The Fable decision is fundamentally a domestic US policy mess, and it seems likely to resolve itself, albeit chaotically. For middle powers, it's a tempting starting point for ill-conceived 'sovereign' AI takes, but I think the right move is to let it blow over and buy more time. The decision itself seems counterintuitively domestic in scope. USG got worried about the prospect of a jailbreak, didn't feel like it had a particularly precise and effective way to tackle that risk, and defaulted to limiting access in an obvious and available way. The easy way to do this was also a way to make Anthropic uncomfortable and annoy allies, but these seem like secondary considerations at best. That's still relevant information for middle powers--it goes to show that there is no immediately effective and legible reason for USG or American developers to consider their interests in making access decisions. As for middle powers' posture in reacting to this: I think nothing good comes from wading into a politically charged AI policy environment, solidarising with Anthropic and drawing the continued ire of the Trump administration. Right now, middle powers are collateral damage, and acting hastily risks making them parties to the conflict. What would have helped in this case? It's not clear that even a European model would really have. Imagine you had the absolute best case European sovereignty in place, up and running since 2024. would it have a Fable-class model by now? or would it 'only' be at the level of Opus 4.8 - a near-frontier model in its own right that remains available today? you'd have to be quite confident that the European champion would not just be 2 months behind the curve, but at the absolute bleeding edge of frontier development, to make a difference to this particular scenario. Not even the most bullish views of the domestic project makes that kind of outcome particularly likely, so this really is not a particularly incisive wake-up call on European frontier models specifically. But even if you disagree, what would it actually *mean* for this to be a wake-up call for European sovereignty? Are you going to build your own model now? What are you going to do in the--generously--three years between announcing this project and reaping the frontier models it would build: are you willing to give up frontier access in the meantime? Because the resources required for building this frontier model directly trade off against the resources you could invest into guaranteeing access instead (most notably through compute); and the political fallout from announcing an attempt to build the very kind of model capability the US is attempting to restrict would also make future access negotiations harder. Let's say you're willing to bear that delay: do you think a Trump administration that just refused to give you access to Fable is going to let you buy enough frontier chips to train an unrestricted Fable clone yourself? Are you willing to go the mat on semiconductor chokepoints, even if it comes with sky-high costs in Ukraine and trade policy? I don't actually think so. Look into the details of what would be required for a big European push right now, and you'll see the leverage for 'waking up' and divorcing from the US ecosystem simply is not feasible in the current technological or geopolitical environment. I regret that this is the case, but that doesn't make it the case any less! What, then, is the alternative? First, I think it's worth noting that this is fundamentally a very good version of a very bad thing. In a fortuitous turn of events, the Trump administration has picked the most ill-conceived version of access restrictions you could possibly come up with. It's legally fraught, so domestically impactful that it will lead to massive internal pushback, and likely extremely economically harmful. As a result, it will likely go down in flames eventually. The U.S. is not yet in the spot to actually go through with long-term cut off: international markets are still too important, the security situation is not yet sufficiently dire, and so on. So the first live fire exercise of cutting off the rest of the world is going to fail, which means labs and the admin are going to be much more wary of subsequent attempts to do the same, even if they end up more sophisticated. Second, I think the access recipe is fundamentally the same as it was yesterday: build leverage on the margins that makes cut-offs like these even less attractive, for instance through access-for-compute deals and by creating deep economic integrations that are economically central to US labs and strategically central to the US supply chain--create a lobby to push back harder against attempts like this in the future. In the future, we can use the resources and capacities that gives us to sprint toward our own frontier project if we must, but right now we neither have the political will nor the relative power to get even close to trying that. Third, and somewhat trivially, we should start thinking about what we want to do the next time this happens. I suspect any analyses that assess whether you can use ASML or any semiconductor chokepoint to avert this will come up short, but there's still value in analysing and then credibly precommitting to threats. Right now, USG did this operating under the assumption there would be absolutely no reaction from middle powers at all. Any plan in the drawer that suggests there is a non-negliblie cost for the US to act like this in the future would be helpful. There's little use in deploying it reactively now; there's lots of value in precommitting to it for the next iteration. That's different than actually going to the mat; the goal here is to play chicken a bit, increase uncertainty and latent risk for the administration in making these decisions to tilt the calculus toward integration, not to go all out on a highly costly tradewar. Fourth, I think this clarifies the specific concerns that could motivate access restrictions. Security concerns, both on misuse as well as distillation and model theft, fundamentally make the US more likely to restrict model access; this time around, it was concerns around reducing surface area for unmonitored jailbreak attempts. That is, in principle, fixable--middle power governments can and should engage with labs to create security conditions that create permission structure for exports and model sharing. Make your infrastructure as secure as they want it to be, and you reduce the risk they consider exporting to you a security vulnerability. Again, I understand if this sounds submissive and uncomfortable to you---but again, all this is necessary even if you go for the maximal sovereignty playbook at the same time, because you will need frontier access in the meantime. Instead of these reasonable responses, I worry that the low-resolution view on this whole affair is to think this should shake middle powers into the wrong kind of action. Realising how important and contingent frontier AI access is quickly leads down the path of wanting to build your own; realising how capricious the American ecosystem is makes you want to divorce from it faster. But for better or for worse, the central implication of this episode is the opposite: as evidenced by this episode being possible at all, middle powers currently do not have the leverage to do much about any of this, and building up this leverage is almost impossible to do in an openly adversarial relationship to the US. In that sense, waking up is not a matter of loud yelling, decisive action or pivotal decisions. For all the internal urgency with which I think we should precommit to some leverage and shore up our security concerns, I still think the optimal strategy is one of public restraint and progress on the margins of the current playbook. I'm just not sure there's that much to wake up from - this is just what life is like for now.

