> I can certainly imagine LLMs taking a similar path. Maybe it's useful to think about what fundamental differences could contribute to LLMs taking a very different path. What comes to mind is the scaling hypothesis, implying that the best LLMs will require enormous capital investment.
That seems largely incompatible with open source barring a fundamental change. There's open weights, but I can't think of a clean historical analogy there and find it extremely difficult to even guess how the future will go
Capital has eaten software.
We need a real effort to get these technologies free as in beer and to model ourselves on that movement.
LLMs are already being kept closed weight/source by default. On the client side it's just a generic API client. The underlying technology (weights) wasn't going to be exported even if allowed.
But what's more interesting isn't binary access or not--it's monitoring the chat content, and potentially influencing its replies. (Perhaps the old GPS SA is a better analogy than encryption export.) For example, model providers could be required to allow the government to detect suspected foreign government users and silently degrade performance. They could be required to flag potential exploit discoveries and then send them to CISA for remediation. Or, they could be required to inject disinformation about sensitive topics so that even if you jailbreak, the model is incapable of discussing topics like, say, the presidential motorcade or the design of military bases.
It does remind me of the mid-1990s when suddenly asymmetric cryptographic tools such as PGP became a reality and a wide usage possible due to the growing base of internet users.
Governments (US, France…) did not understand how to regulate and banned export (and asked users to apply for a licence).
I do see a strong parallel with the situation that we are currently living.
What’s interesting is what’s happened out of the few years where regulations were strong enough to reduce innovation.
Well, open source won for the common and everyday uses, and even more powerful crypto has been developed and used by corporations and governments.
I can certainly imagine LLMs taking a similar path.