Is AI the new nuclear arms race?

Fable 5 shutdown - does it mean anything to the world?

Recently, Anthropic removed access to Fable 5 - its most capable model yet. Why? Because the US government deemed it too powerful and did not want it to be accessed by anybody outside the US, or even within the US, by non-citizens. Anthropic had no way to comply with this order, so it shut it down worldwide.

Reference - https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access

Given what happened, what does it mean for an Indian (or foreign) origin Staff Engineer working at Meta, Google, Microsoft or even OpenAI or Anthropic? There has never been a precedent like this. Nobody had told that even in the US, some people cannot access a certain software while others can!

Looking at the larger picture, what does it mean for India and other countries without their own LLMs? India has chosen Sarvam to build an LLM https://www.sarvam.ai/blogs/indias-sovereign-llm, which is great, but the question is, will it be the best of the best of the best? If not, we cannot win this race or even be a part of the race!

The country with the most capable AI model can disrupt innovation in other countries. Whether they choose to do that is a separate question. But, they can, and that is the point!

So, now starts the race to build the most capable AI model owned and operated by each country. What it does for innovation if it’s localised, I am not sure. And this is a race which can never end. Each day, a new model can be released, and each day its capabilities will improve. So, it will put all of us in a constant state of improving the LLM instead of using it for innovating further.

In conclusion, I do believe each country should have its own LLM, even if all the LLMs are usable across countries. This is a safety net no country should do without.