I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that part of the reason American startups haven't released or haven't released as many successful "open weight" models or related companies is because we have a lot of really high-end, top-tier tech firms which are hiring most of the talent and paying them a lot. It's not just Anthropic and Open AI. It's basically every tech company, plus finance companies, airlines, &c. who are researching and figuring out how to make their own companies better.

If you find that to be something wishful or you have trouble understanding, I think instead of combatting my comment you should ask yourself why you think that American tech companies aren't hovering up exceptional talent and that has had an impact on startups or other tech companies launching similar open-weight models.

You also need to understand the economics better and talk through those. Investors in the US don't generally have state backing so they may be more diligent in what they invest in.

> Rome is not what it once was, and China has plenty of universities, bright people and capital of its own.

Sometimes I think people are internalizing the troubles in Europe (I know you mean Rome as in the US being the new Romans or something) and externalizing those issues at American problems because of Donald Trump, but I would caution against this. China has plenty of universities, bright people, and capital of its own. Yes. It also has disadvantages. The US also has advantages and disadvantages.

> I don’t see how anyone, looking at the past 30 years, can be so sure that the US will out-do China. But good on you for being an optimist I guess.

We've proven we can build competitive and capable companies. I'm not being an optimist, instead I'm just calling it like it is. Our ability to continue doing what we already have demonstrated we can do isn't taken away by China (or other countries) also doing those things. There hasn't been any material change in the ability of the US to build world-class companies in recent history.

I am pretty sure Facebook has clever people and deep pockets, but it hasn’t materialized properly. I cannot say for the very latest releases, but Google too has been a bit of a laughing stock on this front - same story.

As for viewing things with an economic lens. I profess to having only a moderate grasp of economics, I do better with history and geopolitics- and I think this is another blind spot. Americans largely view the world as “business as usual “, but you profoundly underestimate the animosity, concern, suspicion and outright fear other countries have now. There is simply no way our entire infrastructure will be hooked up to an American “super intelligence” firm where the president calls every other Tuesday to extort a country. And failing to appreciate that leads to vastly more rosy ideas of the growth potential of OpenAI, Anthropic and others.

Ok - we just disagree there. It seems incredibly obvious to me.

> As for viewing things with an economic lens. I profess to having only a moderate grasp of economics, I do better with history and geopolitics- and I think this is another blind spot.

I do better with history and geopolitics as well, my point was just that no matter how "open" the so-called open models are, money is what matters and you have to be able to sell the model or associated infrastructure around it (in software terms but perhaps also hardware in the future) to keep your company going and to make money. There is no way around this.

> Americans largely view the world as “business as usual “, but you profoundly underestimate the animosity, concern, suspicion and outright fear other countries have now.

Sure, but on the other hand this exact comment has been parroted all over the Internet (which has little in common with what most people actually think) on select forums of slightly more intelligent than average people to the point where the extent to which Americans view business as usual is being underestimated we can also say that random people on the Internet trying to tell Americans they are so big mad at us is itself an overestimate of how people feel.

I'd also like to point out - which countries, exactly? And just how profoundly are they big mad at the US? If they are profoundly angry, concerned, suspicious, and fearful, and perhaps they are European, maybe we should immediately withdraw from NATO, withdraw military forces from Europe except where it benefits us directly, and we can remove sanctions on Russia because well Ukraine is in Europe and we want cheaper oil and gas here at home. After all, you can't simultaneously claim that there is all this distrust and then trust us to have armed soldiers in your countries.

There's a strong contradiction between rhetoric and action and it plays out very obviously at times like this. You see the same thing with big, grandiose statements from European leaders who want to talk tough and appear like they're "standing up" to Donald Trump, but behind closed doors it's always a different story.

> There is simply no way our entire infrastructure will be hooked up to an American “super intelligence” firm where the president calls every other Tuesday to extort a country. And failing to appreciate that leads to vastly more rosy ideas of the growth potential of OpenAI, Anthropic and others.

Yes but then you also can't be hooked up to, idk, Chinese "super intelligence" firms because they also can do that to you and have demonstrated that they will punish European countries for saying the wrong thing about their dear leader or whatever. You're also assuming that the United States will allow other countries to hook their infrastructure up to our AI infrastructure. It seems likely, but in terms of the latest, state of the art models and capabilities I'm not so sure that non-Americans will even be permitted to use those, at all.

