11 ms·

Will AI obliterate the rule of law?

46 points by mmphosis 4y ago

cs702 4y ago
The OP is a bit too long-winded for my taste, but this passage struck a chord with me: > If AI companies are allowed to market AI systems that are essentially black boxes, they could become the ultimate ends-justify-the-means devices. Before too long, we will not delegate decisions to AI systems because they perform better. Rather, we will delegate decisions to AI systems because they can get away with everything that we can’t. You’ve heard of money laundering? This is human-behavior laundering. At last—plausible deniability for everything. Corporations routinely get caught doing things that are illegal, but employees rarely suffer any legal consequences because it proves really hard or impossible to pin responsibility on any one person. The responsibility is diffuse; it falls on the system, not on the individuals that work for it. AI will make it more so.
- jerry80 4y ago
  A lot of crimes things require intent. Perhaps using AI could actually circumvent the intent requirement of crime, thus making a lot of otherwise illegal things totally legal. That is to say, it not only makes it hard to pin responsibility, but actually makes it no longer a crime at all.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    I think this is actually a good thing in the long run because “requiring intent” creates a clearly perverse incentive where the organization may be able to do illegal things so long as it can delude itself about them, for instance by keeping inaccurate books or allowing broken processes to remain broken because fixing them would shed light on something illegal. Instead I think it would be better for organizations to be approximately as liable for their mistakes as their crimes. In that case it doesn’t matter if an employee does something illegal or an AI does some illegal on behalf of the company, the company will remain liable.
    - eropple 4y ago
      > I think this is actually a good thing in the long run because “requiring intent” creates a clearly perverse incentive where the organization may be able to do illegal things so long as it can delude itself about them This doesn't really match how intent is handled in (at least American) law. There are reasonable-person tests. It is subpar, and so I agree with your second paragraph, but it isn't as cut and dry as the first paragraph suggests.
    - Kranar 4y ago
      Intent/mens rea doesn't work like that unless the law explicitly specifies so. By default intent simply means intent to perform an act, as opposed to intent to cause harm. In some specific cases, like murder, intent to cause harm is an element, but that's the exception not the rule. For example if you intentionally take someone's property, maybe you took their phone away because you genuinely thought their phone was causing them harm and wanted to help them, you have the mens rea for theft. However, if you unintentionally took someone's phone, like you mistook someone else's phone for your phone, then you don't have the mens rea for theft.
  - simonh 4y ago
    We’ve had software making business decisions for decades now, so this really isn’t a new problem. When is comes to finance laws, intent doesn’t work like that, the onus is on the company and it’s employees to prevent the criminal activity. Lack of intent, or even knowledge, is not sufficient. You have a responsibility to implement processes that give you the knowledge you need. I wrote the above before reading the article and wondered how much the author knows about corporate criminal and civil responsibility. I’ve worked for finance institutions so I’ve been through the training on this. A graphic designer. Right, I completely understand and appreciate the problems with generative AI. Those are points well taken. I mean I’ve got nothing against graphic designers, and I’m not saying there are no risks with AI. There are many. But the risk assessment particularly in finance, and likely other business areas is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the way regulations on this actually work already today.
- bjt2n3904 4y ago
  Human behavior laundering is a magnificent phrase. The only thing is you don't have to worry about this in the future, it's already here. [1] 1 - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight-idUSKCN1MK08G https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...
- GuB-42 4y ago
  When a company does something illegal, the employees are also punished in a "diffuse" manner, as a result of economic sanctions. When a big company has to pay a X million fine, it is X less million for paying employees, so less raises, maybe layoffs, etc... People who invested in that unlawful company will also lose money. When it is not just money matters (like when people may die), we usually designate one person, and say something like "if people die, you go do jail, make sure it doesn't happen". Up to him to make sure he does what is necessary, including punishing employees who do not follow the rules.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Counterpoint: when the fine is less then the profit made from doing the illegal action it us just the cost of doing business.
    - GuB-42 4y ago
      Same thing for individuals. I know some people who never pay for parking, public transport, or tolls, because in their case, the fine for not paying times the chance of getting caught is less than the ticket price.
      - stevesearer 4y ago
        I recall that some Scandinavian countries base fine amounts for traffic violations like speeding according to income.
        bheadmaster 4y ago
        I guess that makes it economically viable for people with less income not to follow the law.
        MaxMatti 4y ago
        It's actually the other way around. It's high enough to not be economically viable for anybody.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Not only corporations. States (government and police and law) will also use this BS...
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  First, AI being a black box isn’t a legal shield. See Tesla Autopilot. Second, corporations and employees have a specifically unique legal relationship but employers can be held criminally responsible for their actions if their actions are intentionally illegal. Often a corporations actions are illegal in the aggregate but no one person did anything illegal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Kenneth_Lay_and_Jeffrey_Skilling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Kenneth_Lay_and_Jef...
