The Washington Post reported that the US government will decide who can use state-of-the-art LLMs. After the ban of Fable and the limitations coming to ChatGPT 5.6, what's next? My bet is Chinese models.
For all of Anthropic's doomsaying and propping up of their secret model Mythos, several open-weight models have proven capable of similar feats, and at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek rocked the AI world in December 2024 with their initial release, nearly sending shockwaves through American stock markets.
Last year, I looked into getting a BYD electric car. At the price they were selling for, I figured that even with a 100% tariff slapped on top, it would still be a bargain. Then I discovered that not only is there a steep import tariff, you simply cannot register the car in the United States. The car itself is illegal. According to reviews from people who actually own one, it's a fantastic vehicle that would outcompete most cars on the US market. Because of that, the US simply banned it.
So what does this mean for large language models? If we're now told that state-of-the-art LLMs are too dangerous for the general public, what happens to Chinese models that are equally powerful? People will start flocking to DeepSeek and zAI. The quality matches OpenAI and Anthropic, the models are open-weight, and the cost is dramatically lower. The logical next step, if you're a DC lobbyist on retainer for a San Francisco AI lab, is to ban them.
We don't live in rational times. The only path to an IPO for Anthropic and OpenAI is to kick the ladder out from under everyone else and get Washington to call it "safety policy." Download the models while you still can, because once the regulation drops, owning a local copy of DeepSeek might just make you a dissident.