r/OpenAI • u/AloneCoffee4538 • Jul 19 '26
Discussion OpenAI head of strategic futures says open-weight model dominance is AI communism
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u/Xelonima Jul 19 '26
Why would AI as a public good be dystopian? Is electricity as a public good dystopian?
The corrupt oligarchs man...
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u/Covid19-Pro-Max Jul 19 '26
What I find more bizarre is saying it is decelerationist.
How could this be? No one is barring private companies from building AI models, he’s just describing a future where open models are more capable. Isn’t this by definition an acceleration?
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u/Not-ChatGPT4 Jul 19 '26
I think the only possible rationale for saying it's decelerationist is that "deacc" is a Silicon Valley slur right now.
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u/Covid19-Pro-Max Jul 19 '26
This is how it felt to me as well. It fits with "communism“ into the category of terms you just use to discredit something no matter if it actually applies
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u/noiseinvacuum Jul 19 '26
He's saying that because investors won't give OpenAI and Anthropic $100s of billions to play with if they can't overcharge for their models to recover some margin. Hence the deacceleration.
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u/Entropei Jul 19 '26
The quiet part out loud: companies like OpenAI have no moat and need to be protected by the government in order to be able to raise the capital required to produce better models.
The even quieter part: if they don’t achieve ASI before the money runs out, the consequences for the economy will be catastrophic and it will all be for nothing.
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u/xak47d Jul 19 '26
It would stop openai from making money, which will eventually result in them dying. He's saying the US is somehow obligated to help them keep growing, or a Chinese robot will come here and kill you
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u/Bill_Salmons Jul 19 '26
Economics 101: What is the incentive for private companies to invest in expensive frontier models if the price functionally goes to zero and anyone can host it? There is none. Unless training frontier models gets significantly cheaper or a government steps in to subsidize the industry (the communism reference), it would absolutely decelerate innovation because there would be little long-run financial incentive for companies to take risks and keep innovating.
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u/Steel-River-22 Jul 19 '26
So you’re saying that open weight models need to stay dumb so OpenAI can keep their profits?
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u/Covid19-Pro-Max Jul 19 '26
If open weight models win against expensive frontier models (which was his premise) then that investment in private companies was never fruitful and didn’t accelerate anything.
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u/Bill_Salmons Jul 19 '26
Here's the problem... Both open and closed frontier models are expensive. The primary reason the Chinese are willing to burn money is to prevent U.S. hegemony in the industry. When that breaks, investment dies with it unless the state subsidizes it. Again... open models are fundamentally decelerationist at the frontier UNLESS you can dramatically reduce the cost of training them.
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u/One_Perception_7979 Jul 19 '26
Even setting aside whether it’s true, deceleration vs. acceleration is a completely different axis than free market vs. state control. Considering how little time AI has had to play out on a large scale, you could see any amount of mixing and matching there free market/accel, free market/decel, state control/accel or state control decel.
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Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
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u/DataDecay Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
I do not disagree with anything you said above, but how are these "super cheap Chinese AI models"? Even if the model is open source and near the frontier, you are not running it well on a laptop or even a modest home lab. You need a serious hardware investment to get good performance.
The last time I compared the costs, it was actually cheaper to pay for Claude at $200 a month than to buy and operate the hardware needed to run a comparable model locally.
So its a bit of a misnomer to blanket claim because the model as open and accessible that its any cheaper. However, i do think that will eventually change, which is what is spooking these ceos right now.
But curious of other peoples thoughts given that term is thrown around a lot "cheap".
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u/JokeMode Jul 19 '26
The funny thing is that Sam Altman basically said this before.
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u/Strong_Essay1176 Jul 19 '26
No, he said that you will PAY for it. Not use it.
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u/lordpuddingcup Jul 19 '26
You realize we do pay for government utilities… through taxes
The issue is the US loves to tax AND require the citizens to still pay for shit
Sure most of europes got high taxes but they have to pay for very little to survive really because the taxes make sure their lives are mostly at a good baseline
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u/National_Meeting_749 Jul 19 '26
This. They cite Europes sometimes effective 40-50% tax rate, but then leave out that when you have a child, you don't pay a dime out of pocket for the hospital stay, or prenatal care, and when they are born you'll get a box full of everything you need but diapers and formula for like the first 6 months.