- curiousllama 4y ago
  Eh, we’ve had black boxes for a while. It’s just a non-human “fall guy.” The law deals with this with outcome tests: if the outcome would have been illegal had a person done it, then the person using the black box is liable. Eg, if you hire on non-skill-based criteria, and the outcome is not similar to the racial distribution of the applicant pool, you’re liable for discriminatory hiring. This is a common problem with using personality-based hiring assessments.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  One of the biggest problems with the concept of corporate personhood is that if a corporation commits a crime you can't just throw it in jail like a normal person. At some point perhaps we should just consider the "death penalty" for corporations that break the law. That or we start holding executives and/or shareholders accountable for the actions that happen in organisations they're supposed to control.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  The entire point of corporations is diffuse legal liability. We already see this as well in the law no AI needed this is why is rare for an individual police officer, judge, or prosecutor to face any accountability. The system is designed to ensure no personal accountability via over lapping nearly impenetrable liability shields (aka immunity) The mantra then becomes "we have a systemic problem", and no one can agree on either the actual problem nor the solution when in reality we have a liability issue. This will only grow with AI, but the fact people do not see that we have already obliterated the rule of law long before the law was touched by AI, we have no hope of stopping the abuse by AI
  - Jeff_Brown 4y ago
    That ñack of personal accountability would be no problem, though, if the corporate sanctions for lawbreaking had sufficient teeth. Corporations will always treat fines etc. as a cost of doing business; the cost should be high enough to deter lawbreaking.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      While that is true, I have seen executives attitude change when a regulation held them personally liable, either economically or under threat of jail time, in those are taken far far more seriously then when the punishment is just a fine for the company which then is a math problem, is the fine more than compliance.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    The police should absolutely not operate as anything like a corporation, it is a fundamental pillar of democracy, this should be absolutely accountable for any wrongdoing. What individual officers can get away with in the US is just completely insane.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      I dont think I claimed they should, the juxtaposition was the parent comment about corporations and tying that in the wider concept of law. Corporations are legal constructions to limit liability not only of investors but of employees of the corporation, that is their function in law Similarly the law has other legal constructions to exempt and limit liability for other positions inside that system So it not that police are operating as corporations, the same legal construction that created corporations also created police forces. The root of the problem for both is the same (more on that in a second) >>it is a fundamental pillar of democracy I disagree here kinda, a fundamental pillar of democracy is equality under the law, the root of the problem for both police, corporations, politicians, etc is the ability for the law to make some people "more equal" than others... i.e not equal at all. This is done by making police officers exempt from some laws, some regulations, some liability even if the city is not... this is done by making individuals exempt from regulations even if the corporation is not... So you are correct that police should not be operated like a corporation, but at the same we can look at the law and see where there are treated similarly and see why that is a problem. I will refrain from my general negativity about democracy and just say that for what you call democracy to hold everyone must be treated equal under the law... and I do mean everyone, and I do mean equal. No exemptions, no special privileges. Most political ideologies have a problem with true equality
oidar 4y ago
Related: ChatGPT Says What Our Unconscious Radically Represses by Slavoj Žižek <https://www.sublationmag.com/post/chatgpt-says-what-our-unconscious-radically-represses https://www.sublationmag.com/post/chatgpt-says-what-our-unco...>
- kflfodp 4y ago
  Zizek is a slippery faux intellectual who says very little with a lot of flowery academic language, making his money by grifting midwits who can't see past his use of language, and who knows absolutely nothing about what he's talking about here, absolutely nothing, but thinks he's got an insight because he's done so much cocaine he thinks he's God's gift to modern philosophy
  - Jeff_Brown 4y ago
    Ok sure but tell me how you feel.
- eternalban 4y ago
  Unconscious is far too generous a term and already loaded with implication at the possibility of consciousness (given that consciousness arose from a unconscious substrate). LLMs can be (at best) considered intellectual zombies until proven otherwise.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    Everyone except me is an intellectual zombie until proven otherwise.
    - eternalban 4y ago
      That is a reasonable position if one ignores others are of the same species (mechanisms if you wish). In fact your position is the very position of a racist mind that refuses to project the implicit “this other is just like me” and thus refused to acknowledge the humanity of the other.
MrThoughtful 4y ago
What is the modus operandi for upvoting links on HN these days? Is it to upvote interesting titles, so we can discuss certain topics? Or to upvote interesting content? The topic (AI and the future of copyright law) is interesting. But the content seems to be an angry rant without any merit or structure. many generative AI products are based on massive violations of law If so, which law was violated?
- ben_w 4y ago
  Off the top of my head (and IANAL): 1. Copyright laws 2. Data protection/privacy laws e.g. national implementations of GDPR, medical privacy laws
  - MrThoughtful 4y ago
    Why? How does training a neural network violate copyright law? Which paragraph? Same question for "data protection/privacy".
