“AI #167: The Prior Restraint Era Begins” by Zvi

“AI #167: The Prior Restraint Era Begins” by Zvi

From LessWrong (30+ Karma) by LessWrong

May 8, 2026 · 1h 27m

About this episode

The episode discusses the implications of government intervention in AI model releases and the evolving landscape of AI development in the U.S.

The era of training frontier models and then releasing them whenever you wanted? That was fun while it lasted. It looks likely to be over now. The White House wants to get an advance look and have the option to veto your release decisions, and it has used this veto on an expansion of access to Mythos. We have additional clarity on what that might mean and it does not look good. Hassett explicitly used the FDA as a parallel, which is the actual worst option unless your goal is to strange or pause AI development in America, without a parallel action from China. That doesn’t seem like a great plan to me and Susie Wiles is out doing damage control. The part where we are talking to China to coordinate model access restrictions does seem better. Anthropic continues its explosive growth, and it continues to strike compute deals. In addition to a long term expanded deal with Google, Anthropic is now leasing SpaceX's Colossus 1, which has let them expand usage limits immediately, and Elon Musk is now speaking positively about Anthropic, including its motivations. This comes as we get testimony in the Musk [...] --- Outline: (01:45) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility (02:45) Language…

People in this episode

Host: Zvi

Topics covered

  • AI regulation
  • model access
  • AI development
  • government intervention
  • technology partnerships
  • AI growth

Keywords

  • AI
  • government
  • model access
  • Anthropic
  • Elon Musk
  • FDA
  • White House
  • technology
  • regulation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: White House, FDA, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX

Books & works: Mythos

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