Their strategy right now is to socialize the negative externalities (copyright does not protect anything from them) and capitalize the gains (ToS says you can't use their outputs).
PS: I do understand your point. Using taxpayer money would be even worse.
"We have no moat. But we are well-capitalized, so in classic early-mover monopolist fashion we'll try to pull the ladder up, then use funds to bri--er, lobby--the government into smacking down climbers."
If I understand their strategy, it's to limit the use of LLMs to American-based companies, by saying that it is dangerous (when used remotely) and illigal (when using remote models). So they strive to make it so that all American companies use American models whereas government agencies use their dedicated gov infra.
Government agencies would use dedicated infra anyways. Don’t many European governments insist on EU segregated cloud providers or open source software to avoid having critical infrastructure be under US control?
And the US is an official ally, whereas China is not.
It seems to make sense but when you look at the dynamics of it, if you legally lock organizations in this way, the Americans will be the only one using expensive models and the rest of the world would be using cheap Chinese models. This wouldn't be great for the USA in general.
Their strategy right now is to socialize the negative externalities (copyright does not protect anything from them) and capitalize the gains (ToS says you can't use their outputs).
PS: I do understand your point. Using taxpayer money would be even worse.