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Somebody will make the next version of GPT read the all existing published law and it will be a clusterfuck. Tons of contradictions, everybody is guilty of some

by comboy 6y ago

Somebody will make the next version of GPT read the all existing published law and it will be a clusterfuck. Tons of contradictions, everybody is guilty of something, nobody except computer program can hold it in their memory to know when and what should apply. It's madness. Yes I know it's only tangentially related, but I believe most regulations against big tech only establish their domination. These companies can likely invest more resources in legal analysis than the goverment, so they will use most of it to their advantage. Laws should be as general as possible. We have robots.txt, you can even add some new marker, if some news site doesn't want to have it content fetched in an automated way, let it have that but it's already a slippery slope because why should a human be able to read it and write an article citing source if a program cannot do that.

jokethrowaway 6y ago
While I generally agree with you (look how VATMOSS, that was supposed to be a way to force Amazon to pay vat taxes, forced all the small sellers - without money to spend on implementation - on Amazon), I don't see an upside for Google. This is likely just change for Google though. They probably consider the value of showing French newspaper content to be higher than whatever the price has been set.
cannabis_sam 6y ago
I kinda want to help make this a reality.. Even though I believe that a solely “mechanical”/“logical”interpretation of laws, misses the point in some really important ways. Approaching law/justice systems as a computer system to be manipulated, usually results in the judge seeing through the manipulation and cracking down on it, while still enforcing the spirit of the law rather than adhering to mechanical minutiae.. (Modulus the differences between common law and civil law jurisdictions, which probably colours my view)
- kazen44 6y ago
  contradictions also exist in civil law systems (ofcourse). But seem to be far less... cloudy then common law systems. Most contradictions in civil law seem to either be from really old law (think, pre french revolution/napoleonic period) or from weird edge cases which get covered by two laws which contradict themselves. The first one is usually not resolved because it is just straight up ignored. There was a famous example of this a couple of years ago about a law which prohibited people from carrying swords/knives inside city walls.
ardy42 6y ago
> ...but I believe most regulations against big tech only establish their domination. These companies can likely invest more resources in legal analysis than the goverment, so they will use most of it to their advantage. If that were true, or true to the degree suggested here, I don't think these companies would fight regulation as hard as they do. Rather, they'd embrace them and encourage more. IMHO, this kind of thinking is an interesting bit of free market propaganda, to the effect of convincing people that they're helpless in the face of domination by some corporation or other, and their only option is to wait patiently for some market-driven "creative destruction" to occur in the (perhaps far) future.
- comboy 6y ago
  Let me elaborate. Even ignoring potential loopholes and just creating new dynamics - they don't want it, the cost is high to adjust to that regulation. Creating some tools may be necessary, just getting familiar with it and creating a plan to follow it is a cost. Now this cost is additional entry cost for new companies, unless the law is passed specifically with the original company name with it, which I think should never be the case because law should apply equally to everybody. High entry cost is exactly how monopolies are created. Creating a youtube clone is much simpler than creating a youtube clone that doesn't brake any existing laws and regulations. Every additional regulation is making it harder. Case in point, I've run a forum for coders for 15 years with thousands of users. When the GDPR came out, I did not have time to make sure I follow it, the cost was too high, I shut it down. And of course the law was to protect users privacy from big evil companies. Guess who had money and resources to make sure they follow it.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Creating a youtube clone is much simpler than creating a youtube clone that doesn't brake any existing laws and regulations. Every additional regulation is making it harder. Though, that's an exceedingly narrow perspective, judging things exclusively on the effect on startup costs and ignoring everything else. An increase in startup costs often is an acceptable price to pay in order to achieve other goals. For instance, environmental regulations definitely make it more expensive and difficult to spin up many kinds of industrial plants (e.g. plant builders need to buy pollution control equipment and use more expensive processes that create less pollution), but it means less unhealthy air and rivers that can support life and don't catch on fire [1]. All the competition in the world won't achieve that. I think it's pretty useless to talk about "regulations" generically. It's really only helpful to talk about the costs and benefits of particular regulations, since that's the only context where you can figure out if the regulation is a net good or not. [1] https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire > Case in point, I've run a forum for coders for 15 years with thousand of users. When the GDPR came out, I did not have time to make sure I follow it, the cost was too high, I shut it down. And of course the law was to protect users privacy from big evil companies. Guess who had money and resources to make sure they follow it. While that may have been a negative to you personally, the alternative is to allow those big companies to violate users' privacy in ways the law forbids, which is worse. Also, I'm a little skeptical that the GDPR would actually placed much if any burden on site such as yours.

