When AI insiders warn that their products could wipe out humanity, they mean that their own work is maximally important and demands unprecedented investment. This extinction fantasy distracts from the real damage AI is already doing.
We passed the period of exponential LLM growth as of mid-2025 and now the gains are just incremental, which has given open models a chance to rapidly close the gap. Now the narrative is that the “dangerous” open LLMs need to get kneecapped while the “safer” closed LLMs continue with a healthy lead.
Certainly possible that either a Trump executive order or congress will ban Chinese models in the United States. Legal at my company has already banned Chinese models to avoid the risk of the company relying on something that may become illegal. If Anthropic and OpenAI are successful in their marketing campign to paint Chinese models as dangerous and a threat to national security, they will have effectively kneecapped Chinese models in the U.S., at least.
We passed the period of exponential LLM growth as of mid-2025 and now the gains are just incremental, which has given open models a chance to rapidly close the gap. Now the narrative is that the “dangerous” open LLMs need to get kneecapped while the “safer” closed LLMs continue with a healthy lead.
There’s no feasible way to do that when the open models are in an entirely different jurisdiction, fortunately enough
Certainly possible that either a Trump executive order or congress will ban Chinese models in the United States. Legal at my company has already banned Chinese models to avoid the risk of the company relying on something that may become illegal. If Anthropic and OpenAI are successful in their marketing campign to paint Chinese models as dangerous and a threat to national security, they will have effectively kneecapped Chinese models in the U.S., at least.
Sure, I more meant on the global scale. The US will always find a way to kneecap itself.