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      If current AI's don't actually violate copyright law (doubtful) then they should be modified, since it is obviously harmful to actual creators and will likely result in shitty outcomes for existing artists, fewer future artists, and less compelling art overall. If copyright law isn't intended to protect artistry in the case of existential threat, what exactly is the point of copyright law, anyway? I personally think an unstated goal of society is that it's primarily for the benefit of humans, and the major problem with AI is it ignores that. Art in particular is special, and if AI cheapens art, it cheapens the human experience.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        I have no idea how you make the law in the way that does not also punish other humans/businesses and give a massive windfall of power to large businesses that buy up copyright.
      - 4y ago
tromp 4y ago
> For instance, to run a typography business, I have to stay conversant in at least four programming languages—Python, JavaScript, Racket, and Swift The latter two are relatively uncommon. I can see why Swift might be needed for Apple's platform, but I was curious what the functional language Racket is doing in that list. A bit of Googling revealed that the author himself wrote a book publishing tool in Racket: https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/
- soegaard 4y ago
  Butterick has written several typography related tools in Racket: https://git.matthewbutterick.com/explore/repos?sort=recentupdate https://git.matthewbutterick.com/explore/repos?sort=recentup...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
z82s3 4y ago
This essay advances, but does not really analyze, the legalist argument against generative AI. I found it uncompelling. It would be more interesting to discuss the moral and ethical arguments rather than discuss old laws that were never designed to answer questions about AI.
maximejkb 4y ago
I think it's particularly interesting to see this debate play out as AI starts to reproduce code. As in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35643715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35643715 -- I find that people who work on these systems are fine with exposing all kinds of artists and writers to the dangers of automation, but when that comes home to roost and AI starts to be able to reproduce their own work, suddenly it's a problem. It just makes me wonder why should software engineers should represent some special protected class from the dangers of automation. Not saying this author is 100% right, just saying I understand the spirit of it.
- GaggiX 4y ago
  Most software engineers I know are happy to use ChatGPT.
- Jeff_Brown 4y ago
  Political influence, like just about everything, is distributed unequally. I doubt software engineers have much more pull than artists. But once AI is threatening to obsolete lots of labor, it might run into problems. The strategic way to introduce it, therefore, would be in ways that help a lot of people without (at least initially) destroying many jobs. But it seems like firms would have to cooperate beyond what they are capable of to pull that off.
throwawayadvsec 4y ago
[flagged]
- kneebonian 4y ago
  Please keep comments constructive and engage with the subject of discussion rather than ad hominem attacks.
mindslight 4y ago
All of these "will AI destroy X" articles are so weird. It's not as if unbridled late stage capitalism [0] hasn't been undermining our longstanding institutions and values. It's not as if corporate bureaucracies aren't artificial intelligences that we've been ceding control to for decades, while they increasingly become paperclip maximizers. I fully expect "AI" to turn the screws on existing power imbalances even harder, but to frame things as if we're at some watershed moment strikes me as utterly myopic. [0] as distinct from distributed free market activity. I'm coming from a libertarian perspective here.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  Perhaps off topic, but I thought late stage capitalism is the what you get as a result of libertarianism. To avoid wealth and power imbalances you need to effectively wield our democratic powers and take money from winners and redistribute it to the losers. (As taxes and regulation)
  - mindslight 4y ago
    Thorough corporate welfare and regulatory capture across all industries, including the government routinely giving away trillions of dollars to banks, is not what I'd call libertarian at all. I'm open to the possibility that centralized capital accretion is inevitable, it's just not my null hypothesis and it's not the experiment we're running. Overall I identify with libertarianism because individual freedom is a powerful perspective. It's most certainly not the only perspective, but it seems to be one of the easiest to lose sight of. And notice how I left the 'l' lower case - I'd say that the US "Libertarian" party is set up to be the exact same type of corporatist bait and switch as the other parties.
    - jay_kyburz 4y ago
      Corporate welfare and regulatory capture is just corruption in my mind. It's a symptom of individuals having too much power. When I think if late stage capitalism I imagine a world where all our millions of individual businesses and are merged into just a few super conglomerates. Winners snowballing power, hovering up smaller players, all perfectly legal. That's the result of not taxing enough and blocking mergers. I don't identify with libertarianism because, although I acknowledge that some people work harder than others, there is a multitude of factors outside our own control that effect our ability to succeed.
gavinhoward 4y ago
Betteridge's Law of Headlines is wrong here because the answer is "yes, unless we do something about it." The problem is that AI centralizes control [1], even "democratic" uses of AI, and the scale of AI will make it so entities that have resources will be able to scale their use of AI more. And once an entity becomes large enough, they become a law unto themselves. Thus, they will ignore the rule of law and impose rules on us. To those who claim that AI "Luddites" are hindering AI, would you be so eager to go that direction if you could see the future, and the future with AI was dystopian? I promise you that it will be because those with control will toss us aside once they think they don't need us. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2022/10/dispelling-ai-myths-and-rhetoric/ https://gavinhoward.com/2022/10/dispelling-ai-myths-and-rhet...