by comboy 6y ago

jokethrowaway 6y ago

While I generally agree with you (look how VATMOSS, that was supposed to be a way to force Amazon to pay vat taxes, forced all the small sellers - without money to spend on implementation - on Amazon), I don't see an upside for Google. This is likely just change for Google though. They probably consider the value of showing French newspaper content to be higher than whatever the price has been set.

cannabis_sam 6y ago

I kinda want to help make this a reality.. Even though I believe that a solely “mechanical”/“logical”interpretation of laws, misses the point in some really important ways. Approaching law/justice systems as a computer system to be manipulated, usually results in the judge seeing through the manipulation and cracking down on it, while still enforcing the spirit of the law rather than adhering to mechanical minutiae.. (Modulus the differences between common law and civil law jurisdictions, which probably colours my view)

kazen44 6y ago
contradictions also exist in civil law systems (ofcourse). But seem to be far less... cloudy then common law systems. Most contradictions in civil law seem to either be from really old law (think, pre french revolution/napoleonic period) or from weird edge cases which get covered by two laws which contradict themselves. The first one is usually not resolved because it is just straight up ignored. There was a famous example of this a couple of years ago about a law which prohibited people from carrying swords/knives inside city walls.

ardy42 6y ago

> ...but I believe most regulations against big tech only establish their domination. These companies can likely invest more resources in legal analysis than the goverment, so they will use most of it to their advantage. If that were true, or true to the degree suggested here, I don't think these companies would fight regulation as hard as they do. Rather, they'd embrace them and encourage more. IMHO, this kind of thinking is an interesting bit of free market propaganda, to the effect of convincing people that they're helpless in the face of domination by some corporation or other, and their only option is to wait patiently for some market-driven "creative destruction" to occur in the (perhaps far) future.

comboy 6y ago
Let me elaborate. Even ignoring potential loopholes and just creating new dynamics - they don't want it, the cost is high to adjust to that regulation. Creating some tools may be necessary, just getting familiar with it and creating a plan to follow it is a cost. Now this cost is additional entry cost for new companies, unless the law is passed specifically with the original company name with it, which I think should never be the case because law should apply equally to everybody. High entry cost is exactly how monopolies are created. Creating a youtube clone is much simpler than creating a youtube clone that doesn't brake any existing laws and regulations. Every additional regulation is making it harder. Case in point, I've run a forum for coders for 15 years with thousands of users. When the GDPR came out, I did not have time to make sure I follow it, the cost was too high, I shut it down. And of course the law was to protect users privacy from big evil companies. Guess who had money and resources to make sure they follow it.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Creating a youtube clone is much simpler than creating a youtube clone that doesn't brake any existing laws and regulations. Every additional regulation is making it harder. Though, that's an exceedingly narrow perspective, judging things exclusively on the effect on startup costs and ignoring everything else. An increase in startup costs often is an acceptable price to pay in order to achieve other goals. For instance, environmental regulations definitely make it more expensive and difficult to spin up many kinds of industrial plants (e.g. plant builders need to buy pollution control equipment and use more expensive processes that create less pollution), but it means less unhealthy air and rivers that can support life and don't catch on fire [1]. All the competition in the world won't achieve that. I think it's pretty useless to talk about "regulations" generically. It's really only helpful to talk about the costs and benefits of particular regulations, since that's the only context where you can figure out if the regulation is a net good or not. [1] https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire > Case in point, I've run a forum for coders for 15 years with thousand of users. When the GDPR came out, I did not have time to make sure I follow it, the cost was too high, I shut it down. And of course the law was to protect users privacy from big evil companies. Guess who had money and resources to make sure they follow it. While that may have been a negative to you personally, the alternative is to allow those big companies to violate users' privacy in ways the law forbids, which is worse. Also, I'm a little skeptical that the GDPR would actually placed much if any burden on site such as yours.