9 ms·

Isn't this the same argument as "ban murder, not guns"? Murder is illegal, yes, but fatalities are lower in places with gun control than places without.

whiddershins 4y ago
If it is, it is good for precisely the same reasons.
aftbit 4y ago
Yes, which is also a valid argument. Tools have no alignment. The people using them do. Thus, one should regulate the people, not the tools.
- mirchibajji 4y ago
  This is a case of people actively building and deciding to use a tool with plausible deniability built-in. How would you regulate people when they shirk any accountability? It is much more reasonable to require that people use a tool that shows its work.
  - everforward 4y ago
    > How would you regulate people when they shirk any accountability? This happens with or without AI. It's not too hard to make an algorithm that discriminates against people without doing so explicitly. You can use certain bits of data as proxies for whatever characteristic you want to discriminate against (e.g. ZIP code, household income, marital status, etc). Due to the myriad of ways to arrive at a discriminatory conclusion, it's easier to regulate results than tools. One potential solution to your question is to make the laws carry strict liability (I'm assuming the EU has something along those lines). Plausible deniability no longer exists because intent doesn't matter. The company is liable if someone can demonstrate discrimination, regardless of whether it was intentional or accidental. That ends up pushing towards something similar to what you want. It encourages a tool that can show its work to fend off lawsuits without being directly tied to the tool itself. The other alternative is extensive testing to make sure discrimination doesn't happen, but I think that will still be worrying to companies due to the inability to prove a negative.
- ip26 4y ago
  How about harmful tools with no practical uses to the general public? Mortars, tanks, ketamine, ICBM GPS units… You’re taking an absolutist position, so I’d like to explore it.
  - M4v3R 4y ago
    Curious that you’ve put ketamine, a well known anesthetic used primary by the vets but recently also used in depression treatment [1], in that list of “harmful tools with no practical uses”. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine-assisted_psychotherapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine-assisted_psychotherap...
    - ip26 4y ago
      Vets and psychotherapists are not “the general public”. Every item I listed has a clear and valuable purpose, but only in specific contexts.
      - M4v3R 4y ago
        Yeah I would consider pet owners and people with depression (so groups of people that benefit from this specific tool) a part of general public, both are fairly large groups.
        ip26 4y ago
        And ketamine is employed by trained professionals appropriately in veterinary hospitals and psychotherapy contexts. The public does not need unregulated access to ketamine for this to happen.
        neural_thing 4y ago
        Computers are employed by trained professionals appropriately in military contexts. The public does not need access to computers for this to happen.
cheeselip420 4y ago
The upside potential of guns is not even remotely comparable with AI...
- hyperhopper 4y ago
  Saving your own life could be argued to be the most important upside possible.
  - cheeselip420 4y ago
    Statistically you're much more likely to lose your life to a gun than to save your life with a gun...
  - talideon 4y ago
    Given you brought up Switzerland, "saving your own life" isn't a valid reason there: concealed carry isn't legal there, and you need a gun-carrying permit to open-carry outside of some very limited circumstances, such as travelling to and from a shooting range. The only people who can easily get gun-carrying permits are those in security and such. In Switzerland, guns exist for recreational and competitive shooting, hunting (so long as you have a hunting permit), and national defense. Not personal defense.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      Czechia is a European country you want to look at for an example that you can have gun laws that allow civilians to own handguns and carry them for defensive purposes without problems. US is somewhat unique in the Western world across the board - no public healthcare, generally poor social safety net etc - which means that exercises in causal linking of those unique traits to outcomes are wild guesswork, if one is taking a charitable perspective. A non-charitable one is that people mostly just cherry-pick things that compare favorably for whatever political cause they're advancing, and will often outright refuse to believe a similar comparison that is contradictory.
      - 4y ago
felipelemos 4y ago
In this case it's the opposite: they are trying to ban guns while not making murder a crime.
- amelius 4y ago
  Well, it would make sense if they (at least temporarily) banned guns if they didn't know yet that they could be used for murder.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    It's at "this thing shoots high speed metal projectiles at things far away in speed enough to go thru. We'd like to ban it before it becomes used for murders"
hyperhopper 4y ago
You should look up Switzerland's gun laws and intentional homicide rate if you think so. That is a far more complex issue which is far deeper than such a simple correlation.
- izacus 4y ago
  Switzerland is top of Europe in gun homicide rates with about 5x the EU average. You might not be making an example in support of an argument you think you're making ;P
  - hyperhopper 4y ago
    Yeah, and if you ban blue cars, blue cars will crash less and you'll see more red cars crash. I specifically said "intentional homicide rate" for a reason, to get ahead of this ridiculous argument that people bring up despite it not holding up or being relevant. I don't care how the homicide happens, I care that a homicide happened. And despite lots of guns, it doesn't happen a lot in Switzerland compared to the world or even other EU countries. Clearly, guns aren't the problem, the other factors play into it more.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    But it also has a murder rate less than half of France's. The people who use guns to kill in Switzerland instead use knives or other objects in France. (I am admittedly cheating a bit, as Switzerland lacks the high crime subpopulations that France has)
  - talideon 4y ago
    TBF, much of that is down to suicides, as Switzerland has a much higher rate of suicide by gun than other countries. The general gun homicide rate once they're omitted isn't quite so crazy.
    - briHass 4y ago
      Same in the US, of course. Suicide by gun counted as 'gun violence' is the classic disingenuous deception. Remove those and gang violence (primarily against rival gangs), and the numbers don't look that scary, which is the issue for those with an agenda.
theshrike79 4y ago
I'm thinking of this more in the way of "printers got so good so now they have to add tracking dots when people try to print money or IDs". We need the same thing for AI generated imagery, video and text.
- zirgs 4y ago
  What stops me from removing that data manually? Some AI tools are open source so nothing prevents me from modifying the code and removing the part that adds those watermarks. Even closed source programs can be patched to remove that functionality.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    Again, nothing like this is aimed to prevent 100% of anything. The tracking dots stop a huge portion of the low hanging fruit, identity thefts, fake money scams etc. Of course they do nothing to people who know how to hack the printer driver and/or firmware to remove tracking, but they aren't the ones being targeted. Having trackable data in the biggest AI-generators would again stop a metric fuckton of casually made revenge porn and fake news. It won't stop actual professionals from training their own GPT-3 to do the same thing.
  - antibasilisk 4y ago
    FYI this is something you can even do with printer dots
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > nothing prevents me from modifying the code and removing the part that adds those watermarks. These regulations are aimed at major institutions like banks. Those rely on government-provided privilidges and protectuons to exist. In return we expect they follow some rules. Nobody cares about AI running in your garage.
concordDance 4y ago
Seems more like banning cars than guns. Cars can be used pretty effectively for murder but the vast majority of use cases are not killing things.
- torstenvl 4y ago
  There are more firearms than cars in the U.S., but motor vehicles cause far more deaths (with the exception of 2020 when nobody was driving).
  - lillecarl 4y ago
    Unrelated but interesting fact, mortality rate per mile driven went up during covid. The reason motor vehicles kill so many people in the US is because of street design, but usually it's all clogged up with traffic to reduce speeds to a non-lethal level.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Just a note: gun control doesn’t do much because American gun manufacturers produce more than 10 million guns a year for the domestic consumer market. A ban would basically say no to that. What we have are laws against gun usage without any real constraints on a massive supply. It doesn’t make sense to use gun ban and gun control interchangeably.

