Yet another Hacker News

David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

72 points kolanos 1 hour ago 31 comments

Insanity 51 minutes ago | parent

They’ll slow down not because they “are worried” but because their improvements are stagnating as they hit financial and technical challenges.

kypro 34 minutes ago | parent

> because their improvements are stagnating as they hit financial and technical challenges.

I don't mean to be rude, but how is it even possible for someone to hold this opinion in mid-2026?

Can you explain why you believe this?

Zenul_Abidin 28 minutes ago | parent

Basically, continuously building out compute is costing these labs enormous amounts of money, which VCs and other companies have been bankrolling in order for them to develop powerful models.

So if the new models they can develop right now are less frontier, it could be a net loss on their balance sheets.

tuvix 19 minutes ago | parent

Why would someone hold the opposite opinion?

It’s much more likely that our current approach to large language models for general use will eventually show diminishing improvements (even if you think it hasn’t yet), than the opposite situation where valuable improvements can be made forever.

The threat of distillation and efficiency gains from competitors mean that providing value at the top end of the market is an existential necessity for these labs. I don’t think they can do that forever and, in my opinion, for the vast majority of use cases we’ve already reached very little improvement for new models when compared with available offerings.

simianwords 1 minute ago | parent

Sorry, this is ridiculous. OpenAI said that they have a step change in model performance. They proved it by solving a Millenium problem. HF incidents are public and vetted.

If you still think there's a stall despite all evidence pointing to opposite, I don't know what to say..

johnnienaked 11 minutes ago | parent

How can you not believe it? Neither of them are even close to making a profit and the market is saturated with cheaper alternatives.

This is a ploy for regulatory capture.

simianwords 3 minutes ago | parent

huge problem in discourse is that there are real interesting wedges in debate like p(doom) and RSI. but zitronion thought is not the real interesting wedge and almost everyone is on this side.

- AI can't be profitable (lol)

- everything is hype

- HF incident was a conspiracy between HF, METR, OpenAI, Anthropic to drive up market share

- Navier Stokes was solved because they literally looked at one of the codex chats and presented as their own (lol)

asdfman123 26 minutes ago | parent

Actually, one of the major challenges they'll face is getting enough electricity. That could stop AI growth in its tracks.

darth_avocado 2 minutes ago | parent

I think it’s more than money and slowing progress. Public perception on AI is in the gutter. That is a much bigger threat to these companies. They’re trying to turn it around.

socalgal2 48 minutes ago | parent

Admits China won’t stop but says USA’s top should. Reminds me of City in the Edge of Forever

mrweasel 15 minutes ago | parent

Unsure about your reference, but is your argument: Someone else is doing it, so I should be allowed to as well.

That's basically the western companies complaining that they can't compete with China because Chinese companies are allowed to polute more, so they would be allowed to polute as well. I don't buy that. Once you realise that you're doing something wrong or dangerous, you stop, regardless of what everyone else is doing and what rules they have to follow.

elicash 38 minutes ago | parent

David Sachs wants to use government to punish people he disagrees with politically, like Dario.

He supported the Department of War's illegal actions against Anthropic.

He supported the Trump administration's temporary export controls against Anthropic, the first government-imposed pause.

He has said Anthropic has created a monopoly, implying that they should be broken up.

I don't take him seriously when he says he doesn't favor government action. He favors it when he doesn't like their speech.

Founderarcstone 37 minutes ago | parent

this is like a real-world game of thrones episode.

tjwebbnorfolk 35 minutes ago | parent

poor Anthropic

elicash 34 minutes ago | parent

A principled individual could dislike Anthropic and still not favor using government to punish speech.

Zenul_Abidin 30 minutes ago | parent

Will someone please think about Dario?

kypro 32 minutes ago | parent

You're being downvoted because you clearly have the wrong opinion. If you want upvotes here, please share a conspiracy theory about why the CEOs of AI companies might want to slow down.

It doesn't need to based in reality or even reasonable.

nba456_ 33 minutes ago | parent

He's right that if all the frontier labs are in agreement that they should slow down, they don't need the government to do that.

esafak 24 minutes ago | parent

And kids don't need parents to eat their vegetables and do their homework.

vatsachak 16 minutes ago | parent

They actually don't

layer8 8 minutes ago | parent

…if all kids are in agreement that they should do just that.

SpicyLemonZest 13 minutes ago | parent

No, that’s not accurate. An agreement among competitors to not engage in research that would let them outcompete each other is clearly an antitrust issue requiring a government waiver.

jubilanti 4 minutes ago | parent

No, absolutely not "clearly". That word has no business being in any sentence about federal antitrust law in 2026. There is nothing clear or consistent about how is being applied and interpreted right now. If you're applying a coder's mindset to 'settled' law, you're in for a bad time.

biophysboy 29 minutes ago | parent

David Sacks is one of the most predictable VCs in Silicon Valley. He could have written "I still have the same thoughts; here's a link to my first and only opinion" and the post would have communicated the same amount of info.

vatsachak 24 minutes ago | parent

The first time I have agreed with David Sacks

toss1 12 minutes ago | parent

Yup. Sacks has been so catastrophically wrong about everything else (especially geopolitics), this prompts me to reconsider my opinion on this.

throwaway63467 23 minutes ago | parent

I guess what they really want is to limit sale of AI models to compliant vendors and then raise the bar to compliance just high enough so they can pass it but smaller labs can’t. There’s no moat, it’s an efficient market that drives margins to zero right now, of course they don’t want that, collusion of the big vendors is the next logical step.

daveguy 14 minutes ago | parent

But.... Money.

agd 5 minutes ago | parent

Huge amount of skepticism on HN right now, but the models are increasingly capable, and there are real, significant risks.

The approach proposed by Amodei looks sensible - voluntary checks at frontier labs, and appropriate regulation to follow. Yes, the devil's in the details, but it feels like the right approach overall.

vrganj 56 seconds ago | parent

Turns out the EU was right all along with the AI act. They've been adopting a well-deserved "told you so" stance lately:

> "In my view, the EU has already legislated for exactly this scenario: it is called the AI Act," said Michael McNamara, an Irish European Parliament lawmaker, who's the co-lead of the Parliament's group monitoring AI.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-response-ai-extinction-wa...