SSI. Mira left and we got Thinking Machines. So it seems we can break it up and actually get even more innovation!
- tptacek 1y agoYou're not "breaking it up" in this instance; you're just killing it. You can mechanically generate new competition by killing any company --- new entrants will rush in to fill the void.
- animitronix 1y agoBreaking up a company that loses billions every quarter doesn't make any sense, but I'm not surprised Sanders wouldn't understand
- biophysboy 1y agoMy best case scenario for AI is that it becomes a dirt cheap commodity. If the hyperscalers pour trillions into it, fail to build a moat around it, and end up giving newcomers the tools to replace them, that would be absolutely fantastic.
- paulvnickerson 1y agoBernie Sanders is a professional useless person. He was once kicked out of a commune for failing to pull his own weight.
- tptacek 1y agoI think this is more a branding statement than an actual policy proposal. Breaking up OpenAI doesn't make any sense, not merely because it has intense competition, but also because it doesn't have meaningful internal business units whose collusion cause public policy problems. Really, what he's saying is "OpenAI should make and spend less money". The honest policy proposal there is to tax the bejeezus out of it. But Sanders has, for reasons I don't really understand, gone all in on a modern antitrust branding around "oligarchy", so that all his statements about excessive corporate power have to be about restructuring companies, rather than exercising the full portfolio of powers the government has to influence the economy. You saw something similar a few days ago from Elizabeth Warren, who reacted to the UE1 outage by saying we should break up AWS. Not Amazon: AWS. Like, RDS and S3 should be different companies. That's not real; whether or not she understood what she was saying, she didn't mean it. What she means is she doesn't like huge corporations (fair enough). It's annoying to have to read between the lines on these people, but I guess that's always been politics.
- zr98f321 1y agoOne of the saddest things about elderly American politicians is their inability to understand the nature of the globalized economy which necessitates competition. "We should cripple our strongest AI Company" translates into "We will be subservient to foreign companies". Just look at how the collapsed British Empire is trying to enforce its nonsensical censorship laws on American companies with no success. Good luck getting DeepSeek to do what you want. See iRobot for an example of this American self-flagellation by the elderly in action.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- zug_zug 1y agoI'm not sure if I understand how a break-up would work, but the sentiment that government be ready to nationalize or otherwise prevent a single company from potentially disrupting the whole economy seems obvious. Perhaps it would look like this -- if you replace a worker with AI then you must still pay minimum wage straight into a public benefit tax.
- mhb 1y agoSanders thinks that nationwide rent control is the solution to housing affordability. Why would anyone pay attention to what he thinks?
- bix6 1y agoHe thinks that is one part of the solution so you’re obviously not arguing in good faith.
- mhb 1y agoSanders thinks that nationwide rent control is part of the solution to housing affordability. Why would anyone pay attention to what he thinks?
- HaZeust 1y agoI've never heard him say that he believes rent control will solve housing affordability. Can you share where you've seen him say that? I've seen him say it will prevent landlord exploitation, but by definition - almost any pragmatic appliance of rent control will admit a goal of cheaper month-to-month rent. At present, a lot of rental properties have a monthly payment that are equal to - or sometimes more - than mortgage payments for similar* offerings in the same area. It then follows logically that if rent control leads to cheaper rent, and a lot of rent costs are presently equal to or more than mortgage payments, then it makes renting affordability easier - and housing affordability is still innately more expensive. Rent control is a rent solution, and I guess it makes RENTAL of housing more affordable - which is good. But it's not a solution for the costs of buying houses.
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoAI is a natural fit to be provided through libraries.
- Protostome 1y agoNot him again ...
- tim333 1y ago>“I want to see us rebuilding manufacturing in America, but it ain’t going to do any worker any good if that manufacturing work is done by robots,” he said. It's kind of like trying to preserve agricultural jobs by banning farm machinery. It's not the way to prosperity. People who would have dug potatoes become yoga instructors or web consultants or whatever.