As entertaining as the sheer Schadenfreude of the situation is, this is terrible for foreign peasants like myself. It no longer makes any sense to pay for America's frontier AI models. I'd be funding the training of models I will never be able to use.

GLM 5.2 is competitive with Opus 4.6. If the best model I'll ever get is Opus 4.8, then the choice is clear. I'll miss Opus.

The geopolitical angle of all of this is interesting. Will countries, especially bigger players really just hope they'll get access to something so crucial from the US or China?

Probably the EU could pool together funds to create something competitive as being on the mercy of someone else isn't a pleasant place to be.

And I wouldn't get so used to the open models. Eventually, if they get good enough, the access to them will also get restricted.