Distills are bad for the US economy because they compress margins that otherwise go to pushing the frontier. You'd see model progress dramatically slowed if US companies had to compete on distills.

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JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You'd see model progress dramatically slowed if US companies had to compete on distills

We’re already competing on distills—they exist. The question is whether America will actually compete or if it will lean into its populist tendency and cede the market globally to China.

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solenoid0937 12 hours ago | parent [-]

If you want the cost of today's intelligence to go down, distills are fantastic.

If you want AGI to arrive sooner, distills force you to move your compute off the frontier and will necessarily delay it significantly.

It's a question of what you actually want out of the AI race.

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JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> If you want AGI to arrive sooner

Yeah, I don’t buy this is happening. I’m open to being wrong. But folks who believe that can put their money where their mouths are in terms for stumping up cash for the training.

> distills force you to move your compute off the frontier

Versus moving it to inference?

	▲	solenoid0937 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I guess I don't know how you can use the latest models and feel that we are not on the verge of some kind of intelligence. Maybe it's your harness, maybe your problems aren't complicated enough. I find it bizarre to outright dismiss the possibility of AGI in this day and age.

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12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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brazukadev 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

bad for the US economy but good for the World economy.

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JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> bad for the US economy

Almost certainly not in the long term. If AI is a productivity enhancer, which I think we have evidence for, then the American economy’s heft (and continuing dynamism) get a tailwind. The minority of the new, leveraged economy getting hit will be a short-term painful adjustment, but it need not be anything more.

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everforward 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The distills are almost certainly bad for the US economy.

AIs promise is undercutting knowledge work, which is our primary export. Manufacturing left ages ago.

In theory, if OpenAI/Anthropic win then the US still wins since they’re headquartered here.

If open or Chinese models succeed, it undercuts our knowledge work market and that money starts flowing out to inference providers instead of in to US companies and their employees.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> knowledge work, which is our primary export We export more goods than services [1]. > Manufacturing left America is the second-largest manufacturer in the world by a long shot. > that money starts flowing out to inference providers Where are most of these? [1] https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_p...

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brazukadev 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The longer the US AI strategy continues to be to bet on openai/anthropic the bigger it will be the US economy impact. The US bounced back from the dotcom crash and the 2008 crash, it does not mean it will bounce back after an AI crash.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> it does not mean it will bounce back after an AI crash It almost certainly will. AI dominates growth. It doesn’t dominate the actual economy. Most spending and investment is entirely decoupled from it.
	▲	wolttam 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Well, one thing it will still have is a boat-load of compute.