46 points by mmphosis 4y ago

The OP is a bit too long-winded for my taste, but this passage struck a chord with me: > If AI companies are allowed to market AI systems that are essentially black boxes, they could become the ultimate ends-justify-the-means devices. Before too long, we will not delegate decisions to AI systems because they perform better. Rather, we will delegate decisions to AI systems because they can get away with everything that we can’t. You’ve heard of money laundering? This is human-behavior laundering. At last—plausible deniability for everything. Corporations routinely get caught doing things that are illegal, but employees rarely suffer any legal consequences because it proves really hard or impossible to pin responsibility on any one person. The responsibility is diffuse; it falls on the system, not on the individuals that work for it. AI will make it more so.

jerry80 4y ago
A lot of crimes things require intent. Perhaps using AI could actually circumvent the intent requirement of crime, thus making a lot of otherwise illegal things totally legal. That is to say, it not only makes it hard to pin responsibility, but actually makes it no longer a crime at all.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  I think this is actually a good thing in the long run because “requiring intent” creates a clearly perverse incentive where the organization may be able to do illegal things so long as it can delude itself about them, for instance by keeping inaccurate books or allowing broken processes to remain broken because fixing them would shed light on something illegal. Instead I think it would be better for organizations to be approximately as liable for their mistakes as their crimes. In that case it doesn’t matter if an employee does something illegal or an AI does some illegal on behalf of the company, the company will remain liable.
  - eropple 4y ago
    > I think this is actually a good thing in the long run because “requiring intent” creates a clearly perverse incentive where the organization may be able to do illegal things so long as it can delude itself about them This doesn't really match how intent is handled in (at least American) law. There are reasonable-person tests. It is subpar, and so I agree with your second paragraph, but it isn't as cut and dry as the first paragraph suggests.
  - Kranar 4y ago
    Intent/mens rea doesn't work like that unless the law explicitly specifies so. By default intent simply means intent to perform an act, as opposed to intent to cause harm. In some specific cases, like murder, intent to cause harm is an element, but that's the exception not the rule. For example if you intentionally take someone's property, maybe you took their phone away because you genuinely thought their phone was causing them harm and wanted to help them, you have the mens rea for theft. However, if you unintentionally took someone's phone, like you mistook someone else's phone for your phone, then you don't have the mens rea for theft.
- simonh 4y ago
  We’ve had software making business decisions for decades now, so this really isn’t a new problem. When is comes to finance laws, intent doesn’t work like that, the onus is on the company and it’s employees to prevent the criminal activity. Lack of intent, or even knowledge, is not sufficient. You have a responsibility to implement processes that give you the knowledge you need. I wrote the above before reading the article and wondered how much the author knows about corporate criminal and civil responsibility. I’ve worked for finance institutions so I’ve been through the training on this. A graphic designer. Right, I completely understand and appreciate the problems with generative AI. Those are points well taken. I mean I’ve got nothing against graphic designers, and I’m not saying there are no risks with AI. There are many. But the risk assessment particularly in finance, and likely other business areas is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the way regulations on this actually work already today.
bjt2n3904 4y ago
Human behavior laundering is a magnificent phrase. The only thing is you don't have to worry about this in the future, it's already here. [1] 1 - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight-idUSKCN1MK08G https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...
GuB-42 4y ago
When a company does something illegal, the employees are also punished in a "diffuse" manner, as a result of economic sanctions. When a big company has to pay a X million fine, it is X less million for paying employees, so less raises, maybe layoffs, etc... People who invested in that unlawful company will also lose money. When it is not just money matters (like when people may die), we usually designate one person, and say something like "if people die, you go do jail, make sure it doesn't happen". Up to him to make sure he does what is necessary, including punishing employees who do not follow the rules.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Counterpoint: when the fine is less then the profit made from doing the illegal action it us just the cost of doing business.
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    Same thing for individuals. I know some people who never pay for parking, public transport, or tolls, because in their case, the fine for not paying times the chance of getting caught is less than the ticket price.
