Amodei's conception of regulation is difficult to distinguish economically from some form of regulatory capture, protectionism, or rent-seeking in the face of limited infrastructure and resources and intense regional competition.
It doesn't make sense given that the US does not have a monopoly on AI development and regulation would put US companies at a disadvantage, especially given the US's hegemony is debatably potentially over. The idea of US using regulatory sway requires that the US can influence the entire ecosystem, from access to capital to semiconductor development to allied export controls. That world is probably over.
The US has lost its grip on all of these threads and China has picked up the slack. This is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle with one hand tied behind your back.
> Dario acknowledges that AI is structurally centralizing but attributes this mainly to chips and scaling laws.
Is that a correct idea to acknowledge in 2026, with the proliferation of open-weight models hitting an inflection point, and Nvidia and AMD both putting significant effort into developing local AI products at price points already accessible to prosumers and SMBs?
Is this "acknowledgement" actually a rear-guard attempt to protect centralization on the software side of the AI market via the exact sort of regulatory capture that he's hand-waving away, so he can use it to artificially prop up his inferencing-as-a-service business model?
“ I have repeatedly argued for strong antitrust enforcement to keep industries competitive, especially Big Tech.”
Has David Sacks actually called for stronger antitrust enforcement? Not that he has total control of this administration but it’s gone pretty hard in the other direction in my observation.
> “I have repeatedly argued for strong antitrust enforcement to keep industries competitive, especially Big Tech.”
> Has David Sacks actually called for stronger antitrust enforcement? Not that he has total control of this administration but it’s gone pretty hard in the other direction in my observation.
Not commentating on this particular case (because I don't know the details), but it's amazing how many public statements from tech people are just absolute shameless lies. The public/PR statement is just whatever it is they think you want to hear, but behind the scenes they just do whatever they want. There's no connection between the two, except by coincidence.
David sacks and the rest of the all in venture bro crew collectively lost their shit when lina khan actually enforced our anti trust laws for the first time in decades. That is a huge reason why silicon valley elites switched to maga
> As Zuckerberg notes, concentrating power in the hands of an enlightened few has rarely produced the promised results; the practitioners turn out to be less enlightened in practice than in self-conception.
You know is peculiar how discourse evolves on the Internet.
So many folks have been posting Twitter links from this exchange in separate threads here on HN and arguing about them.
I’m sure these threads are being argued about in other forums and social media platforms.
Sometimes you get the feeling that there is one social media extravaganza going on and all the different forums and social media platforms are just conduits to access the extravanangza.
See how TikTokers make their videos and upload identical copies to their TikTok accounts and then also YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc etc
Each platform the same just a different lens into the same cacophony
People discussing stuff in their communities rather then all of us at the same place is nothing peculiar. It used to be done in person, now it is done online.
> See how TikTokers make their videos and upload identical copies to their TikTok accounts and then also YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc etc
That is not "extravaganza". That is how competition looks like. It is kind of forgotten since "competition is for loosers" per our wanna be future feudal lords.
The labs are betting on there being more applications for stronger models and that many existing applications will continue to need stronger models to keep up with competitors.
Yep. I keep thinking "this is good enough for almost anything" and then I remember how my Pentium 75 seemed like it was good enough for almost anything I could think of at the time. And it was!
The US controls most of the capital in the industry, including most of the compute used for training. And also, NVIDIA, arguably the most important actor in the industry
The US military can come and separate me from my MacBook and Qwen if it likes. I dare it. Sadly however, I suspect they’re busy with other matters at the moment.
This is a well-articulated post but we could address this in a couple of sentences: regulation for protecting people comes from grassroots campaigns by the people. Regulation for capturing the industry comes from industry lobbying. Is Dario the people or the industry? Is there a single person in this world so stupidly naive as to believe that Dario is just looking out for the people when he says that open-weight models must be banned and that only Anthropic should control frontier LLMs?
> 2. Dario claims his critics live in a “bubble” where all regulation equals regulatory capture. He calls this an overly simplified view and notes that “Many people outside this bubble think of regulation as something that constrains corporate power and benefits ordinary people.” This argument is a straw man. Of course treating all regulation as capture would be overly simplified – but almost no one holds that view.
If my time on HN is any indication many, many people hold that view. Any call for any kind of new regulation is attempted to be shot down with references to "regulatory capture." It seems like it's one of the standard libertarian arguments.
> Stigler challenged the traditional view that government regulation arises from a benevolent state protecting the public from market failures.
Government regulation arises also from a desire to just limit or prohibit certain unwanted situations the market would otherwise support. For instance: gun regulations limiting high-capacity magazines have nothing to do with "protecting the public from market failures," and are almost certainly hated by the gun industry.
We're probably on the right track if the regulation of the AI industry is something both Amodei and Sacks hate.
Sacks is of course in the space that benefits from deregulation, like cannabis and illegal Adderall startups as well as Solana helping a Trump coin scam on Trump's first day.
I'm waiting for him whining for an AI bailout when the bubble bursts, just like he did for Silicon Valley Bank.
Oh, and maybe deregulate your comment section in the all-in podcast. It is completely censored now with only gushing AI-written one-liner posts.
I agree with Sacks.
Amodei's conception of regulation is difficult to distinguish economically from some form of regulatory capture, protectionism, or rent-seeking in the face of limited infrastructure and resources and intense regional competition.
It doesn't make sense given that the US does not have a monopoly on AI development and regulation would put US companies at a disadvantage, especially given the US's hegemony is debatably potentially over. The idea of US using regulatory sway requires that the US can influence the entire ecosystem, from access to capital to semiconductor development to allied export controls. That world is probably over.
