Both OpenAI and Anthropic are locked into an arms race funded on shaky hype-based debt. They have to constantly push the envelope at the frontier or risk seeing their funding pulled, probably causing a global financial crash in the process which would kill them.
Clearly they've realised that people are increasingly fine with non-frontier models, including Chinese ones. They can't consolidate and just deliver a product to profit because they're constantly being caught up by the Chinese at prices they will never be able to match.
I suspect their main goal for the last year and a half or so was to pull a GM - let the share of the AI economy grow, then have the government bail them out when the debt becomes unsustainable. Clearly Trump would have never let the bubble explode before the midterms, right?
Well it's now clear that the US government has way too much debt right now for 2008-style bailouts, and the market doesnt have the money lying around to buy their overinflated stocks at an IPO. The only avenue realistically left to them is to cry wolf so much to get governments to ban all non-approved models, stop new developments and give them breathing room to consolidate to get their current crop of models profitable at higher prices.
Unfortunately for them I suspect Mr President has way too much dementia and way to little business acumen left to realise the sham going on, so I think they'll keep doing charades for a while until they'll suddenly stop
This line of conspiracy theory is sooo uninteresting.
“It’s all hype”
“Government bailouts”
“Labs are fundamentally unprofitable”
And the same people who say all this will again claim OpenAI should be held responsible and arrested for when agents hack other systems.
It’s a fundamentally unthoughtout analysis. If you believe that OpenAI should be more careful and prevent future hugging face incidents, surely their decision to delay models is rational? Does it really require tinfoil analysis?
What would you say when their models cause new incidents like hugging face one?
I think that the economic side of things of how those businesses are run, and the fact AI has potential to be an incredibly powerful tool, are orthogonal concepts. I don't see how the fact an LLM can be used, autonomously or directly, to perform hacking or penetrate computer systems, has to do with the fact that there's clearly an interest from those labs in being strictly regulated while dictating the rules they should respect in the first place. I suspect such regulations will be surprisingly difficult to implement for anyone but the existing US-based labs, and of course it will be super surprising when it turns out that since the federal government stopped everybody from making new frontier models they suddenly got super profitable.
> What would you say when their models cause new incidents like hugging face on
What would you say if Caterpillar builds a bulldozer with a faulty breaking system that kills people? I'd hold them responsible because they failed to oversee the development of their product like every responsible company should do. If they're so much in a hurry to ship that they can't even test what they're building properly, they must be held responsible for that - and I say this as one of their customers and users, not as a random Joe that dislikes LLMs. LLMs are useful but it's undeniable that these labs are clearly desperately trying to keep the lights on no matter the consequences
> If they're so much in a hurry to ship that they can't even test what they're building properly, they must be held responsible for that - and I say this as one of their customers and users, not as a random Joe that dislikes LLMs
You are replying to a post where they are doing exactly that. But you analysed it as if they are secretly in a cash crunch and trying to keep the lights on.
You and I both agree that delaying release is the rational response.
What's the necessity for the conspiracy theory, when the simple explanation is that they are delaying the release for safety reasons?
Models like this are in effect dual use - just like computers and computer programmes in general. Ethercap is a very useful debugging tool - and can also be used for exploits.
We don't ban Ethercap, we police the use - just like with all dual use stuff.
If OpenAI is directing the software ( how ever badly ) that's hacking - OpenAI is responsible, it's not the fault of the software.
Note if somebody else is using OpenAI models to generate code to hack - that's not OpenAI's responsibility it's the person using and running the generated code.
> Note if somebody else is using OpenAI models to generate code to hack - that's not OpenAI's responsibility it's the person using and running the generated code.
No, I don't think a company can get away from releasing a powerful tool that can cause disruption if used poorly. This is just not how society works.
The reality is that labs will get blamed for things people do using it. And they have - look at any news about US Army using Claude etc
Things can be regulated in sensible countries where the things are pretty much single use - like guns.
However, nobody bans cars because somebody has driven one into a crowd, or hammers because of a particularly grusome murder.
These models, just like computers, are universal tools by their nature - they don't fall into the gun category - they fall into the hammer and car category.
There is plenty of commercial hacking tools. And those seem to survive just fine.
Issue really isn't that these models can be used for something.
Issue is that they have been used for something with such disregard of any even slightly reasonable oversight that everyone in executive team, board and every shareholder should be in jail just now...
> The other point is if their new model isn't safe, doesn't that mean all their previous models aren't safe as well?
This understanding comes from the fact that people think either models are fundamentally unsafe or they are completely safe. The reality is that there are different levels of alignment possible. So it is really a tradeoff between effort/time taken to align the model and speed of release.
Bigger models require better alignment. So I would assume that the newer models will undergo more stringent alignment checks. For instance, I wouldn't put that much effort on GPT 4.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are locked into an arms race funded on shaky hype-based debt. They have to constantly push the envelope at the frontier or risk seeing their funding pulled, probably causing a global financial crash in the process which would kill them.
Clearly they've realised that people are increasingly fine with non-frontier models, including Chinese ones. They can't consolidate and just deliver a product to profit because they're constantly being caught up by the Chinese at prices they will never be able to match.
I suspect their main goal for the last year and a half or so was to pull a GM - let the share of the AI economy grow, then have the government bail them out when the debt becomes unsustainable. Clearly Trump would have never let the bubble explode before the midterms, right?
