alt Hacker NewsYeah, seems pretty likely. Anthropic will make the case that their models should be evaluated with the safety layer in front, because that is the only way the model is available whereas open weight models need to pass the same test just on the weights. The economic implications will be rather large, but in terms of security it seems inconsequential. The most compelling argument would be that by limiting the use of open-weight models in the US that it will reduce cases of accidents like the recent attack on Hugging Face. More crucially though, the US government can do little to enforce their testing requirements. The nature of open-weight models makes it virtually impossible to clear the same bar for security as models served via an API. Open-weight model makers couldn't comply if they wanted to. The US government can restrict access with IP blocks and limit inference capacity with export controls, but these measures are not effective in deterring malicious actors.
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> The US government can restrict access with IP blocks and limit inference capacity with export controls, but these measures are not effective in deterring malicious actors.
But aren't we talking about import controls, and the import of information itself? This has serious First Amendment ramifications.
Makes sense why OpenAIs little "hacking" stunt was published last week
Regulatory capture and lobbies will keep you safe and you'll like it! The sudden surge is Washington dollars makes great sense with this context. Only way to keep the kids safe is attested compute all the way down. Don't you care for children???
It is actually an interesting conundrum.
Is a non-well-aligned frontier level AI a problem? I think it is likely that it is, or at least has a high likelihood to be in the future. Two scenarios for this: Misused by some bad guys. Or the terminator scenario. Both not great.
So what do we do about it?
1) We can accept it, and hope that the good guys AI can defend.
2) We can try to limit the access to it (AI proliferation?)
3) We stop the development of it
4) We can accept the risk and do nothing.
None are particular good options. Really reminds me of nuclear proliferation, on so many levels. For that, we kinda do all three:
1) Nuclear triad / iron dome / early warning systems
2) Nuclear anti-proliferation treaties.
3) Dead Physicists
Ok, so assuming all of this is true, open weights are a problem. Don't get me wrong, I love open science, open source etc. It's great to have access to capable open models. But: Even if release open weights are well aligned and have a safety layer built in, it is likely not to difficult to abliterate that part of it.
If this is really where it is going, then even closed weight model providers will see a lot more requirements for protection of the weights.
> but these measures are not effective in deterring malicious actors
Wanting to use open weight models in light of commercially imposed export controls doesn't make for "malicious actors"
> The most compelling argument would be that by limiting the use of open-weight models in the US that it will reduce cases of accidents like the recent attack on Hugging Face.
an attack done by a closed-weight model (GPT-6) and defended against by an open-weight model (GLM-5.2) precisely because OAI positioned themselves as gatekeepers for cyber capabilities.
if anything, open-weight models shift the battle towards defenders because they can actually run them.
Just sell us the gate and we can run any open-source model behind it.
Didn't OpenAI attack Huggingface. Looks like a publicity stunt.
> malicious actors.
It is malicious and anti-capitalist legislation. A grotesque caricature of protectionism for the oligarchs.
> Anthropic will make the case that their models should be evaluated with the safety layer in front, because that is the only way the model is available whereas open weight models need to pass the same test just on the weights.
Feels a bit like: "We're not against open-source or community projects, oh heavens no! We juuuust believe all participants must have their full legal identity vetted in advance before they're allowed to contribute anything. We already do this with our employees, so it's not too much to ask in the name of safety."