I was so stressed at work a few years ago. Burnt out. Exhausted. I started meditating. Shared with my manager that I started, and it’s been helping me process all the chaos at work.
He told me that wasn’t normal, and I shouldn’t have to meditate just to function at work :’)
He was a smartass, but also very blunt - unsparingly.
I did not encourage him to, this was just during a weekly 1:1 where I was sharing with him how I’ve been coping with the amount of workload and chaos happening among the team/myself.
He was wanting to empathize me that it’s not normal to have to do that to be functional at work, acknowledging how rough things were at the time.
I kept doing it, but fell out of practice. Also left and no longer work there, due to stress and poor support. Shocker.
I was getting heat for proposing companies do this if they truly care about their mission.
Even if nothing comes of it, it’s a healthy consideration to anyone operating in the US to really think about their goals and what best sets them up for success.
Many other parts of the world do not operate under the same capitalistic mindset that American companies are forced into by pressure of the systems they are beholden to.
The UK is a lot more compassionate about people’s wishes, it’s not nearly as bureaucratic and polarizing “democracy” as the US. Laws in the UK are passed quickly, and feedback is always considered. Whether you agree or not on the regulation is another discussion.
Probably you're right overall but that doesn't apply to anyone who chooses to want to educate their kids in a non-taxpayer funded State school. Around 100–105 independent schools were reported as having ceased operations after the UK government introduced 20% VAT on private school fees from January 2025. Some may feel (I would not dare suggest it) that the current government is on a mission to close them all up unless they attract sufficiently rich parents like Eton. Closing the latter would be news indeed. However - exit Exeter Cathedral School after 847 years, which taught Charles II's composer and Coldplay's Chris Martin. It's closing with financial difficulties which have beset the sector in general since charges were introduced.
That's one way to look at it I suppose. The other is that these institutions had a tax break for a long time, not having to charge VAT like every other business. So I think quite a few people see it as a little unfair that the schools for rich kids get a tax break: and it is wealthier families that use private schools for the most part. It's not like these schools didn't know this rule change was coming.
I don't live in the UK these days, but one of the problems with the place is how complex the tax system is. All these little carve outs, sudden % cliffs, rebates and what have you. My first job was writing payroll software in the UK. You think that's the norm, then you move somewhere else and realize how much easier it is in many other countries. Then you get calls from people like "don't charge VAT on vegetables like in the UK": people don't understand the cost imposed administrating an ever more complex tax system.
It is extremely difficult for me to care about the fate of private schools. In my opinion, they shouldn't exist. If the rich are forced to send their children to the same schools as everyone else, maybe they'll pressure the government to improve said schools.
In all seriousness, I can’t believe the AI firms are abiding by this peacefully. If I truly loved my company, and I felt we were on the bleeding edge of incredible, life changing products, why would I allow my company to be set up for failure by remaining somewhere that clearly wants control over the sovereignty.
The US gov sees these AI companies as bartering power, not as innovation. Wouldn’t you as a parent always want what’s best for your child, not for yourself?
It also feels like they can’t just relocate out of the country, as the administration will surely sanction anyone from business within the country again. These firms are so over inflated with evaluations and opex, they’ve dug themselves into a corner.
This is not to say regulation does not exist in any other country, but it’s clear now after what’s happening at Anthropic + OAI that the US gov has taken these companies hostage.
This is only further playing into the hands of open source and the outside models; the US gov is going to be to blame for when they all lose the race to low cost/free.
> In all seriousness, I can’t believe the AI firms are abiding by this peacefully. If I truly loved my company, and I felt we were on the bleeding edge of incredible, life changing products, why would I allow my company to be set up for failure by remaining somewhere that clearly wants control over my sovereignty.
So, locate in China, where every company of importance is essentially required in practice to maintain ties to the CCP?
I personally think the US has gone too far with its use of export controls and sanctions as a political tool, but it's foolish to believe that it's different anywhere else on the planet.
In China, it has even been reported that top AI talent is restricted from overseas travel.
Bottom line: if you're working on cutting-edge technology that is deemed to be of critical national security importance and has military or dual use implications, you're going to be a hostage no matter where you go.
