OpenAI for Countries
217 comments
·May 7, 2025kiernanmcgowan
slg
One of the most shocking aspects of this era of history is the number of people who not only end up accidentally resembling or aligning with the bad guys of our satire and dystopian fiction, but how many of them seem to be actively and intentionally pursuing that path. It's the Torment Nexus all the way down.
hayst4ck
That's because there are no consequences for bad behavior, only reward. Game theory dictates that if bad behavior is a winning strategy it will be adopted and propagate until it is the dominant strategy.
The only way it stops becoming a winning strategy is if we provide consequences, but that requires taking personal responsibility for the state of the world, which was a core American value, but doesn't seem to be anymore.
kubb
How do you reconcile the belief that personal responsibility is the solution with game theoretical analysis? It seems contradictory to me.
In order to change the game theoretic outcomes, we‘d need a systemic change that affects the rewards, not a personal attitude change that will become a losing strategy in the game.
Also, do you remember how tobacco companies were invited to the table to discuss whether smoking is bad for you? Were those the days of personal responsibility or was it even before that?
whaleofatw2022
I will dare say, it's a question of what happens to Mario's brother. Jury nullification in that is the best message that could be sent to the populace.
jillyboel
The only way out is to hold executives personally responsible for the actions of their companies, and politicians for the results of their policy.
Sam Altman should receive the same treatment as Aaron Swartz. Actually, he should be punished much more severely since the scope of his copyright infringement makes Aaron's seem like child's play.
moralestapia
100%.
"Smaht"[1] people learn to game the system and scam others for momentary benefit.
The worse side that is that we're all guilty of that system, to some degree, even if only by enabling it.
I'm also 100% sure that this is what drives civilizations to the ground.
1. Smaht is a term I use to describe people who think they're smart but they're actually extremely stupid. A lot of smaht people have degrees and diplomas which further fuels their delusion of intelligence.
nicbou
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
(@AlexBlechman on twitter)
staticman2
Sci-Fi Author: Inspired by human atrocities, I present to you my new novel: God Emperor of Dune.
Tech adjacent blogger: Hey guys here me out I love that we're building "starships" but it would also be spiffy if we end democracy and appoint a God Emperor!
pixl97
>end up accidentally resembling or aligning with the bad guys of our satire and dystopian fiction
Quite often this dystopian 'fiction' is just a biography with the names and place rewritten. A scary number of people are rather anti-human.
Alex_001
I’ve had that same thought. It’s wild how often real-world decisions echo the exact warnings from sci-fi and satire. Sometimes it feels like people read dystopian fiction not as a cautionary tale, but as a roadmap. The "Torment Nexus" joke stopped being funny a while ago because it keeps getting closer to reality.
roxolotl
I really wish I could know if they are earnestly cosplaying Lex Luther or if they are just deluded. Of course a good Lex Luther cosplay would involve misdirection so it’s basically impossible to know. It doesn’t really matter which one it is because the outcome is similar but it would be very gratifying to know.
orbital-decay
But what are you going to do about it?
waltercool
[dead]
Trasmatta
They used the word "democratic" 8 times in that post. I'm not sure that word means what they think it means.
ASalazarMX
It means "ChatGPT aligned with your government agenda".
snihalani
I think it means they are blinking twice in front of their republic friends. Fortunately, no one is going to save them
krackers
As opposed to those "unaligned" communist open-source models. As a proud freedom-loving citizen of the West you wouldn't want to support those now would you?
I'm reminded of the first half of this wonderful short-story that was shared on HN a year back https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/
dzhiurgis
What's an open source model?
GuinansEyebrows
"democratic" means "i can pay for anything i want, so i will"
echelon
> spread democratic AI
Open weights and code and models? That's the only way to ensure sovereignty.
I think this company is a walking oxymoron.
easygenes
Super-Earth Defense Ministry Broadcast: Special Bulletin
https://chatgpt.com/share/681c31e8-67f8-8011-a4b0-2bed9d4da7...