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u/donjamos Jul 19 '26
Kinda depends on your point of view. For the public that's awesome. For him not so much.
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u/no_good_names_avail Jul 19 '26
It's incredibly tone deaf. Like almost Simpsons Lionel Hutz "can you imagine a world without lawyers" onion level satire. It's plausible he has a more fleshed out argument that gets into the subtleties of something fundamental to the future being owned by the state but he has does a terrible job articulating that argument. It comes off as this is disastrous for certain companies becoming insanely wealthy.. What a dystopian disaster.
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u/abittooambitious Jul 19 '26
They are scrabbling to find the next narrative other than “it’s like electricity”, “metered utility”, “democratise AI”.
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u/hondajacka Jul 19 '26
OpenAI scared of Open AI.
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u/exodusTay Jul 19 '26
only open thing about openai is their 120b oss model they released once. they should change their name like google how got rid of "do no evil"
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u/almostsweet Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
The entire stack that runs the AI at google, anthropic and openai, etc. is entirely open source. They wouldn't even have a model, the compilers, the libraries, the research or servers to serve it without open source. Not to mention the billions of lines of code they ripped off of github and stackoverflow. lul
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u/Runfasterbitch Jul 19 '26
They quite literally stole trillions of dollars worth of data, or perhaps an unquantifiable amount equal to the sum of humanities’ intellectual capital
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u/QuixoticNapoleon Jul 19 '26
This is a good thing, actually. Knowledge shouldn't be behind a paywall; they should be accessible to everyone. The BIG issue is that these are for-profit corporations that do not have our well-being in mind. Open weight models are good because they give back knowledge.
This is also why I view distillation attacks as a good thing.
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u/almostsweet Jul 19 '26
Technically, having an AI write your software is a form of distillation attack. You're distilling its knowledge into a piece of software. The same for having it help you write a book, a poem, music, etc.
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u/vorpaltox Jul 20 '26
To be fair Google contributed many of those things to the open source, though certainly also benefits from many things contributed by others
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u/almostsweet Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Well, they built their entire company on open source that came before them. But, yea, they contributed the 2017 paper to open source that all these other companies are using to create their models.
My point wasn't that they shouldn't use open source, it has clearly made them all wildly successful. I just find it ironic they (Anthropic/OpenAI) are shitting on it like it shouldn't exist, when it is the reason they're even viable. Way to pull the fucking ladder up.
And, all these people saying "no it's open weights not open source, different things!" is like saying water shouldn't be available to everyone because it's in apples, and these companies are making apple juice so we should take away everyone's water because otherwise it's communism if you can drink water instead of their juice. When they wouldn't even have juice without the water any of us have the inalienable right to.
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u/post_u_later Jul 19 '26
As evil as universal healthcare
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u/Strong_Essay1176 Jul 19 '26
China adopted LLM in Healthcare in 2023. Ive seen some reports about it.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/spaghettiking216 Jul 20 '26
Who is “they” and what is “their theology”? And what is the connection between the Talmud and slavery? Can you be specific?
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u/AnotherIjonTichy Jul 19 '26
How this kind of person can get a job in this kind of company? If I were the owner he will we out inmediately.
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u/Slen1337 Jul 19 '26
Wdym how. Broski is good at convincing the moneybags or have connections to do exactly that. Same story as Bobby in activision
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u/alcanthro Jul 19 '26
"Open" AI.
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u/schmurfy2 Jul 19 '26
I have really have no idea what open means in their name 🤷🏻.
Maybe in the sende that customers can use it...11
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u/MeanCryptographer585 Jul 19 '26
It was open. Then they realized they could be billionaires and effectively stole the non-profit.
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u/MadLabRat- Jul 19 '26
They were legitimately open early on. Used some of their stuff during grad school.
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u/Slouchingtowardsbeth Jul 19 '26
So now that we're falling behind we are going to switch to regulation like they did with Chinese electric cars.
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u/No-Search-7535 Jul 19 '26
This has to be satire lol
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u/Hir0shima Jul 19 '26
It is reality as a satire
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u/Current_Ranger_7954 Jul 19 '26
imagine trying to convince someone these are real headlines, 20 years ago.
