alt Hacker NewsIn the first paragraph,
> Anyone who has read my past writing should know that I don’t regard such bans as a useful measure,
Later (on banning chip sales to china)
> we should crack down on the rampant smuggling and workarounds used to obtain access to such chips.
If you truly believe that bans don't work, the same applies to hardware too.
Furthermore, Dario says later "To address these concerns, I do support the following three measures...": 1. ban chip sales to China 2. crack down on distillation 3. all capable models should go through mandatory safety testing
Just so happens that all these moves commercially benefit Anthropic. If Dario really wanted to make a point, it would land a lot better had Anthropic released a single open-weights model
Replies
> If you truly believe that bans don't work, the same applies to hardware too.
No, software and hardware are different. You can very plausibly prevent smuggling of physical objects, and you very obviously cannot prevent smuggling/diffusion of open source bits-on-disk.
Banning software/data from being put on the internet vs banning GPU hardware is fundamentally different though, isn't it?
Exactly, the letter will make much more sense if they are releasing open weight models and China is distilling their models and keep them in secrets for evil purpose
TL;DR: We like money, and Anthropic should stay in a position to make loads of it despite any competition.
Bans on Chinese open weight models being used in the US and bans on AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment being exported to China are two extremely different things, and it's not inconsistent in any way to oppose one and endorse another.