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dzhiurgis
There are countries with more and less freedoms than USA... Operating to that countries standard opens up the market and improves UX.
nicbou
Facebook did that. It ended up exposing a lot of private information to China and supporting a genocide in Myanmar.
Tech companies only care about growth. They only care about anything else insofar as it supports growth.
nicbou
I just finished reading "Careless People" and the tone is shockingly similar to the one Zuckerberg loved to use. It reminds me of that Silicon Valley scene where every startup wants to "make the world a better place".
As someone who is both expected to keep creating information to train AI while being stripped from the fruit of my labour by it, I find it sickening.
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jwrallie
> It’s clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development.
Well, OpenAI, I think you are mixing up your own backend for economic growth with everyone’s!
gooob
i'm wondering what's going to happen when AI tells us to stop pursuing "economic growth" and instead seek "health and sustainability"
tedivm
They'll train a new version to fix the problem.
cube00
The eternal AI hype excuse, the next model will fix that, now we're seeing new models hallucinating more then ever.
caseyy
Just tweak the system prompt until global domi... I mean democracy is achieved. /s
zmgsabst
WEF is already pitching that, so it would represent a pivot to be “on brand” for fascist elites.
blibble
> These secure data centers will help support the sovereignty of a country’s data
there is no data sovereignty if there's a US entity at the top
fakedang
I honestly wonder if American companies are so dense that they think foreign governments don't know of the Cloud Act.
Sol-
Comes with a free US government backdoor to all of the foreign citizens' data and AI usage.
Though of course this is already the status quo for all US companies abroad, so you have to give props to OpenAI for spelling it out explicitly: Give up what remains of your digital sovereignty to the US government and you get a small piece of the AGI pie.
_bin_
The pattern for basically every small nation is "choose of which superpower you wish to be a client." From that patron you get some level of benefit. Not aligning with any either doesn't work (you get attacked) or means you get no benefit (and eventually get pushed into obscurity and instability.)
You can make a lot of complaints about America but we have, looking back on history, been nicer than any other patron. Other good evidence includes the fact that europe is still standing (paying to rebuild) and her extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending.
delusional
I agree with most of what you said. America has been a great ally, mostly by allowing her allies to flourish independently of herself. The US did whatever she wanted to do, and so did her allies. This was a great benefit to all involved.
> subsidized largely by American defense spending.
This part is in my opinion ahistoric. US wars have not been popular in Europe. We did not want a war in Afghanistan or Iraq, we supported an ally calling for defense from terror. American war machine spending is rooted in her own desire for hard power, not pleas from her allies.
All of this is coming to an end. Not because the US is retracting. I think most of the west would accept a more nationally interested US, but because the US is starting to see her allies as vassals that she should control. She is realigning as a traditional power, like the USSR.
We are not vassals, we are independent nations seeking our own happiness.
kubb
> The pattern for basically every small nation is "choose of which superpower you wish to be a client."
This is straight up Russian mentality.
> extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending
This sounds to me like a US partisan narrative rather than anything else. It’s a nice story, because it strokes the American ego, but I’ve yet seen it backed up by serious analysis. Most likely it’s just a story.
_bin_
This isn't a russian mentality, this is more of a realpolitik reading of how things work. Don't mistake a positive statement for a normative one.
There was actually a really good article in the FT of all places on this subject: https://www.ft.com/content/37053b2b-ccda-4ce3-a25d-f1d0f82e7...
The fact that the FT is picking this up should tell us something given its typical perspective. There are two big groups of countries in this situation concerned with keeping russia in check: America and the Euros. The former has less of a direct concern but more ability to do something about it; the former have more concerns but less ability. So we settled on a compromise where each country would contribute a proportion of GDP rather than a dollar figure. This is fair-ish; it's still a huge benefit to the euros, but pretty fair. Yet for decades, they have consistently failed to meet their proportional obligations, instead directing those funds to things like "free healthcare".
Other major reasons they can do this include not having debt from having to finance the rebuilding of their continent themselves.
rowanseymour
> This is straight up Russian mentality.
