6 ms·

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people

by thimabi 7mo ago

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats. I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very competitive AI industry.

piskov 7mo ago
> I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has And where would they emigrate? Russia? China? UAE? :-)
- BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
  The UK and Europe welcome the US Footgun Operation. Plenty of opportunities for those top researchers and engineers over here. The EU (which is not the same as Europe), is also looking a bit sharper on AI regulation at the moment (for now… not perfect but sharper etc etc).
  - thimabi 7mo ago
    I agree. And even if those workers stay in the U.S., there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll do their best to favor the government’s interests — quite the opposite, if anything. At the end of the day it’s a matter of incentives, and good knowledge work can’t simply be forced out of people that are unwilling to cooperate.
  - piskov 7mo ago
    Do UK and Europe have hardware manufacturing for those researches to work with once US imposes GPU export restrictions to them at the first whiff of competition/threat?
    - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
      Yes. And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC. This is part of why there’s funding from the EU to develop Sovereign AI capabilities, currently focused on designing our own hardware. We’re nothing like as far behind as you might expect in terms of tech, just in terms of scale. Also, while US export restrictions might make things awkward for a short while, it wouldn’t stop European innovation. The chips still flow, our own hardware companies would scale faster due to demand increase, and there’s the adage about adversity being the parent of all innovation (or however it goes).
      - piskov 7mo ago
        > And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC See what happened to Russian Baikal production on TSMC
        BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
        You mean because of the international sanctions that needed Taiwanese, British and Dutch support to be effective? Or because of the revoked processor design licenses from the British company Arm (which is still UK headquartered… despite being NASDAQ listed and largely owned by Japanese firm SoftBank)? Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Or could stop us manufacturing RISC-V-based chips (Swiss-headquartered technology)? The US is weak in digital-logic silicon fabrication and it knows it. That’s why it’s been so panicked about Intel and been trying to get TSMC to build fabs on US soil. They’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into trying to claw back ownership and control of it, but it’s not like Europe or China or others are standing still on it either.
        piskov 7mo ago
        > Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Being built as in not operating yet? 12 nm gpu is what? Nvidia 1080/2060 level? Those top researchers mentioned would love to train on that. Also how many gpus would be made annually? Also what about CPU? You gonna use risc-v? With what toolchain? Chinese could pull it off in a few years, yeah. EU? Nah. Started thinking about sovereignty too late compared to China
  - SauntSolaire 7mo ago
    To make 1/10th the salary they're making now?
    - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
      You seem to have a very ill-informed view of UK/EU salaries in this particular sector; And also: yeah, people take salary hits to go do things they believe in (this is like, the entire premise of the underpaid American startup founder model) - it should come as no surprise that people are willing to forgo pay for reasons other than just building their own business / making themselves personally wealthy.
      - SauntSolaire 7mo ago
        We're talking about the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector, you may be underestimating US salaries for the people that's referring to. And no, working remotely for US companies doesn't count.
    - readthenotes1 7mo ago
      That much?
      - ambicapter 7mo ago
        No, of course not.
        SauntSolaire 7mo ago
        For the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector? I wouldn't be so sure.
    - lemontheme 7mo ago