whiddershins 4y ago

If it is, it is good for precisely the same reasons.

aftbit 4y ago

Yes, which is also a valid argument. Tools have no alignment. The people using them do. Thus, one should regulate the people, not the tools.

mirchibajji 4y ago
This is a case of people actively building and deciding to use a tool with plausible deniability built-in. How would you regulate people when they shirk any accountability? It is much more reasonable to require that people use a tool that shows its work.
- everforward 4y ago
  > How would you regulate people when they shirk any accountability? This happens with or without AI. It's not too hard to make an algorithm that discriminates against people without doing so explicitly. You can use certain bits of data as proxies for whatever characteristic you want to discriminate against (e.g. ZIP code, household income, marital status, etc). Due to the myriad of ways to arrive at a discriminatory conclusion, it's easier to regulate results than tools. One potential solution to your question is to make the laws carry strict liability (I'm assuming the EU has something along those lines). Plausible deniability no longer exists because intent doesn't matter. The company is liable if someone can demonstrate discrimination, regardless of whether it was intentional or accidental. That ends up pushing towards something similar to what you want. It encourages a tool that can show its work to fend off lawsuits without being directly tied to the tool itself. The other alternative is extensive testing to make sure discrimination doesn't happen, but I think that will still be worrying to companies due to the inability to prove a negative.
ip26 4y ago
How about harmful tools with no practical uses to the general public? Mortars, tanks, ketamine, ICBM GPS units… You’re taking an absolutist position, so I’d like to explore it.
- M4v3R 4y ago
  Curious that you’ve put ketamine, a well known anesthetic used primary by the vets but recently also used in depression treatment [1], in that list of “harmful tools with no practical uses”. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine-assisted_psychotherapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine-assisted_psychotherap...
  - ip26 4y ago
    Vets and psychotherapists are not “the general public”. Every item I listed has a clear and valuable purpose, but only in specific contexts.
    - M4v3R 4y ago
      Yeah I would consider pet owners and people with depression (so groups of people that benefit from this specific tool) a part of general public, both are fairly large groups.
      - ip26 4y ago
        And ketamine is employed by trained professionals appropriately in veterinary hospitals and psychotherapy contexts. The public does not need unregulated access to ketamine for this to happen.
        neural_thing 4y ago
        Computers are employed by trained professionals appropriately in military contexts. The public does not need access to computers for this to happen.