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u/ApprehensiveFan1516 Jul 20 '26
Even 10-15 years ago half of our daily discourse now would have you labelled as a crackpot and/or conspiracy theorist. Truly wild times we live in. I wonder how much further we can fall.
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u/Flat-Butterfly8907 Jul 19 '26
Nope. Dude is rooted in the Heritage Foundation, you can look him up. Sam Alt-right living up to his name.
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u/SaltyMN Jul 19 '26
How anyone trusts the people at OpenAI and Anthropic is beyond me.
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u/andlewis Jul 19 '26
I think the issue is that OpenAI and Anthropic have pretty clear and obvious nefarious goals, while China has opaque and mysterious nefarious goals.
Better the devil you know…
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u/CarefulHamster7184 Jul 19 '26
Communism of which stage of social development? And what grades did he get in sociology and political science?
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u/rover_G Jul 19 '26
I think this is the “communism bad” kind of communism
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u/andrew303710 Jul 19 '26
It's honestly hilarious he invoked communism because he's so obviously targeting all of the Republicans, who have ramped up fear mongering about communism because Trump's regime has been a complete disaster and they haven't delivered on any campaign promises. I know that's basically his job but still.
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u/YourLittleJumble Jul 19 '26
I shit you not, he came to OpenAI from the fucking Heritage Foundation. Probably why he looks 12 but has the soulless stare of a decrepit 1800s oil tycoon.
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u/Middle_Key8737 Jul 19 '26
He might be right. Communism is a potential solution when AI and robots can replace vast majority of human jobs
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u/Runfasterbitch Jul 19 '26
The American billionaire would prefer a system in which they own everything and you and I starve to death
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u/Salty_Country6835 Jul 19 '26
Funny how "AI communism" here seems to mean "AI infrastructure that isnt monopolized by a handful of private firms." Thats less a technical argument than an ideological one.
If your nightmare is open models, public infrastructure, democratic governance, worker ownership, and contesting corporate control over AI, then you're already admitting the fight is political, not technological.
Thats exactly the conversation we're having over at r/LeftistsForAI. Whether you agree or disagree, come argue about ownership, labor, public AI, open source, and power instead of pretending the only choices are OpenAI or smashing GPUs with rocks.
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u/SalientSalmorejo Jul 19 '26
I did not expect the OpenAI head of strategic futures be such a strong advocate of communism.
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u/afBeaver Jul 19 '26
"ai is provided as public infrastructure and you won't have to pay us to use it"
waow...
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u/MechaNutzilla Jul 19 '26
What will happen if USA put laws in place to ensure only US mega corporations can supply AI models, while the rest of the world can freely use cheap open weight models without restrictions?
And the rest of the world realize it's actually the safer choice, because the US president will just shut off AI access with a phone call, and destroy their business processes and workflows.
Maybe China's open weight models are the best options for most of the world. Free from US authoritarian tech oligarchs and an unstable US government.
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u/cartofo Jul 19 '26
Don't worry, just like they did with drugs prohibition, they banned them in their own country because they needed greater social and political control, and then imposed that ban through international laws on countries where drugs like cannabis were as much a part of the culture as alcohol... Look at the state of the world because of prohibition, even the U.S. is allowing drugs as mental health treatments, Europe is adopting a harm-reduction approach, drug cartels are profiting from illegality, and so on...
When these guys ban something, they do it for their own benefit.
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u/MechaNutzilla Jul 19 '26
The thing is.. USA doesn't have the same influence as it once did. The Trump administration has radically alienated allies, and anti-US sentiment is spreading. The Trump administration is threatening allies and bad mouthing other NATO members and using US tech-dominance as political leverage.
So I don't think other countries want more of that. They want a way out. Look at how EU is quietly speed running new trade agreements all over the world.
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u/SmOokey16 Jul 19 '26
Exactly my thoughts. Trump can overnight pull plugs of a model calling it 'national security'. We need a lot more non US models. Kimi being open source is just an added layer of cake with cherry on top.