      First, the difference isn’t that big in the economically stronger EU countries. Second, you need to factor in cost of living, which by most accounts is lower. Third, meaningful labor laws and a shared appreciation for work-life balance. And finally, to continue the sweeping generalizations, while we celebrate business acumen, we don’t fetishize wealth. People who flaunt money get made fun of, as do sigma grindset hustle bros. I’ll take a pay cut any day for the ethos of the EU.
  - dmix 7mo ago
    The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Not to mention UK is arguably further down the mass surveillance pipeline than the US. They’ve always had more aggressive domestic intelligence surveillance laws which was made clear during the Snowden years, they’ve had flock style cameras forever, and they have an anti encryption law pitched seemingly yearly. I’d imagine most top engineers would rather try to push back on the US executive branch overreach than move. At least for the time being.
    - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
      For sure we’re not currently attracting the talent. There’s more to that than just money, but money is significant factor. When it comes to compensation, AI is too broad a category to have a meaningful debate. Hardware or software or mathematics or what kind of person? Etc. I’m not gonna dispute the UK being further down some parts of the road. Not sure what you’d count as top engineers, but I know enough that have been asking about and moving to the UK/EU that it’s been a noticeable reversal of the historic trends. Also, a major slowdown of these kinds of people in the UK/EU wanting to move to the US.
    - reaperducer 7mo ago
      The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Which is why people are talking about this -- it's about ideology now. You may personally be motivated solely by money. Not everybody is you.
      - dmix 7mo ago
        I’m not an AI engineer but it’s not hard to imagine why some bright talent would want to work at the most exciting AI companies in the US while also making 3-10x what they’d make in Europe. Ideology is easy to throw around for internet comments but working on the cutting edge stuff next to the brightest minds in the space will always be a major personal draw. Just look at the Manhattan project, I doubt the primary draw for all of those academics was getting to work on a bomb. It was the science, huge funding, and interpersonal company.
- zymhan 7mo ago
  Well that's quite a leap to make. Plenty of room in between those options.
- csomar 7mo ago
  > ... UAE? :-) At least you are not paying taxes for the things you don't agree on. It's indeed a strange time we are living in.
timr 7mo ago
I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to the government. Both are half right. You can argue that the government refusing to do any business with company A is overreach, I suppose, but I imagine that the next logical escalation in this rhetorical slapfight is going to be the government saying "we cannot guarantee that any particular use will not include some version of X, and therefore we have to prevent working with this supplier"...which I sort of see? Just to take the metaphor to absurdity, imagine that a maker of canned tomatoes decided to declare that their product cannot be used to "support a war on terror". Regardless of your feelings on wars on terror and/or canned tomatoes, the government would be entirely rational to avoid using that supplier.
- thereitgoes456 7mo ago
  The President is crashing out on X because a company didn’t do what they wanted. “Forcing” is not a binary. Do you seriously believe that the government’s behavior here is acceptable and has no chilling effect on future companies?
- galleywest200 7mo ago
  The government declaring a domestic company as a supply chain threat is a tad more than “refusing to do business” don’t you think?
  - timr 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - adrr 7mo ago
      It stop any one with government contracts from using anthropic. Not just bidding on government contracts.
gmerc 7mo ago
Sweet summer child, the purpose of government is a monopoly on forcing things down people's throats. When people lose control of their government that monopoly doesn't go away, especially when the Don running the show has blackmail on every influential person in society taken from a decades long intelligence operation by offing it's leader. A vast number of people in positions of responsibility right know have their life at the mercy of the redaction pen and are ultimately going to do whatever it takes to keep that pen out of the "wrong hands"
queenkjuul 7mo ago
Individuals at that company could have simply refused to do business with DoD in the first place, but that sweet murder money is too good to pass up

