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Comment by EmbarrassedHelp | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately even if this blocking is only temporary, a precedent has been set.

The government will likely be more willing to target open source models in the future that they deem to be too powerful. A lot of open source AI infrastructure exists within reach of the US government.

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I keep imagining what we would be hearing on loop if a Dem administration had done this.

"Typical Dem overreach and regulation! The nanny state!"

"Frontier models are expensive to create! Why should US companies continue to invest in them, if the government won't let them make sales! This is how China wins!"

The Internet will find a way to route around censorship. I’ve already started downloading notable open weight models onto my NAS and will distribute via eg BitTorrents if needed. I’m not in the US, and you can’t ban VPNs overnight.

I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't some kind of marketing stunt Amazon paid the white house to do on Anthropic's behalf to make the model appear more desirable and it'll be back online in a week or two. It's artificial scarcity tactics 101 to boost value that you see in crypto every day.

A huge win for china. No one is going to forget this. Every single developer will remember this weekend and be pissed off. I'm sure it's a huge wakeup call for any dev that was asleep and not bothering with open source models.

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