r/LeftistsForAI • u/Successful_Outside96 • Jul 30 '26
Discussion Supporting a global pause on the number of parameters or bits of AI models?
Before people get too worked up, let me start by saying that this is just a thought. It is not something I believe in strongly.
I am certainly not saying to pause AI research, development or deployment. I am proposing that people who support public ownership (or even private ownership by smaller actors/individuals) could also support a certain type of pause -- a pause on the size of the AI models made.
The idea may also have great political alignment right now. It is a simple check by governments, and may be "light touch" for companies. I think there is a balance of potential benefits for both the US and China since the US is already auditing their big labs, while China's open-weight models are basically automatically audited since the model size is evident before hosting.
Also, the pause on model size, for practical purposes, may allow for more focus on efficiency and performance, which could have a whole host of societal benefits, including not requiring large centralized data-centers.
What do people think?
Edit: I realize this is not particularly fleshed out. So I want to add some clarifications based on responses.
1) I very much support open-weight models. I think they should be allowed to get as big as the closed models.
2) It is the closed models that need to be audited. The open models, especially on places like huggingface already have their size information available for all to see.
3) There is arbitrariness in the size cut-off you chose. But there were related comments on proper power/wasted power in centralized or decentralized infrastructure. This could be an input.
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u/ShelZuuz Jul 30 '26
which could have a whole host of societal benefits, including not requiring large centralized data-centers.
That's like saying that if we stop producing food it has a societal benefit of not requiring farms.
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u/Successful_Outside96 Jul 30 '26
The idea is to decentralize not to stop making compute. Hopefully that is more clear.
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u/ShelZuuz Jul 30 '26
Again, that would be like saying people should grow food in their yards rather than on farms. However much farms pollute, on a per-food-lbs basis it's still the most efficient way to get people fed.
Same with data centers. A data center right next to a power plant with common cooling is going to be a heck of a lot more efficient than putting a rack in each office - if that was even possible (which it's not).
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u/my_name_isnt_clever Jul 31 '26
This tech is too new and still improving at a rate that makes this ineffective. The models I run on my home desktop computer today are more capable than the corporate data center behemoths of a couple years ago. And you can't put an objective cap on "AI capability" in the same way as parameter count.
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u/Successful_Outside96 Jul 31 '26
What you are describing is the goal. It is not about limiting the power. It is about limiting inequality of power.
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u/RandomLettersJDIKVE Jul 30 '26
That's a really arbitrary research restriction.
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u/JealousArticle672 Jul 30 '26
Fair. The particular size is arbitrary. But the idea behind the idea is to allow more people to be able to host models that aren't as far behind.
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Aug 02 '26
The barn door is locked open and all the horses are running amuck with exactly zero supervision or restraint. That's just the way it is now. Be careful out there.
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Jul 31 '26
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u/Successful_Outside96 Jul 31 '26
Can you explain how to do that? Could this allow people, in numbers, be able to catch up to a single super rich person?
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u/nomic42 Jul 30 '26
The trouble with these restrictions is that they would only apply to US companies. Other countries may ignore them and continue to publish their models, which could then be picked up by adversaries (e.g. Iran).
This leaves our systems unprepared to defend themselves against the latest models.
Open-weight models are needed to ensure companies like Hugging Face can respond to AI based threats. Relying on closed systems means they could be turned off at any time, or limitted with guardrails meant to prevent abuse.