The US has lost its grip on all of these threads and China has picked up the slack. This is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle with one hand tied behind your back.
> Dario acknowledges that AI is structurally centralizing but attributes this mainly to chips and scaling laws.
Is that a correct idea to acknowledge in 2026, with the proliferation of open-weight models hitting an inflection point, and Nvidia and AMD both putting significant effort into developing local AI products at price points already accessible to prosumers and SMBs?
Is this "acknowledgement" actually a rear-guard attempt to protect centralization on the software side of the AI market via the exact sort of regulatory capture that he's hand-waving away, so he can use it to artificially prop up his inferencing-as-a-service business model?
“ I have repeatedly argued for strong antitrust enforcement to keep industries competitive, especially Big Tech.”
Has David Sacks actually called for stronger antitrust enforcement? Not that he has total control of this administration but it’s gone pretty hard in the other direction in my observation.
> “I have repeatedly argued for strong antitrust enforcement to keep industries competitive, especially Big Tech.”
> Has David Sacks actually called for stronger antitrust enforcement? Not that he has total control of this administration but it’s gone pretty hard in the other direction in my observation.
Not commentating on this particular case (because I don't know the details), but it's amazing how many public statements from tech people are just absolute shameless lies. The public/PR statement is just whatever it is they think you want to hear, but behind the scenes they just do whatever they want. There's no connection between the two, except by coincidence.
The only thing David Sacks ever calls for is more money and power for David Sacks.
He called for a lot of questionable stuff about Ukraine. (https://x.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1643320904930275328 etc)
https://xcancel.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1643320904930275328
He would not have been attached the current administration if he had even hinted at so. Quite the opposite.
David sacks and the rest of the all in venture bro crew collectively lost their shit when lina khan actually enforced our anti trust laws for the first time in decades. That is a huge reason why silicon valley elites switched to maga
> As Zuckerberg notes, concentrating power in the hands of an enlightened few has rarely produced the promised results; the practitioners turn out to be less enlightened in practice than in self-conception.
Pot, meet kettle.
David Sacks, the man who has multiple conflicting investments while serving in public office?
Seriously how is twitter still a thing.
You know is peculiar how discourse evolves on the Internet.
So many folks have been posting Twitter links from this exchange in separate threads here on HN and arguing about them.
I’m sure these threads are being argued about in other forums and social media platforms.
Sometimes you get the feeling that there is one social media extravaganza going on and all the different forums and social media platforms are just conduits to access the extravanangza.
See how TikTokers make their videos and upload identical copies to their TikTok accounts and then also YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc etc
Each platform the same just a different lens into the same cacophony
People discussing stuff in their communities rather then all of us at the same place is nothing peculiar. It used to be done in person, now it is done online.
> See how TikTokers make their videos and upload identical copies to their TikTok accounts and then also YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc etc
That is not "extravaganza". That is how competition looks like. It is kind of forgotten since "competition is for loosers" per our wanna be future feudal lords.
People just want to see their flavour of free speech. Plus there is a strong need to virtue-signal.
The open models are now good enough. The rest of the world needn’t concern itself with the petty dramas of the colonies any longer
Good enough for what?
The labs are betting on there being more applications for stronger models and that many existing applications will continue to need stronger models to keep up with competitors.
Yep. I keep thinking "this is good enough for almost anything" and then I remember how my Pentium 75 seemed like it was good enough for almost anything I could think of at the time. And it was!
The US controls most of the capital in the industry, including most of the compute used for training. And also, NVIDIA, arguably the most important actor in the industry
The US military can come and separate me from my MacBook and Qwen if it likes. I dare it. Sadly however, I suspect they’re busy with other matters at the moment.
PSA: The government can remotely brick your MacBook.
Air-gap one of my Macs.. thanks for the advice! ;)
[dead]
This is a well-articulated post but we could address this in a couple of sentences: regulation for protecting people comes from grassroots campaigns by the people. Regulation for capturing the industry comes from industry lobbying. Is Dario the people or the industry? Is there a single person in this world so stupidly naive as to believe that Dario is just looking out for the people when he says that open-weight models must be banned and that only Anthropic should control frontier LLMs?
Related discussion on post in question:
On A.I. regulation and messaging
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49325789
https://xcancel.com/DavidSacks/status/2089227290769080656
> 2. Dario claims his critics live in a “bubble” where all regulation equals regulatory capture. He calls this an overly simplified view and notes that “Many people outside this bubble think of regulation as something that constrains corporate power and benefits ordinary people.” This argument is a straw man. Of course treating all regulation as capture would be overly simplified – but almost no one holds that view.
If my time on HN is any indication many, many people hold that view. Any call for any kind of new regulation is attempted to be shot down with references to "regulatory capture." It seems like it's one of the standard libertarian arguments.
> Stigler challenged the traditional view that government regulation arises from a benevolent state protecting the public from market failures.
Government regulation arises also from a desire to just limit or prohibit certain unwanted situations the market would otherwise support. For instance: gun regulations limiting high-capacity magazines have nothing to do with "protecting the public from market failures," and are almost certainly hated by the gun industry.
We're probably on the right track if the regulation of the AI industry is something both Amodei and Sacks hate.
Sacks is of course in the space that benefits from deregulation, like cannabis and illegal Adderall startups as well as Solana helping a Trump coin scam on Trump's first day.
I'm waiting for him whining for an AI bailout when the bubble bursts, just like he did for Silicon Valley Bank.
Oh, and maybe deregulate your comment section in the all-in podcast. It is completely censored now with only gushing AI-written one-liner posts.