> The use of proprietary internal models by AI labs to do mathematical research risks creating a two-tier system where labs outrun the rest of the field
This is literally the economic bet of the big labs in the broader economy. You use your relative advantage to front run or outcompete.
I'm not sure this argument will work given it is essentially an argument against the thesis the big labs use to justify their valuations.
Once they get good enough, they won't even ship the models, they will just replace all the jobs themselves. This is where Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are heading, esp Google with GSuite, it already is up in your business doing your business.
Right, the whole idea of these labs is to install themselves as capitalist philosopher kings. They won't tolerate any ideas of "decentralization" despite it benefiting 99% of humans.
OpenAI was started because Elon and Sam thought Demis was going to make himself dictator and they wanted a piece of that action (reading between the lines). All the labs, even Anthropic have the same idea dressed in different marketing gloss. The major exception (I imagine) are Chinese labs, since the Communist Party of China will demand control over these labs and their models. Good! Democratic human control is a good thing. Certainly, there is more democracy in China than in America. That's the idea of socialism, democracy for the workers, not for the capitalists (we do the inverse).
You end with some pretty far fetched claims there. Control by an authoritarian government is no democracy. I am sure that the people running AI companies will claim they intend to do it for the good of society, just as the Chinese government already does.
Socialism is about the decentralization of power. In some popular formulations, the economy is run according to a central plan, but in one view, this is democracy. Otherwise, you are at the whim of the rich and tyrannical market forces. With central planning, you get a vote on the general direction of society, which has its possibilities encoded in the material world.
With AI you can see a stark illustration. In America, the government is captured by the rich and the AI companies. They can do whatever they want to you and you have no control. In a worker's government, the government will direct production on behalf of society so you will benefit.
China uses a capitalist mode of production, but imposes strong restrictions and ensures the benefits accrue to the people. That's democracy.
The "authoritarian" propaganda about China is primarily sermonizing against people being able to being able to choose a direction to go in. Instead, the rich are supposed to be able to do whatever they want to whomever they want. That's the American dream.
This is literally the economic bet of the big labs in the broader economy. You use your relative advantage to front run or outcompete.
I'm not sure this argument will work given it is essentially an argument against the thesis the big labs use to justify their valuations.