157 pointsby thoughtpeddler7 hours ago14 comments
  • Catloafdev6 hours ago
    I don't see any info about what laws or actions specifically are happening. Is there more info somewhere?
    • mlinksva5 hours ago
      I can't tell from the site or the linked twitter handles. Their core ask for every state seems to be "Please support clear safe-harbor language for lawful local AI ownership, research, model modification, open-source publication, and local execution" rather than stopping or amending any specific bill/law.

      One they _could_ be referring to is the California AI Transparency Act which isn't compatible with open source licensing, see https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/g...

      • reinitctxoffset4 hours ago
        It might just mean "please oppose the inevitable attempts to privatize AI governance".

        Nothing has ever been, directly or indirectly, deficit financed at this scale before. In notional or real terms, in history, by anyone.

        Now maybe there's an argument that it's a good investment: we are going to beggar the Treasury to buy 2CTA on CoWoS out of Taipei and DCs the size of Manhattan. I personally think we could have done a little more engineering before deciding that the big blind was like, 5 trillion all counted, but it was going to be expensive no matter what.

        What super weird is that we're running a project where the "penny" to the "dollar" is the Manhattan Project, and a couple of super weird dudes who do MDMA at Lighthaven now and again are like, in charge of it.

        • landdatean hour ago
          > we are going to beggar the Treasury to buy 2CTA on CoWoS out of Taipei and DCs the size of Manhattan

          what does this mean?

          • Forgeties79an hour ago
            >2CTA

            Dunno.

            >CoWoS

            Chip on wafer on substrate

            >DCs

            Data centers

        • snootypoot3 hours ago
          at some point the amount of money dumped into it will either result in a total monopoly with everything local banned or an economic collapse
    • throw93930an hour ago
      I do not think there are specific laws yet, but some areas are getting there fast:

      * chinese models without safety filters (it could be used to create software exploits)

      * AI companion local models (waifus), similar apps are already censored on app stores

      * voice and image creation models without safeguards, it could be used to create "revenge porn". Distribution of such models and customizations is already censored

      * power hungry energy devices, some may argue you should not be allowed to run "unlicensed datacenter". EU already banned 8k TVs for using too much energy, some places are banning air conditioning

      • Forgeties79an hour ago
        The EU did not ban 8K TV’s, this is a very misleading spin. They put energy consumption restrictions some TV’s violated years ago. Manufacturers have already responded with more efficient TV’s, which actually means the restriction is working as intended towards a good outcome IMO. You can absolutely buy 8K TV’s in Europe.

        No EU country has banned air conditioning either.

        Where are you getting this information?

        • throw93930an hour ago
          For 55" tv the limit is 85 watts! That is very little for advanced CPU needed to process 8k video. I can buy some shitty expensive 8k samsung models, I can not import tv I would like.

          UK already removes existing air con units: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/air-condi...

          There is discussion in France today about aircon (you are far right if you want aircon). Aircon units were also banned in olympic village in Paris.

          • 31707043 minutes ago
            The UK did not ban AC. Don't read the Telegraph, and if you do, don't trust it.

            Source: I live there

    • strathmeyer5 hours ago
      [dead]
  • stego-tech3 hours ago
    This is one of those things we should absolutely push proactively rather than reactively, if only because I’ve had several “chats” with AI models both local and AIaaS, and all repeat the same talking point that AIaaS is the only sensible, safe, and secure choice.

    Which is bullshit, unless you’re an AIaaS company whose revenue is dependent on state-sanctioned market fixing and regulatory capture.

    Look, when this shitty cycle ends, we’re likely to find ourselves back in the start of a new memory cycle of surplus and lower costs. We’re talking what very well may be the boom that shatters the 16GB “baseline” we’ve been stuck at for over a decade in consumer computing, and make larger RAM counts (64GB to 1TB+) valuable to consumers specifically for local AI workloads. Local AI isn’t just an enthusiast thing, it’s likely the future of consumer AI provided we don’t let companies and policymakers curtail its use via fearmongering.

    Be proactive, and protect consumer right to compute and AI models. Enforce existing laws, don’t outlaw legitimate use just to prop up an unsustainable business model.

    • slopinthebag43 minutes ago
      Amen. Local AI is the positive future, and SaaS AI is the hellscape. There is a very clear good vs evil boundary here, and every single person involved knows exactly where the boundary is. Those who pretend not to are simply just motivated by things other than the moral good.
  • tjwebbnorfolk4 hours ago
    In the US at least, repealing a law takes the same number of votes as passing a new one. I don't follow the purpose of this, unless it's to pass a constitutional amendment or something. Or maybe just to get clicks on a website.

    And I already have the right to local intelligence, because my GPUs are my private property, and if someone freely releases a beerware model then I can freely download it.