You wrongly assumed I implied these firms relocate to China. We are all aware of how China operates and controls its assets.
AI has long existed in many countries around the world without this type of behavior from the government. Deepmind in the UK, Mistral in France, DeepL in Germany - the governments don’t seem to be forcing employees to get their deploys approved by a government official.
My argument is that the US gov does not like that these companies have too much influence which they do not feel they can mandate. It’s slowing the entire country down at a very critical sink or swim inflection point in this tech.
> You wrongly assumed I implied these firms relocate to China. We are all aware of how China operates and controls its assets.
Then why write "+1 point to China!" and not "+1 point to the UK, France and Germany"?
> Deepmind in the UK, Mistral in France, DeepL in Germany - the governments don’t seem to be forcing employees to get their deploys approved by a government official.
The UK, France and Germany all have their own export controls rules, so if a company in these countries comes up with a model that those governments deem to be of significant enough importance, they also have the means to exercise greater control over them as well.
The latest models from Anthropic and OpenAI are said to be the most advanced in the world. Agree or disagree, like it or not, the powers that be in the US determined that there is sufficient justification to control their export. Under long-standing and perfectly legal export control laws, the US has the ability to issue such orders.
In the case of Anthropic, the company chose to reverse providing public access to Fable because it said it could not comply with the requirement that non-US nationals (even those residing in the US) be restricted from accessing Fable.
> It’s slowing the entire country down at a very critical sink or swim inflection point in this tech.
You might or might not be right, but I think many people would argue that "move fast and break things" is risky when it comes to AI. I can't say that the current administration is genuinely concerned about the broad societal impacts of AI but if the effect of their brand of greater oversight is that companies like Anthropic and OpenAI have to slow down, it might not be a bad thing for humanity.
I think it’s pretty clear why they’re abiding by this:
-the US is the only place where you can raise the kinds of money you need to run a lab like this.
-a government that won’t let you sell products to customers abroad will probably object even more to you moving abroad.
Even if you made the move abroad, that government might no longer let you access US data centers.
-This basically affects OpenAI and Anthropic, which make the only LLMs most people consider frontier nowadays. Since most open weights models rely on distillation of frontier models, it may genuinely entrench those companies more.
It may be playing into the hands of open source OAI/Anthropic dependencies start to look more dangerous, but it also makes building better OSS models harder.
The advantages the AI labs rely on might be less durable than a proprietary process in industrial manufacturing, but it’s still meaningful.
I think the bigger reckoning will come from a different angle: tokens will eventually need to cover cost.
That will likely mean multiplying prices compared to today. And companies already complain now!
Model orchestration and smaller models that can run locally or cheaply will become more important in my opinion.
Right now, you can still default to GPT/Claude and it’s kind of fine, but that will have to change.
The elephant in the room is that the US AI firms should not be as valuable as they are. They should not require the sort of capital they are seeking, the amount of employees, the amount of offices and resources..but they are so steeped in investor interests - why stop being fed?
Many Americans want AI to fail. The US gov wants to control AI. The AI companies are running out of things to do, and are shipping product after product after product to keep the perceived productivity narrative alive.
At this rate I would not be surprised to see an OAI/Anthropic merger just to throw everything AI the US has to offer to the global markets.
Whether they’re over-valued and over-resourced is a big question. I think that will be answered when eventual price hikes happen and people shift which AI they use and/or what they use it for.
We’re still in the “5$ airport Ubers thanks to VC money” era of AI
I have a few friends who have gone into VC either starting their own or an existing. Hearing about some of the companies they are invested in makes me realize that half of these show HN posts are legit multi billion companies already with 2-5 person teams. As you’ve said, low to zero profit, and seemingly no corner on the market.
It’s like coin collecting, without the currency part - just hoping someone one day sees it, and wants to put them on their coin on their shelf. I can’t make sense of it, maybe that’s the point. I miss when VCs cared about helping people change the world, better or worse (ideally better).
I guess we all get to continue trusting GAM (https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM) with an entire companies most precious data, instead of, I don’t know…Google?
California still S-tier for protecting its land and people.