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Comment by p-e-w | Hacker News Reader

The corporations that provide AI hold all the power because people (and businesses!) want to use their products.

Let's say the French government decides that OpenAI must change something about their business practices if they want to continue operating in France. OpenAI says "nope", and blocks access to French users.

Suddenly French companies aren't able to use GPT-X anymore – while their competitors in other countries can. How long do you think it will take before a storm of corporate outrage forces the government to relent?

Any individual government (except, perhaps, the combined US and EU governments) is powerless against today's technology megacorporations, because they can take much more away from a country than that country can take from them. If push ever comes to shove, it will become obvious where the true power lies. So far, the corporations have barely even tried to throw their weight around.

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> Let's say the French government decides that OpenAI must change something about their business practices if they want to continue operating in France. OpenAI says "nope", and blocks access to French users.

That's one possible outcome. (ETA: You DO have a point here, but...)

The other is, you know, something like every website explicitly telling me, via an annoying popup, how much they value my privacy. Also, me not being able to access half of US news sites to this day.

The last time EU raised their finger, every technology company (FAANG included) shat their pants.

And that was simpler times, times when a cookie stored in your temp folder without websites shouting they're about to do so, was somehow the biggest concern of an EU netizen. It almost seems ridiculous, compared to the damage AI could do (the extent of which which nobody really knows).

> Suddenly French companies aren't able to use GPT-X anymore – while their competitors in other countries can. How long do you think it will take before a storm of corporate outrage forces the government to relent?

Bof, les alternatives à ChatGPT ne sont pas si mal.

And even if the open source alternatives were far behind rather than just a bit — all this talk about corporate moats and their absence may be blind to the strengths of OpenAI's offerings, but even so it can be replaced if it must — the storms of protest in France are normally by the people, not by the corporations.

> Bof, les alternatives à ChatGPT ne sont pas si mal.

But that's not true, and people know it.

> the storms of protest in France are normally by the people, not by the corporations

Correct. CEOs of big corporations just call the ministers directly and tell them to get in line, or else.

> But that's not true, and people know it.

Based on what I've seen? They're good enough to be interesting, more so than GPT-2.

They don't need to be amazing from day one to be a foundation for replacing the status-quo.

> CEOs of big corporations just call the ministers directly and tell them to get in line, or else.

I roll to disbelieve (that it works, not that CEOs attempt it); that sounds like conspiracy theory to me.

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