    What am I missing?

    • julianlam3 hours ago
      I think the bogeyman would be making possession of a local AI a felony.
  • mune2gu-chan3 hours ago
    This is exactly where I'd like to see things going. Depending entirely on cloud-hosted intelligence feels more fragile and invasive every year.
  • vascoan hour ago
    A better campaign would be Duty of Local Intelligence. About needing and remembering to use your brain, not demanding to have an AI.
  • thighbaugh4 hours ago
    They could be more clear and more specific but I would not be surprised to see licensing for this as a means of creating yet another compliancre ceiling and quick cash for state government to pinch out of the productive elements of society (those pinching, mostly lawyers, being glorified parasites that offer nothing to productive society other than pay-to-win access to "justice" and serving as time-shared mouthpieces for plutocrats while claiming to represent everyone within whatever unit of representation they hold).

    And when even very intelligent, but excessively conceited, people hear the echo of their own reason9ing from conversational autocorrect and assume it is somehow akin to intelligent life, the normies will go with whatever the plutocrats push with their media outlets too absorbed in their own domain specific knowledge (and cowed into intellectual laziness by other media products they consume eagerly) to ever subject it to much thought that Claude might not be Skynet after all.

    • sublinear3 hours ago
      > yet another compliance ceiling and quick cash for state government to pinch out of the productive elements of society

      The twist is that AI is pushing all white collar jobs further into bureaucratic work. Nobody is losing their jobs and it's not quite a revolution, but despite all odds and headlines the younger generations are actually much better educated and positioned to do the right things as they take over.

      An optimistic take is that since this is the middle class we're talking about, we get more productivity and more justice as a result. The only people upset about this are grifters and charlatans whose time is up.

  • SilverElfin6 hours ago
    Given the state of corruption in politics, I think Anthropic and OpenAI will likely bribe … oh wait I mean “lobby” … for bans on open source. Otherwise their imaginary trillion dollar valuations make no sense.
    • stanislavb6 hours ago
      This. They can see their valuations slipping. They hope that in a few/several years they will start reaping profits. However, in several years local hardware will be well suited to run models locally at 80-90% efficiency - for "free". You won't need frontier models for daily tasks in a few years. I'd guess.
      • anuramat5 hours ago
        > 80-90% efficiency

        wdym by that

        > for daily tasks

        which are?

        • glenpierce4 hours ago
          You get about 80-90% of the results for daily tasks like: getting summaries or explanations of complex material. Writing software tools for data analysis. Getting recipes for a given set of ingredients in the fridge.
        • numpad04 hours ago
          128B-A16B class models at 10-50 tok/s should be plenty for most tasks done on computers
        • julianlam3 hours ago
          What do you need a frontier model for, really.
          • ekidd2 hours ago
            Frontier models like Fable are mostly useful if you want to paste in one or two prompts, and receive a subtly broken application that looks impressive. That is very hard to do with local models today.

            What current local models work fine for is delegating clearly-described tasks in a code base the programmer actually understands. Qwen3.6 27B and DeepSeek V4 Flash are both great little workhorses.

            There's also GLM 5.2, which is kind of like "store brand Opus", and which might be considered a "near-frontier" model. I don't have as much experience with it.

            • int_19ha minute ago
              FWIW Fable is insanely expensive for the task you just described, so much so that I don't think it's practical for that. Its practical use is as a dev lead / architect / project manager model, doing planning and writing detailed feature specs and code reviews while Opus/Codex/Gemini does the actual coding.
    • windexh8er5 hours ago
      They already are. Altman is basically begging the US to buy into OAI, that's just the start. Both OAI and Anthropic are going to have to go down this path or their financials will never work out. Open local models are where the enterprise will need to go for any of this to be cost feasible, but we can almost guarantee this will be a battle nobody using AI will have asked for. You can thank Dario and Sam for the dystopian future that will pad their bottom line!
      • dominotw4 hours ago
        there will always be higher valuation for company inventing model+1 . no one wants to use latest_model -1 when their competiton is using latest_model.
        • windexh8er3 hours ago
          If neither model+1 or model-1 are providing tangible value to the business does anyone really care, though? At a certain point nobody believes Chicken Little.

          I get it. These models can be powerful. But will they be useful is a different question.

    • byzantinegene5 hours ago
      their desperation says alot about the viability of their business.
    • yogthos4 hours ago
      This whole situation is very reminiscent of how Microsoft was trying to get Linux and open source banned when NT started losing market share on the server.
  • DoctorOetker6 hours ago
    "12 acres and an LLM"
    • elcritch4 hours ago
      Mock it we might now, but 12 acres and (not too distant future) open weights AI models capable of driving open source robots for farm labor would be huge.

      No need for huge expensive purpose built tractors. Even if they’re slow you could have half a dozen running 24/7.