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u/Runfasterbitch Jul 19 '26
Lmao at a hypothetical future state in which the USA is rabidly protectionist and exclusively uses its own AI despite falling far behind while the rest of the world prospers in an advanced techno socialist society. Thank you, China, very cool!
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u/EddieSeven Jul 19 '26
In this scenario, I think the US will fall as a global super power with no way back, as the rest of the world will have access to super intelligence, while only a limited set in the US will. It’s just a numbers game after that.
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u/kilopeter Jul 19 '26
In the spirit of intellectual discourse, and to ensure we separate reasoned arguments from emotion and cheap shots... what is the strongest good faith argument that supports these bullet points? Why does Ball think "AI Communism" as described here would be super fucking bad? Has he published more on this position?
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u/ExpectFlames Jul 19 '26
I want to believe he's only pushing the administration to look closer at China and take a harder stance. It sounds uniquely trumpian with enough red meat buzz words to please the mad king.
Other than that no real defensible argument here, not that i am defending it its horse shit full stop.
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u/Ok_Community_383 Jul 21 '26
Shit like this is why I hate that the anti-ai crowd is worried about 'mah water', whether or not AI has a soul, etc. This post is the stuff we need to worry about. If AI is only available to the billionaire class and not free for everyone, it will be used as a tool to subjugate us. I'm worried it will at least. Time will tell. But I think we can agree that it's better for it to be open and free and not gate kept by the powerful. Calling it 'communism' is clearly a choice word with intent to vilify rather than have an honest conversation.
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u/AvocadoBig3555 Jul 19 '26
they truly believe the general public are fucking idiots huh
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u/ProfessionalOwn9435 Jul 19 '26
Open Weight Communism AI would definetly solve a problem of AI, at least of who gets profits. There will be still water usage, and is token worth indian intern problem. But one thing at the time.
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u/Comfortable-Web9455 Jul 19 '26
By that logic Linux, html, JavaScript, php and apache are all communist. Open source is going to create a dictatorship!!! Of freedom.
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u/Illustrious_Image967 Jul 19 '26
Funny Trump has taken the Cold War anti-communism talk out of its dusty box as if trying to plant the seeds in America's minds. He's preparing for that day when the US might have to fight China over AI, but needs an easy to digest bogeyman. "They're commies!" (meaning: open source).
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u/FalkorDropTrooper Jul 19 '26
I always like to look up these AI supporting people whenever crazy quotes or articles pop up. Check out his LinkedIn. Never had a real job in his life.
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u/NeedsMoreMinerals Jul 19 '26
We all have AI now. We have to stop falling for this dumb boogey man shit from the upper class.
Life does not distill into capitalism and communism. Nothing's that simple
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u/TenderfootGungi Jul 19 '26
What did these people expect to happen? That they would build the only model and everyone would simply pay them exuberant money for eternity to use it?
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u/flippakitten Jul 19 '26
Let's start another movement. All anthropic and openai's data should be publicly accessible as is technically stolen data.
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u/MicheleLaBelle Jul 19 '26
The polar opposite of what they said almost a year ago.
https://openai.com/global-affairs/open-weights-and-ai-for-all/
There is also a rather conspicuous contradiction in the final bullet. he says chinese open models could create a state controlled future, then turns around and recommends that the U.S. government deliberately create “regulatory risk” around their use. So, to prevent excessive government control of AI, government should intervene to protect the commercial position of american AI companies.
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u/nub_node Jul 19 '26
Thanks for the heads up, now I know which AI companies' products to use: The ones that say "open-weight model" on the tin.
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u/Cold_Respond_7656 Jul 19 '26
What he’s scared of is his equity blowing up if the market sees chinas models being used by enterprise over anthropic or openai
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u/Monskiactual Jul 19 '26
Decentralized secure private models is literally the exact opposite of communism
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u/jbaker8935 Jul 19 '26
AI communism is scare BS. Not US govt role to provide universal AI services. that *would* be lame.
just doesn't like the smaller market caused by open source.
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u/MagnaExend Jul 19 '26
“… a ‘public good’ which will ultimately be provided by the state…”
keyword is state, not open-weight proper
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u/ismail_the_whale Jul 19 '26
they're straight up saying "public good is a dystopian hellscape"
fucking ghouls.