by thimabi 7mo ago

piskov 7mo ago

> I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has And where would they emigrate? Russia? China? UAE? :-)

BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
The UK and Europe welcome the US Footgun Operation. Plenty of opportunities for those top researchers and engineers over here. The EU (which is not the same as Europe), is also looking a bit sharper on AI regulation at the moment (for now… not perfect but sharper etc etc).
- thimabi 7mo ago
  I agree. And even if those workers stay in the U.S., there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll do their best to favor the government’s interests — quite the opposite, if anything. At the end of the day it’s a matter of incentives, and good knowledge work can’t simply be forced out of people that are unwilling to cooperate.
- piskov 7mo ago
  Do UK and Europe have hardware manufacturing for those researches to work with once US imposes GPU export restrictions to them at the first whiff of competition/threat?
  - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
    Yes. And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC. This is part of why there’s funding from the EU to develop Sovereign AI capabilities, currently focused on designing our own hardware. We’re nothing like as far behind as you might expect in terms of tech, just in terms of scale. Also, while US export restrictions might make things awkward for a short while, it wouldn’t stop European innovation. The chips still flow, our own hardware companies would scale faster due to demand increase, and there’s the adage about adversity being the parent of all innovation (or however it goes).
    - piskov 7mo ago
      > And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC See what happened to Russian Baikal production on TSMC
      - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
        You mean because of the international sanctions that needed Taiwanese, British and Dutch support to be effective? Or because of the revoked processor design licenses from the British company Arm (which is still UK headquartered… despite being NASDAQ listed and largely owned by Japanese firm SoftBank)? Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Or could stop us manufacturing RISC-V-based chips (Swiss-headquartered technology)? The US is weak in digital-logic silicon fabrication and it knows it. That’s why it’s been so panicked about Intel and been trying to get TSMC to build fabs on US soil. They’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into trying to claw back ownership and control of it, but it’s not like Europe or China or others are standing still on it either.
        piskov 7mo ago
        > Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Being built as in not operating yet? 12 nm gpu is what? Nvidia 1080/2060 level? Those top researchers mentioned would love to train on that. Also how many gpus would be made annually? Also what about CPU? You gonna use risc-v? With what toolchain? Chinese could pull it off in a few years, yeah. EU? Nah. Started thinking about sovereignty too late compared to China
- SauntSolaire 7mo ago
  To make 1/10th the salary they're making now?
  - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
    You seem to have a very ill-informed view of UK/EU salaries in this particular sector; And also: yeah, people take salary hits to go do things they believe in (this is like, the entire premise of the underpaid American startup founder model) - it should come as no surprise that people are willing to forgo pay for reasons other than just building their own business / making themselves personally wealthy.
    - SauntSolaire 7mo ago
      We're talking about the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector, you may be underestimating US salaries for the people that's referring to. And no, working remotely for US companies doesn't count.
  - readthenotes1 7mo ago
    That much?
    - ambicapter 7mo ago
      No, of course not.
      - SauntSolaire 7mo ago
        For the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector? I wouldn't be so sure.
  - lemontheme 7mo ago
    First, the difference isn’t that big in the economically stronger EU countries. Second, you need to factor in cost of living, which by most accounts is lower. Third, meaningful labor laws and a shared appreciation for work-life balance. And finally, to continue the sweeping generalizations, while we celebrate business acumen, we don’t fetishize wealth. People who flaunt money get made fun of, as do sigma grindset hustle bros. I’ll take a pay cut any day for the ethos of the EU.
- dmix 7mo ago
  The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Not to mention UK is arguably further down the mass surveillance pipeline than the US. They’ve always had more aggressive domestic intelligence surveillance laws which was made clear during the Snowden years, they’ve had flock style cameras forever, and they have an anti encryption law pitched seemingly yearly. I’d imagine most top engineers would rather try to push back on the US executive branch overreach than move. At least for the time being.
  - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
    For sure we’re not currently attracting the talent. There’s more to that than just money, but money is significant factor. When it comes to compensation, AI is too broad a category to have a meaningful debate. Hardware or software or mathematics or what kind of person? Etc. I’m not gonna dispute the UK being further down some parts of the road. Not sure what you’d count as top engineers, but I know enough that have been asking about and moving to the UK/EU that it’s been a noticeable reversal of the historic trends. Also, a major slowdown of these kinds of people in the UK/EU wanting to move to the US.
  - reaperducer 7mo ago
    The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Which is why people are talking about this -- it's about ideology now. You may personally be motivated solely by money. Not everybody is you.
    - dmix 7mo ago
      I’m not an AI engineer but it’s not hard to imagine why some bright talent would want to work at the most exciting AI companies in the US while also making 3-10x what they’d make in Europe. Ideology is easy to throw around for internet comments but working on the cutting edge stuff next to the brightest minds in the space will always be a major personal draw. Just look at the Manhattan project, I doubt the primary draw for all of those academics was getting to work on a bomb. It was the science, huge funding, and interpersonal company.
zymhan 7mo ago
Well that's quite a leap to make. Plenty of room in between those options.
csomar 7mo ago
> ... UAE? :-) At least you are not paying taxes for the things you don't agree on. It's indeed a strange time we are living in.

timr 7mo ago

I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to the government. Both are half right. You can argue that the government refusing to do any business with company A is overreach, I suppose, but I imagine that the next logical escalation in this rhetorical slapfight is going to be the government saying "we cannot guarantee that any particular use will not include some version of X, and therefore we have to prevent working with this supplier"...which I sort of see? Just to take the metaphor to absurdity, imagine that a maker of canned tomatoes decided to declare that their product cannot be used to "support a war on terror". Regardless of your feelings on wars on terror and/or canned tomatoes, the government would be entirely rational to avoid using that supplier.

thereitgoes456 7mo ago
The President is crashing out on X because a company didn’t do what they wanted. “Forcing” is not a binary. Do you seriously believe that the government’s behavior here is acceptable and has no chilling effect on future companies?
galleywest200 7mo ago
The government declaring a domestic company as a supply chain threat is a tad more than “refusing to do business” don’t you think?
- timr 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - adrr 7mo ago
    It stop any one with government contracts from using anthropic. Not just bidding on government contracts.

gmerc 7mo ago

Sweet summer child, the purpose of government is a monopoly on forcing things down people's throats. When people lose control of their government that monopoly doesn't go away, especially when the Don running the show has blackmail on every influential person in society taken from a decades long intelligence operation by offing it's leader. A vast number of people in positions of responsibility right know have their life at the mercy of the redaction pen and are ultimately going to do whatever it takes to keep that pen out of the "wrong hands"

queenkjuul 7mo ago

Individuals at that company could have simply refused to do business with DoD in the first place, but that sweet murder money is too good to pass up