Well it's now clear that the US government has way too much debt right now for 2008-style bailouts, and the market doesnt have the money lying around to buy their overinflated stocks at an IPO. The only avenue realistically left to them is to cry wolf so much to get governments to ban all non-approved models, stop new developments and give them breathing room to consolidate to get their current crop of models profitable at higher prices.
Unfortunately for them I suspect Mr President has way too much dementia and way to little business acumen left to realise the sham going on, so I think they'll keep doing charades for a while until they'll suddenly stop
This line of conspiracy theory is sooo uninteresting.
“It’s all hype”
“Government bailouts”
“Labs are fundamentally unprofitable”
And the same people who say all this will again claim OpenAI should be held responsible and arrested for when agents hack other systems.
It’s a fundamentally unthoughtout analysis. If you believe that OpenAI should be more careful and prevent future hugging face incidents, surely their decision to delay models is rational? Does it really require tinfoil analysis?
What would you say when their models cause new incidents like hugging face one?
I think that the economic side of things of how those businesses are run, and the fact AI has potential to be an incredibly powerful tool, are orthogonal concepts. I don't see how the fact an LLM can be used, autonomously or directly, to perform hacking or penetrate computer systems, has to do with the fact that there's clearly an interest from those labs in being strictly regulated while dictating the rules they should respect in the first place. I suspect such regulations will be surprisingly difficult to implement for anyone but the existing US-based labs, and of course it will be super surprising when it turns out that since the federal government stopped everybody from making new frontier models they suddenly got super profitable.
> What would you say when their models cause new incidents like hugging face on
What would you say if Caterpillar builds a bulldozer with a faulty breaking system that kills people? I'd hold them responsible because they failed to oversee the development of their product like every responsible company should do. If they're so much in a hurry to ship that they can't even test what they're building properly, they must be held responsible for that - and I say this as one of their customers and users, not as a random Joe that dislikes LLMs. LLMs are useful but it's undeniable that these labs are clearly desperately trying to keep the lights on no matter the consequences
> If they're so much in a hurry to ship that they can't even test what they're building properly, they must be held responsible for that - and I say this as one of their customers and users, not as a random Joe that dislikes LLMs
You are replying to a post where they are doing exactly that. But you analysed it as if they are secretly in a cash crunch and trying to keep the lights on.
You and I both agree that delaying release is the rational response.
What's the necessity for the conspiracy theory, when the simple explanation is that they are delaying the release for safety reasons?
Models like this are in effect dual use - just like computers and computer programmes in general. Ethercap is a very useful debugging tool - and can also be used for exploits.
We don't ban Ethercap, we police the use - just like with all dual use stuff.
If OpenAI is directing the software ( how ever badly ) that's hacking - OpenAI is responsible, it's not the fault of the software.
Note if somebody else is using OpenAI models to generate code to hack - that's not OpenAI's responsibility it's the person using and running the generated code.
> Note if somebody else is using OpenAI models to generate code to hack - that's not OpenAI's responsibility it's the person using and running the generated code.
No, I don't think a company can get away from releasing a powerful tool that can cause disruption if used poorly. This is just not how society works.
The reality is that labs will get blamed for things people do using it. And they have - look at any news about US Army using Claude etc
Things can be regulated in sensible countries where the things are pretty much single use - like guns.
However, nobody bans cars because somebody has driven one into a crowd, or hammers because of a particularly grusome murder.
These models, just like computers, are universal tools by their nature - they don't fall into the gun category - they fall into the hammer and car category.
There is plenty of commercial hacking tools. And those seem to survive just fine.
Issue really isn't that these models can be used for something.
Issue is that they have been used for something with such disregard of any even slightly reasonable oversight that everyone in executive team, board and every shareholder should be in jail just now...
what have they done that they require jail?
The other point is if their new model isn't safe, doesn't that mean all their previous models aren't safe as well?
ie if they were truly being 'responsible' they would pull the lot....
That's what makes people think it's not genuine.
> The other point is if their new model isn't safe, doesn't that mean all their previous models aren't safe as well?
This understanding comes from the fact that people think either models are fundamentally unsafe or they are completely safe. The reality is that there are different levels of alignment possible. So it is really a tradeoff between effort/time taken to align the model and speed of release.
From their own Astra press release.
>Compared to GPT‑5.6 Sol, which without production safeguards went beyond the authorized target 48% of the time, GPT‑6 Astra did this in 0% of cases.
Is Sol still available?
I assume the production safeguards ( filtering prompts and responses ) is fairly transportable between models.
Bigger models require better alignment. So I would assume that the newer models will undergo more stringent alignment checks. For instance, I wouldn't put that much effort on GPT 4.
Why would you expect something else?
So you are telling me Sol can't be used for hacking?
Please...
Also think about it - they are 'announcing' a delay.
They didn't need to do that - they can just release when ready - nobody is expecting them to release a new model on a certain date.
The whole thing is confected.
Don't pull the same con twice...
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49886416
Oh come on, we're tired of this schtick. They have literally done exactly this before.
Yawn. Anthropic already pulled this trick.
We have serious proof that these models are capable of sophisticated attacks.
So what’s the trick in this honestly? OpenAI shouldn’t care about alignment and just release it? I’m genuinely asking.