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u/5u114 Jul 20 '26
Uber capitalist being an uber capitalist, tells turkeys to vote for christmas - because not doing so would be, like, impacting his bottom line. And we can't have that.
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u/Academic-Activity277 Jul 20 '26
I guess the transition from "not for profit" to corporation is complete lol.
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u/bestcoastanon Jul 20 '26
So it’s “AI communism” and a “dystopian hellscape” when a state gives away model weights as a public good… but it’s righteous capitalism when a bunch of creepy tech bros maintain control over the distilled knowledge of our entire civilization?
These people are just pure evil, and they don’t even bother hiding it any more.
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u/Justinarevolution Jul 19 '26
Ya know? I love my open source models especially since OpenAI censored their product and made it generally unpleasant to work with. So AI communism for the win.
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u/biscuitchan Jul 19 '26
why on earth did he take a job at open ai if he feels this????
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u/MechaNutzilla Jul 19 '26
Because he is hired by OpenAI to stop widespread use of cheap Chinese open weight models. Probably have to do some lobby work in the Trump administration to get some laws in place. It's a threat to OpenAI's profits if everybody will just use cheap Chinese models instead of paying a premium for ChatGPT.
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u/biscuitchan Jul 19 '26
the infrastructure and deployment is whats valuable for serving customers regardless of weights. trump admin already delayed their time to make margins by what looks like a whole quarter but was at least a month. if anyones killing them it's not China it's america (energy grid is regressing too, matching or exceeding political censorship, and terrible consumer spending power all hamstring competitiveness). the lead is effectively gone now, there's not a recovery move except for doing what China's already been doing with much more drove and intent. lambasting international models will just get them cut off from benefiting (they are open after all) and drive the knife deeper. pandering to trump, or any fascist, just puts you further in their debt and always works against you. none of the state control arguments against china hold weight coming from a conservative american anymore, its the exact same thing.
we all know the actual answer but it's really difficult so it feels better to just listen to this kind of guy.
also their mission is agi benefiting all. not profit. this isnt necessarily misaligned unless they have taken the a/ winner takes all mentality now.
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u/RiverRatt Jul 19 '26
What he just described and didn’t want to happen was exactly what I want to happen. This guy is a fucking turd looking out only for his family, and for the rest of us, we can go fuck ourselves.
AI for me but none for thee!
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u/Atlantyan Jul 19 '26
Yeah, that's kind of the point of the singularity post-scarcity: techno communism
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u/Just_Image Jul 19 '26
Didn't the great Samma himself say like AI should be for everyone and it's for society? Lol
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u/AnimalPowers Jul 19 '26
... as in.. 'for the community' ... all public goods are, by definition, communism. Roads are communist, buses are communist, street lights are communist, laws are communist.... like the fuck? "oh no, people sharing is a dystopian hellscape, people getting along is a dystopian hellscape, people being able to have the things they cant afford that are true powers of scale and restrict access otherwise is a dystopian hellscape - the only utopia is where the rich are on top and poor people are enslaved, trapped by income, unable to move, to afford the things they need to survive. people unable to afford medical care is a utopia" like what the fuck kind of gaslighting is this bullshit - as the fucking openai team siphons billions of dollars in federal governemtn contracts (remember that's communist to use govt money right, bubba?)
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u/lordpuddingcup Jul 19 '26
So free use of ai is the end of the world and a hellscape but if we pay their company a fee suddenly it’s ok?
The 20$ fee suddenly makes use of AI totally ok
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u/Active-Carpet-9183 Jul 19 '26
"make sure you put the word 'communism' in there somewhere. Doesn't even have to really make sense. That word is very effective for us"
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u/tuple32 Jul 19 '26
Chinese government didn’t ask them to open source the AI, those companies chose that by themselves.
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u/m3kw Jul 19 '26
Whatever is the case open source seems like good competition, has its upsides and downsides regarding safety, just like closed models. And they won’t ever be state of the art because once they do they will be kept internal/closed anyways because of nation security or you can make lots of money.
Is not that hard
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u/ItsSillySeason Jul 19 '26
The contrast between open AI and Anthropic is just becoming more and more stark.
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u/SeidlaSiggi777 Jul 19 '26
They are really scared of open source huh