I don't know how you can look at nearly a century of US imperialism in Latin America and the Middle East and conclude that client states is a Russian thing.
tuyguntn
additionally, anytime you oppose US government ideas, data centers in your country gets shutdown.
globalnode
How can a glorified NLP app be equated with being the backbone of economic development and a path to AGI ? So many people have been fooled by marketing.
Honestly though, we have a much bigger issue with climate change in the medium to long run and it doesn't really matter what our governments and companies do with stats and spyware. If anyone thinks we can stop and deal with the climate when it becomes a bigger problem, just take a look at our track record so far.
(only mentioning climate change to offer perspective)
n_ary
> How can a glorified NLP app be equated with being the backbone of economic development and a path to AGI ? So many people have been fooled by marketing.
Regulators are still figuring out this “AI” and oAI must move into as many market to sustain their valuation and future before regulations start to close many open doors.
Also, when entire EU comission makes “AI” a core focus, all other governments are having a FOMO, which is the most fertile opportunity to entrench oneself quickly before everyone realises the smoke and mirror of “productivity gain” song means just making another layer of middleman mandatory for everything(see Apple pushing towards modifying Safari to be AI first).
Also what climate change? Everyone was being shamed into indignation recently for their carbon footprints, only to wake up to massive power infra expansion and Nvidia/Amazon/Msft announcing that everything is on the table including burning more fossil fuel to power the energy demand(utilities are usually often govt controlled and hence a social cost overall).
nyc_data_geek1
The climate change that, if left unchecked, will almost certainly lead to the death of much of humanity, and the majority of life on Earth. Hundreds of millions of climate refugees knocking at your door.
egorfine
> Partner with countries to help build in-country data center capacity.
Except USA banned export of GPUs to like half of the European Union, let alone third-world countries.
andrewinardeer
As long as banned GPUs are under USA control and know what data is being processed on them then perhaps it will be allowed.
MegaButts
Trump has announced plans to change that (this is news from today).
> The Trump administration plans to rescind Biden-era AI chip curbs as part of a broader effort to revise semiconductor trade restrictions that have drawn strong opposition from major tech companies and foreign governments, according to people familiar with the matter.
pornel
This doesn't mean anything. He won't get enough likes on Xitter tomorrow and will flip-flop to 1000% tariffs or whatever else comes to his senile mind.
This unstable circus of a government can't be trusted.
egorfine
True. Unfortunately this is not a time to have a confidence in long-term business relationships with the US.
egorfine
Given any other US administration this would be a good news. This one? I genuinely have no idea.
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mooreds
On several of Tyler Cowen's recent podcasts, he has said essentially "there are really only two countries that have AI, China and the USA. Does this mean that other countries (like Peru) won't really have a functioning, powerful government when AI runs everything".
See https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/chris-dixon/
> As you know, not many countries have serious AI companies, and even those in Europe may or may not last. They’re not obviously mega profitable. Let’s say you’re the government of Peru, and you can turn over your education system to some foreign, maybe American, AIs. You can turn over how your treasury is managed to the AIs. You can turn over your national defense to the AIs. None of these are Peruvian companies most likely. In the final analysis, are we even left with the government of Peru? Or has it, in some sense, been pseudo privatized to the companies that are running the structures, and indeed to the AI itself?
Interesting to have OpenAI offer up AI infra so other countries are not at quite as large a disadvantage. Also really good for their business.
soared
IMO that analysis is shortsighted when looking at other technologies. Peru’s government would grind to a halt with say, windows/osx, excel, chrome, email etc. They are all tools that enable work. I don’t see AI being categorically different.
In this hypothetical world where AI runs the treasury, is the US now in a massively better position to make treasury related decisions? Maybe? Does the US gov have a remote chance of abiding by these decisions? Etc.
I can see Peru being disadvantaged if they don’t use AI, but if they contract out and set up their own stuff that they didn’t actually build - how’s that really worse? I feel like they let the US spend hundreds of billions in development costs and can now reap the rewards.
47282847
> They are all tools that enable work. I don’t see AI being categorically different.