Some Sunday thinking - time, knowledge, complexity and … AI. yatesweb.com/the-machine-has…

On this Ash Wednesday, Days Of Ash is released as a self-contained collection of five new songs and a selected poem - American Obituary, The Tears Of Things, Song Of The Future, Wildpeace, One Life At A Time and Yours Eternally (ft. Ed Sheeran & Taras Topolia). This new EP is a response to current events, inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom. Four of the five tracks are about individuals – a mother, a father, a teenage girl whose lives were brutally cut short - and a soldier who’d rather be singing but is ready to die for the freedom of his country. Days of Ash EP available now. Listen here: u2.komi.io/

Key ideas in this paper were shared at the Biennial Conference of IDEA, ‘The Future of Practical Ethics’, University of Leeds, last week. It blends a bit of philosophy with a bit of technology :-) #AI yatesweb.com/is-an-ai-philos…

I might have the numbers a bit off, but when I joined Twitter in March 2009, there were around 15 million users worldwide. At the end of 2009, that was 75 million. #BlueskySocial yesterday hit 18 million, fuelled by X-edos. What’s the betting for Bsky users 6 months from now?

I don’t really do endorsements. I’m not shy about sharing my views, but I hate politics and don’t trust most politicians. I also understand that people want to hear from me because I am not just a celebrity, I am a former Republican Governor. My time as Governor taught me to love policy and ignore politics. I’m proud of the work I did to help clean up our air, create jobs, balance the budget, make the biggest infrastructure investment in state history, and take power from the politicians and give it back to the people when it comes to our redistricting process and our primaries in California. That’s policy. It requires working with the other side, not insulting them to win your next election, and I know it isn’t sexy to most people, but I love it when I can help make people’s lives better with policies, like I still do through my institute at USC, where we fight for clean air and stripping the power from the politicians who rig the system against the people. Let me be honest with you: I don’t like either party right now. My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results. Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime. It is probably not a surprise that I hate politics more than ever, which, if you are a normal person who isn’t addicted to this crap, you probably understand. I want to tune out. But I can’t. Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets. To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America is a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious. And I will always be an American before I am a Republican. That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I’m sharing it with all of you because I think there are a lot of you who feel like I do. You don’t recognize our country. And you are right to be furious. For decades, we’ve talked about the national debt. For decades, we’ve talked about comprehensive immigration reform that secures the border while fixing our broken immigration system. And Washington does nothing. The problems just keep rolling, and we all keep getting angrier, because the only people that benefit from problems aren’t you, the people. The only people that benefit from this crap are the politicians who prefer having talking points to win elections to the public service that will make Americans’ lives better. It is a just game to them. But it is life for my fellow Americans. We should be pissed! But a candidate who won’t respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea - that won’t solve our problems. It will just be four more years of bullshit with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful. We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger. That’s enough reason for me to share my vote with all of you. I want to move forward as a country, and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz. Vote this week. Turn the page and put this junk behind us. And even if you disagree with me, vote, because that’s what we do as Americans. vote.org

I WAS a life-long Republican. I went to the 1976 GOP Convention in Kansas City. In 1978, I helped run a GOP Congressional campaign. In law school, I worked for the GOP members of the NJ State Assembly. From 1981-1987, I worked in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department. 1/3

British people should be proud that they have a journalist, working on their behalf, attempting to hold Putin to account. Americans might reflect on how the Presidential candidates might respond to this question being asked.

Wealth of Elon Musk 2012: $2,000,000,000 2024: $273,000,000,000 Wealth of Jeff Bezos 2012: $18,400,000,000 2024: $207,100,000,000 Wealth of Mark Zuckerberg 2012: $17,500,000,000 2024: $200,000,000,000 Federal Minimum Wage 2012: $7.25 2024: $7.25 Three words: tax the rich.

Brave, Steve, thank you, a credit to you and the BBC

This might cost me billions in government contracts but just to be clear, WIRED endorses Kamala Harris.

Bob Woodward is one of America's greatest journalists whose career was born in the bile of nefarious dealings by the White House. He's as skeptical as a journalist can be because he knows that what the White House hides is monstrous. Only Joe Biden could make him report THIS:

Wow, this isn't just an endorsement of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz by Bruce Springsteen, it's a sermon, a song, and a love letter to America!

Holy shit! Bruce Springsteen, with one of the most eloquent endorsements for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz you'll hear. The Boss also delivered one of the strongest repudiations of the loathsome piece of shit I've heard from anyone. Let's fucking go‼️🙌🌊🇺🇸

The eloquence and righteous indignation of this Boomer woman from North Carolina makes my eyes well up with tears. Her outrage over degenerate Nazi Mark Robinson is palpable. 🥺🥺🥺🔥🔥🔥🙌🙏👏👊🌊🇺🇸

Timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs.

Reports that film of Angela Rayner enjoying herself on holiday has resulted in several members of the Reform and Conservative parties exploding with indignation and anger while the editor of the Daily Mail has been forced to have a long lay down.

This - from Private Eye - illustrates why it was reasonable to question the sentence lengths given to the Stop Oil protestors @RestIsPolitics

Liz Truss: “That’s not funny” The Entire UK: “Yes it fucking is!”