    - stevesearer 4y ago
      I recall that some Scandinavian countries base fine amounts for traffic violations like speeding according to income.
      - bheadmaster 4y ago
        I guess that makes it economically viable for people with less income not to follow the law.
        MaxMatti 4y ago
        It's actually the other way around. It's high enough to not be economically viable for anybody.
coldtea 4y ago
Not only corporations. States (government and police and law) will also use this BS...
fnordpiglet 4y ago
First, AI being a black box isn’t a legal shield. See Tesla Autopilot. Second, corporations and employees have a specifically unique legal relationship but employers can be held criminally responsible for their actions if their actions are intentionally illegal. Often a corporations actions are illegal in the aggregate but no one person did anything illegal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Kenneth_Lay_and_Jeffrey_Skilling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Kenneth_Lay_and_Jef...
curiousllama 4y ago
Eh, we’ve had black boxes for a while. It’s just a non-human “fall guy.” The law deals with this with outcome tests: if the outcome would have been illegal had a person done it, then the person using the black box is liable. Eg, if you hire on non-skill-based criteria, and the outcome is not similar to the racial distribution of the applicant pool, you’re liable for discriminatory hiring. This is a common problem with using personality-based hiring assessments.
RobotToaster 4y ago
One of the biggest problems with the concept of corporate personhood is that if a corporation commits a crime you can't just throw it in jail like a normal person. At some point perhaps we should just consider the "death penalty" for corporations that break the law. That or we start holding executives and/or shareholders accountable for the actions that happen in organisations they're supposed to control.
phpisthebest 4y ago
The entire point of corporations is diffuse legal liability. We already see this as well in the law no AI needed this is why is rare for an individual police officer, judge, or prosecutor to face any accountability. The system is designed to ensure no personal accountability via over lapping nearly impenetrable liability shields (aka immunity) The mantra then becomes "we have a systemic problem", and no one can agree on either the actual problem nor the solution when in reality we have a liability issue. This will only grow with AI, but the fact people do not see that we have already obliterated the rule of law long before the law was touched by AI, we have no hope of stopping the abuse by AI
- Jeff_Brown 4y ago
  That ñack of personal accountability would be no problem, though, if the corporate sanctions for lawbreaking had sufficient teeth. Corporations will always treat fines etc. as a cost of doing business; the cost should be high enough to deter lawbreaking.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    While that is true, I have seen executives attitude change when a regulation held them personally liable, either economically or under threat of jail time, in those are taken far far more seriously then when the punishment is just a fine for the company which then is a math problem, is the fine more than compliance.
- kaba0 4y ago
  The police should absolutely not operate as anything like a corporation, it is a fundamental pillar of democracy, this should be absolutely accountable for any wrongdoing. What individual officers can get away with in the US is just completely insane.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    I dont think I claimed they should, the juxtaposition was the parent comment about corporations and tying that in the wider concept of law. Corporations are legal constructions to limit liability not only of investors but of employees of the corporation, that is their function in law Similarly the law has other legal constructions to exempt and limit liability for other positions inside that system So it not that police are operating as corporations, the same legal construction that created corporations also created police forces. The root of the problem for both is the same (more on that in a second) >>it is a fundamental pillar of democracy I disagree here kinda, a fundamental pillar of democracy is equality under the law, the root of the problem for both police, corporations, politicians, etc is the ability for the law to make some people "more equal" than others... i.e not equal at all. This is done by making police officers exempt from some laws, some regulations, some liability even if the city is not... this is done by making individuals exempt from regulations even if the corporation is not... So you are correct that police should not be operated like a corporation, but at the same we can look at the law and see where there are treated similarly and see why that is a problem. I will refrain from my general negativity about democracy and just say that for what you call democracy to hold everyone must be treated equal under the law... and I do mean everyone, and I do mean equal. No exemptions, no special privileges. Most political ideologies have a problem with true equality