You don’t see the difference between a self-contained product, and a foreign subscription service with no influence over what it is delivering and the privacy and data sovereignty implications? Let alone the vast array of subtle manipulation possibilities in responses?
selfhoster11
By and large, those technologies do not come with an always-on umbilical that leads out of the borders of those countries. It is relatively easy to build out capacity, unlike with AI that requires extremely specialised hardware in vast quantities.
simonw
Mistral mean France (and through it Europe) do have at least one very solid contender.
ClumsyPilot
> You can turn over your national defense to the AIs. None of these are Peruvian companies most likely. In the final analysis, are we even left with the government of Peru?
Folks, this has already been happening for decades, western consultancies and think tanks have been pushing for privatisation and outsourcing to American firms and as a result many governments, like UK, have been hollowed. In many cases they haven’t got a grip and the country is running on autopilot.
As the consultancies replace employees with AI, the outcome you talk about will be achieved, in about 5 years. No far fetched future required
ToucanLoucan
> when AI runs everything
You can't be seriously considering fancy autocomplete word guessers are replacing governments when Musk can't even get Grok to stop telling Twitter users what a moron he is.
HeatrayEnjoyer
Fancy autocomplete is, today, killing people in at least two wars. We must stop dismissing the technical nightmare now at our doorstep.
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apwell23
llms are killing ppl ? care to share any references ?
ClumsyPilot
> fancy autocomplete word guessers are replacing governments
UK has had them in government since 2022, or maybe since Brexit/ Teresa May with her nickname Maybot.
The decline in quality of governance has been so severe, that I’d wager you would not see a difference. Both sides of the isle seem to be full of unintelligent or inexperienced people that do not believe in anything or have a vision
dzhiurgis
> Musk can't even get Grok to stop telling Twitter users what a moron he is
what an oxymoron.
this is testament how good grok is.
ToucanLoucan
Touché.
notrealyme123
The wording gives me the heebie-jeebies. Every bit if private/secret data will be 100% used to train their global cash cow models.
blitzar
The wording feels like it was written by Ai.
rikafurude21
I dont get the proposition, they want to build DCs in partnering countries to run GPT on? Who is this useful for, except for OpenAI to get lower latency connections to their customers?
eksu
Not latencies, think data privacy / keeping queries and data from leaving sovereign borders. This way, if there is some local instance / everything is local than the datacenter and service are subject to local laws and regulations (and alternatively you're not subject to foriegn the laws and regulations (and agencies).
sReinwald
That's not quite correct. The "sovereignty" pitch here is largely illusory when dealing with a US-based company like OpenAI.
The US CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) explicitly gives US authorities the power to compel US-based companies to provide data stored on servers, regardless of where those servers are physically located. This effectively undermines any meaningful data sovereignty claims.
Consider the actual arrangement being proposed:
- OpenAI (US company) maintains control of the infrastructure
- OpenAI controls the models and their development
- OpenAI maintains the security protocols and access rights
- The data merely sits physically within national borders
rany_
It would also allow OpenAI to operate in countries that have state subsidized electricity and low wages.
gerash
locality is good for resilience and latency but for privacy? how does it work?
How can one audit that the bytes going from a DC in country A to a DC in the US is not the user queries but some telemetry data for example? Presumably you don't get to look at the unencrypted packets
siquick
This sounds like the sales pitch for the AI Prime Ministers in Ray Naylers excellent new book, Where The Axe is Buried.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374615369/wheretheaxeisbu...
soared
> It’s clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development
Source?
nprateem
They mean for themselves.
minimaxir
The Stargate link is notable since that has received a large amount of backing from the United States government, who hasn’t been friendly with other countries lately.
skywhopper
Stargate has no US government funding. It was latched onto by Trump to pretend he was immediately making some “deals”. But the whole thing is an illusion of pre-existing projects and investments that pre-date the last election.
nprateem
It's not an illusion if he can threaten to disable access, etc. which of course he could, just like China.
> We want to help these countries, and in the process, spread democratic AI
I'm reading this in the same voice as Helldivers 2 "managed democracy"