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> It looks like a liability, if the US's assault on Iran is any basis to go off-of. All the "frontier" AI in the world isn't helping the US win a brushfire war,

by CMay 2mo ago

> It looks like a liability, if the US's assault on Iran is any basis to go off-of. All the "frontier" AI in the world isn't helping the US win a brushfire war, it's a bit embarrassing I'd say. To put it into perspective, we didn't start the war over the Strait of Hormuz and it's correct to say that the US does not depend on the Strait nearly as much as other countries do. We aren't still there because _we_ depend on it so much as we're there to defend the usage of it by allies and defend the applicable international laws. The US could largely walk away and be fine, but there are multiple benefits to staying around. One benefit is that it, combined with the strategic attacks against Russian oil infrastructure, puts indirect pressure and uncertainty on China's oil supply. China has been drawing from its huge oil reserves which it was building up not only to weather short term disruptions, but to sanction proof itself. That increases the threat against Taiwan, obviously. So encouraging them to consume their reserves is of strategic interest to us. A higher price of oil also benefits us and also investment in Venezuela simultaneously, since the US is the largest oil producer in the world. > That's not a safety feature. API providers do that to reduce their risk exposure and limit the liability they could face if someone attempted to abuse their service. Without the legal liability incentive, service providers would gladly remove those limits. As you've noted, Open Weight models don't have this feature at all, because the user is subsuming the liability; False. Blatantly false. These companies pre-emptively implemented security and safety features for all kinds of scenarios, even subtle ones they aren't likely to be legally liable for. In addition, these open models that you say they don't care about as proof it's not about safety, they invest money in safety training the open weight models they release. Chinese AI companies aren't oblivious to this either and also do some safety training, but open weight models cannot be made completely safe and that's largely the argument. The more capable a model is, the more you rely on extra layers which offline AI usage typically runs without. Moral aspects are regularly involved in hiring quality talent. If your company is obviously provably excessively immoral, disregarding human life or any sort of compassionate decency, you lose a lot of the best talent. Companies regularly attempt to align themselves with morals not only because it is the right thing (though that is often the primary reason), but the secondary hiring benefits further reinforce that. Companies are made of people and people do not suddenly become unfeeling as a result of being associated with a company. Real life does not map to Marxist caricature so easily. > You're just describing a typical surveillance architecture. The United States does the exact same thing for data retention purposes It's actually not typical and China is the only country that does this. It is law. You can even host models in Singapore or the EU, but not in China. It's illegal. > As opposed to the US' AI policy, which is centrally planned and ideologically engineered through layers of national policy, and implimented by a coordinated collaboration among government, private tech companies and the military. So, let me present a critical difference between the US and China. China does not have a military. The Chinese Communist Party has a military. Imagine if in the US, the republican and democrat parties had their own militaries and none of them existed to defend _you_, they existed to defend the party under the guise of defending the country, which they extend to suggest that overall defends you while excluding the fact that they will gladly kill you if you don't believe in their political party. This political party then says, no matter what you believe politically, your company is required to implement our political ideology and place our political agents inside your company to maximize vision implementation and civil-military fusion. The US partners with private industry and there exists select strategic operation with the military, but it's nothing like the CCP does. Perhaps they wouldn't care much about what you chat about with your AI on their platforms, because you seem to already be very sympathetic to the CCP. That is not a very useful perspective from which to convince other people that it is good and safe to use.

csomar 2mo ago
> The US could largely walk away and be fine The US can't walk away, otherwise, Trump would have done so. That part of the world is part of the US system and "walking away" is basically giving it to anybody who is willing to exert control over it. They'll certainly be opposed to the US system (sanctions will be reverse imposed at that time). And then what's next? Walk out of the pacific?
- CMay 2mo ago
  Some of your logic isn't exactly wrong, though just because someone can walk away doesn't mean they have to or want to. I simply mean that for the US alone from an isolationist stance, a lot of the primary and secondary goals are already achieved. If we walked away it would have already largely been worth it. Yes, Trump repeats something akin to this, but just because he said something doesn't automatically make it incorrect. We didn't attack them _because_ of the Strait of Hormuz, not exclusively. We knew they could harass the strait, since we've been thinking about this for decades. The other person's argument was some kind of attempt at shaming AI and the US, with the perspective that with all the AI in the world we couldn't win a war with Iran. It's just politics, where a country losing as badly as Iran has to redefine what winning means to save face. Russia has to do the same with Ukraine. Inside their countries they largely have information control, but they still have to apply some strategy for external propaganda. And honestly, to some extent when an opponent feels that they have some kind of leverage, that can be useful as a sort of offramp in negotiations. Clearly there is an actual shift occurring in terms of water control, because Russia lost so many ships from drones alone. Most ships are not equipped to deal with these new threats the way the US carrier groups are and when you're talking about container ships or oil tankers it can be a big deal. Iran relies on shipping too, though. Unfortunately, some countries don't mind hurting themselves. We see this with China and Russia a lot, where they are willing to sacrifice people, quality of life, trade, basics, relationships and more out of some kind of stubbornness or to immunize their country from a ruleset. Like if you think you can use this as leverage, we'll show you! Iran is being self-destructive in a similar way. One comparison is what we see China doing harassing the Philippines in their own territorial waters and establishing fake islands to claim control over an expanded area of water which upsets many of their other neighbors.

by CMay 2mo ago

csomar 2mo ago

> The US could largely walk away and be fine The US can't walk away, otherwise, Trump would have done so. That part of the world is part of the US system and "walking away" is basically giving it to anybody who is willing to exert control over it. They'll certainly be opposed to the US system (sanctions will be reverse imposed at that time). And then what's next? Walk out of the pacific?

CMay 2mo ago
Some of your logic isn't exactly wrong, though just because someone can walk away doesn't mean they have to or want to. I simply mean that for the US alone from an isolationist stance, a lot of the primary and secondary goals are already achieved. If we walked away it would have already largely been worth it. Yes, Trump repeats something akin to this, but just because he said something doesn't automatically make it incorrect. We didn't attack them _because_ of the Strait of Hormuz, not exclusively. We knew they could harass the strait, since we've been thinking about this for decades. The other person's argument was some kind of attempt at shaming AI and the US, with the perspective that with all the AI in the world we couldn't win a war with Iran. It's just politics, where a country losing as badly as Iran has to redefine what winning means to save face. Russia has to do the same with Ukraine. Inside their countries they largely have information control, but they still have to apply some strategy for external propaganda. And honestly, to some extent when an opponent feels that they have some kind of leverage, that can be useful as a sort of offramp in negotiations. Clearly there is an actual shift occurring in terms of water control, because Russia lost so many ships from drones alone. Most ships are not equipped to deal with these new threats the way the US carrier groups are and when you're talking about container ships or oil tankers it can be a big deal. Iran relies on shipping too, though. Unfortunately, some countries don't mind hurting themselves. We see this with China and Russia a lot, where they are willing to sacrifice people, quality of life, trade, basics, relationships and more out of some kind of stubbornness or to immunize their country from a ruleset. Like if you think you can use this as leverage, we'll show you! Iran is being self-destructive in a similar way. One comparison is what we see China doing harassing the Philippines in their own territorial waters and establishing fake islands to claim control over an expanded area of water which upsets many of their other neighbors.