If the promise of AI as being generally stated is true, it actually makes sense for Americans to have sole access to American AI technology so we can build and expand our businesses and maintain competitive advantages. China is also restricting models with fresh news as recently as last month on that front. Perhaps a likely scenario is that China and the United States simply come out on top and the rest of the world is left to suffer what it musts.

Another area that seems strange to me is the insistence (and honestly I think it's just a belief in how someone wants the world to be more than it likely will be) that American tech companies, run by some of the smartest people on the planet and investors, American ones who have been doing this for a long time and have access to incredibly deep capital and resources to evaluate companies are all somehow wrong about spending a trillion dollars or more (whatever the number is it's very large) on AI buildout. It just doesn't seem likely besides a typical boom/bust which is a healthy aspect of our economy. Somehow, they are all wrong and hey some Chinese companies released some open-weight models so I guess all of these people in America are totally wrong and everything will be free and open and run by China and somehow they won't build companies to make money they'll just work for free and release open-weight models and by the way Europe will never use American ones!

I'm just calling this to be all bullshit. Nobody is providing hard numbers and nobody seems to have an explanation as to why American companies can't if they want to just reverse engineer Chinese models if they were better. Let's say investors go out and lose their t-shirts on Anthropic and Open AI? Yea that sucks, so what? We'll just build more and better models. If China "gets ahead" we'll just do the same strategy to them that they seem to be doing to us.

Here's another question - why isn't Europe even in the topic of conversation about AI? Where are the companies? If the Chinese models are just cheap/easy to use or whatever why aren't we seeing a number of new AI startups? If you are going to accuse Americans of being unable to build and release open-weight models, what does that say about European companies?

This isn't a pro-American point of view, though I am pro-America (regardless of who is president). I just find the arguments put forth in this topic to be either of poor quality, or too strongly ideologically tainted.

I don’t think there is any point continuing a discussion from there.

Please refrain from writing things like this or just don't respond.

> I find it curious that, I, a European, consuming European media, living in a European country and consuming its domestic media, which you very likely don’t, am being lectured, by an American, on how we feel.

You're just one random person though. I'm in Europe often and talk to Europeans all the time. How you as a random person on the Internet feels isn't reflective of how everyone feels. There's nothing "curious" here, nor am I "lecturing" you aside from your mistaken belief that your own social circle is how everyone feels.

> The quiet part isn’t said out loud by anyone but the president who threatens to abandon Nato commitments,

Can you quote a specific article, source, or comment where the President has threatened to abandon NATO commitments?

> US deployments here are minuscule, approximately 2 months worth of Russian casualties.

The US deployments in Europe are actually quite significant. Your framing of them in terms of Russian casualties when Russia just pushes people to front lines is obviously flawed. The deployments over time have lowered because the Soviet Union and Marxist ideology that took root there was defeated by the West, but in today's world the value America can bring to a fight in Europe is logistics and air power. 600+ million Europeans need to do the infantry work and go clear Russians out door-to-door, not Americans.

> The value was always the deterrence. And the value for the US was a gateway to the middle east and further abroad along with highly favorable deals for its military industry.

Those are nice to haves but not required, and the value for Europe is US protection. The framing that typically occurs is how there are all these benefits for America and all the bases are good for us, which is wrong since Europe gains even more in benefits.

Maybe we don't need to have troops deployed all around the world anyway? Let's withdraw from South Korea and Japan. Maybe Germany can stop China from taking over Taiwan. Perhaps France and the UK can partner with Saudi Arabia to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons? Or maybe the US can withdraw from Europe and Europeans can spend another trillion Euros on their military? Sounds good to me if that's what you are advocating for.

> The US has already been nearly useless these past 2 years.

incorrect

> We fund the entire war and you sell the arms.

So? It's not turning out well for Europe right now. Look at the riots and protests. How is Europe going to sit here and pay $70+bn to Ukraine when that's more than Russia's entire military budget?

> I don’t think there is any point continuing a discussion from there.

I do as well, no need to reply from here.

So much for being one person. Again, you are actually being arrogant when presuming you know better on this very topic.