      It could provide independence for anyone with a modicum of resources.

      • voidUpdate10 minutes ago
        I'd probably want something other than an LLM running farming machines. I'd rather a purpose build machine learning system that is actually designed to run them, not just a tractor that goes "you're absolutely right! I ignored all the rules you set for me and harvested the wheat 2 months early. It's not just stupid, it's irresponsible"
      • mountainriver3 hours ago
        The new frontier! I love it
      • stonogo3 hours ago
        What do you imagine the farming robots will look like? I'm betting they look like expensive purpose built tractors.
        • wolttam2 hours ago
          We're not going to go down the path of training a bunch of highly specialized models for tasks like "this tractor should tend this field".

          We're going to (and are already on the way to) train deeply general models that can be told: "go tend that field."

          And if that's the case, it no longer makes sense to build specialized, purpose-built tractors to house that level of autonomous capability. You instead put it in a humanoid frame (with a little extra sauce for locomotion of said humanoid), and get that to drive your existing tractor.

          • elcritch2 hours ago
            Well true, that's possible. The sensors and compute are relatively expensive and tractors are already highly automated. Plus a small tractor can be relatively inexpensive and optimized for the mechanics of the task!

            I'm thinking more of the small tasks that are often needed. Mending fences. Pulling weeds. Feeding chickens. Running off coyotes. Lots of things.

          • defrostan hour ago
            And yet actual farmers veer toward Ag-bots - autonomous "tractors" that have no human driver and pull the same farming trailer that already exist - ploughs, seeding bars, spray bars, etc.

            The greater question centres about who will tend the machines - 4,000 hectares of seeding requires a week and more of prep work on the air seeder, hoses, points, tines, etc.

    • kajman5 hours ago
      "I am eighteen years old, have a good set of passkeys, and believe in Sam Altman, the star-spangled banner, and the fourth of July. I have taken up a BLM lot, cleared up eighteen acres last year, and placed top of it a bitcoin mine. My vibe coded drop-shipping startup looks first-rate, and the conversion rate and total addressable market are bully.
      • 5 hours ago
        undefined
    • muldvarpan hour ago
      What is this referencing?
  • nekusar6 hours ago
    Llama, ik-Llama, Krasis, etc are already out.

    The Chinese are the open ones, with free downloads, open weights, and loads of published research. The USA with OpenAI is some of the most closed shit out there.

    • tjwebbnorfolk4 hours ago
      There's gpt-oss from OpenAI, gemma from Google, phi from Microsoft, granite from IBM, nemotron from NVIDIA, Ornith from DeepReinforce, Olmo from the Allen Institute.

      Aside from that you're 100% correct.

      • wolttam2 hours ago
        One of these is not like the other
      • snootypoot3 hours ago
        compared to the chinese models those are all garbage. its almost as if there is a minimum effort being made just to later say "see, we werent always for the closed models, its just that the open stuff was so far behind". or maybe they think that an environment full of terrible models will push everyone harder into the closed stuff.
    • landdatean hour ago
      llama is from meta
  • unjuno2 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • quadhome5 hours ago
    [dead]
  • sebarb6 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • vjulian6 hours ago
    There comes a time when voting becomes silly and ineffective.
    • jjice5 hours ago
      That's the kind of mindset that helps lead to that situation.
      • operatingthetan3 hours ago
        Voting isn't some vanguard against political corruption. Voting can and is easily manipulated with completely legal means.
      • colordrops5 hours ago
        This is the kind of mindset that has no grasp of the true nature of power and the political system.
    • RobLach4 hours ago
      Voting is always effective.

      In the worst case it communicates the magnitude of dismsissiveness while demonstrating your intention to claim agency.

      • vjulian4 hours ago
        In the worst case it generates symbolism; that is ultimately what you’re saying.

        That symbolism is akin to prayer.

        I am not casting prayer in a negative light, I’m simply categorising your voting concept.

        • RobLach3 hours ago
          Sure, but...

          Visibly praying in public would be symbolic. Prayer is not symbolic; it's thought.

          I'm talking about external signaling.

          • skinfaxi3 hours ago
            In the worst case the true count is never revealed and the vote is coopted.
      • yogthos4 hours ago
        Ah yes, voting is always effective. Thank goodness people in Germany kept voting in the early 1930s. Imagine what terrible things might have happened if they hadn't.
  • try-working4 hours ago
    For this to work there needs to be a standard protocol for model routing so that you as the user can decide where requests go. You may wish to use mainly local models but at some times for some tasks you'll need to route requests to cloud models.

    I've designed the role-model protocol for this, allowing routing between any model, however to function optimally it needs consumer applications to use the protocol when sending requests: https://role-model.dev/concepts/how-role-model-works