cheeselip420 4y ago

The upside potential of guns is not even remotely comparable with AI...

hyperhopper 4y ago
Saving your own life could be argued to be the most important upside possible.
- cheeselip420 4y ago
  Statistically you're much more likely to lose your life to a gun than to save your life with a gun...
- talideon 4y ago
  Given you brought up Switzerland, "saving your own life" isn't a valid reason there: concealed carry isn't legal there, and you need a gun-carrying permit to open-carry outside of some very limited circumstances, such as travelling to and from a shooting range. The only people who can easily get gun-carrying permits are those in security and such. In Switzerland, guns exist for recreational and competitive shooting, hunting (so long as you have a hunting permit), and national defense. Not personal defense.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Czechia is a European country you want to look at for an example that you can have gun laws that allow civilians to own handguns and carry them for defensive purposes without problems. US is somewhat unique in the Western world across the board - no public healthcare, generally poor social safety net etc - which means that exercises in causal linking of those unique traits to outcomes are wild guesswork, if one is taking a charitable perspective. A non-charitable one is that people mostly just cherry-pick things that compare favorably for whatever political cause they're advancing, and will often outright refuse to believe a similar comparison that is contradictory.
    - 4y ago

felipelemos 4y ago

In this case it's the opposite: they are trying to ban guns while not making murder a crime.

amelius 4y ago
Well, it would make sense if they (at least temporarily) banned guns if they didn't know yet that they could be used for murder.
- ilyt 4y ago
  It's at "this thing shoots high speed metal projectiles at things far away in speed enough to go thru. We'd like to ban it before it becomes used for murders"

hyperhopper 4y ago

You should look up Switzerland's gun laws and intentional homicide rate if you think so. That is a far more complex issue which is far deeper than such a simple correlation.

izacus 4y ago
Switzerland is top of Europe in gun homicide rates with about 5x the EU average. You might not be making an example in support of an argument you think you're making ;P
- hyperhopper 4y ago
  Yeah, and if you ban blue cars, blue cars will crash less and you'll see more red cars crash. I specifically said "intentional homicide rate" for a reason, to get ahead of this ridiculous argument that people bring up despite it not holding up or being relevant. I don't care how the homicide happens, I care that a homicide happened. And despite lots of guns, it doesn't happen a lot in Switzerland compared to the world or even other EU countries. Clearly, guns aren't the problem, the other factors play into it more.
- concordDance 4y ago
  But it also has a murder rate less than half of France's. The people who use guns to kill in Switzerland instead use knives or other objects in France. (I am admittedly cheating a bit, as Switzerland lacks the high crime subpopulations that France has)
- talideon 4y ago
  TBF, much of that is down to suicides, as Switzerland has a much higher rate of suicide by gun than other countries. The general gun homicide rate once they're omitted isn't quite so crazy.
  - briHass 4y ago
    Same in the US, of course. Suicide by gun counted as 'gun violence' is the classic disingenuous deception. Remove those and gang violence (primarily against rival gangs), and the numbers don't look that scary, which is the issue for those with an agenda.

theshrike79 4y ago

I'm thinking of this more in the way of "printers got so good so now they have to add tracking dots when people try to print money or IDs". We need the same thing for AI generated imagery, video and text.

zirgs 4y ago
What stops me from removing that data manually? Some AI tools are open source so nothing prevents me from modifying the code and removing the part that adds those watermarks. Even closed source programs can be patched to remove that functionality.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Again, nothing like this is aimed to prevent 100% of anything. The tracking dots stop a huge portion of the low hanging fruit, identity thefts, fake money scams etc. Of course they do nothing to people who know how to hack the printer driver and/or firmware to remove tracking, but they aren't the ones being targeted. Having trackable data in the biggest AI-generators would again stop a metric fuckton of casually made revenge porn and fake news. It won't stop actual professionals from training their own GPT-3 to do the same thing.
- antibasilisk 4y ago
  FYI this is something you can even do with printer dots
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > nothing prevents me from modifying the code and removing the part that adds those watermarks. These regulations are aimed at major institutions like banks. Those rely on government-provided privilidges and protectuons to exist. In return we expect they follow some rules. Nobody cares about AI running in your garage.

concordDance 4y ago

Seems more like banning cars than guns. Cars can be used pretty effectively for murder but the vast majority of use cases are not killing things.

torstenvl 4y ago
There are more firearms than cars in the U.S., but motor vehicles cause far more deaths (with the exception of 2020 when nobody was driving).
- lillecarl 4y ago
  Unrelated but interesting fact, mortality rate per mile driven went up during covid. The reason motor vehicles kill so many people in the US is because of street design, but usually it's all clogged up with traffic to reduce speeds to a non-lethal level.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

Just a note: gun control doesn’t do much because American gun manufacturers produce more than 10 million guns a year for the domestic consumer market. A ban would basically say no to that. What we have are laws against gun usage without any real constraints on a massive supply. It doesn’t make sense to use gun ban and gun control interchangeably.