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You're correct that the technology is unprecedented. But, there's a lot of unprecedented technology invented every day. And for the most part we do just carry

You're correct that the technology is unprecedented. But, there's a lot of unprecedented technology invented every day. And for the most part we do just carry on as usual. That's part of what made the original internet such a beautiful place - we didn't try to waterlog it with proactive legislation because of potential bad things that could happen. Instead, that freedom created the wonderful ecosystem we have today. The (US) law eventually reacted, but for the most part did so in a measured and reasonable fashion to form things like DMCA and CFAA. Conversely, it's my opinion that proactive lawmaking leads to disastrous and overly broad, unenforceable, and burdensome laws like SOPA and CALEA. And I see this kind of ban on facial recognition to be firmly in the proactive category.

ace_of_spades 7y ago
I guess the main difference between now and then is that we are starting to have an idea of what is going to be possible and already see “dark uses” of technology happening (e.g., surveillance in china) whereas beforehand we were clueless about those things. I think that rejecting proactive legislation per se is a dangerous attitude. For example, see climate change. Proactive legislation could have made us avoid all of the discussions we are now working through during crunch time... If we have reasonable evidence that there is a high likelihood of us creating worlds that we don’t want to live in, we should take reasonable action proactively to avoid those scenarios. Thus, I agree with you that not all unprecedented technologies need to be proactively legislated but as soon as there is reasonable evidence for possible negative consequences we should start reasonable processes to avoid those consequences. There is no black or white situation here, we need to have evidence based discussions and work our way through this collectively.
tremon 7y ago
The technology is not what is being regulated here. What's being regulated is the use of said technology to do things that were hitherto untractable, and therefore not explicitly forbidden. In other words, for violating the spirit of the law, but on a computer.

ace_of_spades 7y ago

I guess the main difference between now and then is that we are starting to have an idea of what is going to be possible and already see “dark uses” of technology happening (e.g., surveillance in china) whereas beforehand we were clueless about those things. I think that rejecting proactive legislation per se is a dangerous attitude. For example, see climate change. Proactive legislation could have made us avoid all of the discussions we are now working through during crunch time... If we have reasonable evidence that there is a high likelihood of us creating worlds that we don’t want to live in, we should take reasonable action proactively to avoid those scenarios. Thus, I agree with you that not all unprecedented technologies need to be proactively legislated but as soon as there is reasonable evidence for possible negative consequences we should start reasonable processes to avoid those consequences. There is no black or white situation here, we need to have evidence based discussions and work our way through this collectively.

tremon 7y ago

The technology is not what is being regulated here. What's being regulated is the use of said technology to do things that were hitherto untractable, and therefore not explicitly forbidden. In other words, for violating the spirit of the law, but on a computer.