303 - Opensource Lawfare
The US is currently charting the shortest possible path to becoming a third-world country that comes in dead last for the AI domain by proposing a new bill in the Congress that would attempt to punish people for downloading an open-sourced AI model with a 20-year prison sentence.
They are attempting to make open-source software illegal, sending actual AI researchers, engineers, and developers to prison, while the most obvious frauds in the domain become the only ones legally allowed to operate in the US.
Sadly, I'm not pitching the plot for an "Idiocracy 2" movie, the US government is truly stupid enough to propose this. If they are stupid enough to even propose it, then it is time to leave. Move your business, move your people, and leave the hazard zone before the $hit hits the fan.
It might not hit the fan with this bill, but the pattern of US legislation is typically that the most idiotic bills like this do eventually get passed after enough lobbyists have been mustered to bribe and/or blackmail their way to a majority. That will likely take time, but so will moving your business and employees.
Since the US also uses haphazard systems of "legal precedent", introducing bills like this also creates a variety of new offshoots, each a slippery slope unto themselves, presenting a far greater hazard when considered together for the compounding effects they have on one another.
Most people knew that this was coming in some form, that the new administration would throw things into chaos, but being chaotic you can't predict very far in advance. Unpredictability and subsequent instability come at some very steep costs to financial markets, and existential uncertainty, like if your government will retroactively make your open-source software illegal, makes intellectual labor extremely unproductive.
This also offers a strong opportunity to the EU, which for many in the US is a default fallback option, with a variety of reasonably familiar and comfortable cultures, and some fairly favorable immigration policies. Most places in the EU, even major hubs like Paris and Amsterdam, remain far more economical options in terms of cost of living than any of the major US tech hubs.
If the EU follows the US, making all but the tools of the AI industry's most obvious frauds illegal to use, then other parts of the world such as Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America may well capture all of the talent that flees from regimes as they turn more darkly authoritarian and oligarchal.
I'm personally appreciating Vietnam right now, and when the US eventually decides to push the big red button on maximum stupidity, I will be on the opposite side of the planet, but I do hope that Europe doesn't send itself into a new Dark Age by repeating the US's mistakes.