oidar 4y ago

Related: ChatGPT Says What Our Unconscious Radically Represses by Slavoj Žižek <https://www.sublationmag.com/post/chatgpt-says-what-our-unconscious-radically-represses https://www.sublationmag.com/post/chatgpt-says-what-our-unco...>

kflfodp 4y ago
Zizek is a slippery faux intellectual who says very little with a lot of flowery academic language, making his money by grifting midwits who can't see past his use of language, and who knows absolutely nothing about what he's talking about here, absolutely nothing, but thinks he's got an insight because he's done so much cocaine he thinks he's God's gift to modern philosophy
- Jeff_Brown 4y ago
  Ok sure but tell me how you feel.
eternalban 4y ago
Unconscious is far too generous a term and already loaded with implication at the possibility of consciousness (given that consciousness arose from a unconscious substrate). LLMs can be (at best) considered intellectual zombies until proven otherwise.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  Everyone except me is an intellectual zombie until proven otherwise.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    That is a reasonable position if one ignores others are of the same species (mechanisms if you wish). In fact your position is the very position of a racist mind that refuses to project the implicit “this other is just like me” and thus refused to acknowledge the humanity of the other.

MrThoughtful 4y ago

What is the modus operandi for upvoting links on HN these days? Is it to upvote interesting titles, so we can discuss certain topics? Or to upvote interesting content? The topic (AI and the future of copyright law) is interesting. But the content seems to be an angry rant without any merit or structure. many generative AI products are based on massive violations of law If so, which law was violated?

ben_w 4y ago
Off the top of my head (and IANAL): 1. Copyright laws 2. Data protection/privacy laws e.g. national implementations of GDPR, medical privacy laws
- MrThoughtful 4y ago
  Why? How does training a neural network violate copyright law? Which paragraph? Same question for "data protection/privacy".
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    If current AI's don't actually violate copyright law (doubtful) then they should be modified, since it is obviously harmful to actual creators and will likely result in shitty outcomes for existing artists, fewer future artists, and less compelling art overall. If copyright law isn't intended to protect artistry in the case of existential threat, what exactly is the point of copyright law, anyway? I personally think an unstated goal of society is that it's primarily for the benefit of humans, and the major problem with AI is it ignores that. Art in particular is special, and if AI cheapens art, it cheapens the human experience.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      I have no idea how you make the law in the way that does not also punish other humans/businesses and give a massive windfall of power to large businesses that buy up copyright.
    - 4y ago

tromp 4y ago

> For instance, to run a typography business, I have to stay conversant in at least four programming languages—Python, JavaScript, Racket, and Swift The latter two are relatively uncommon. I can see why Swift might be needed for Apple's platform, but I was curious what the functional language Racket is doing in that list. A bit of Googling revealed that the author himself wrote a book publishing tool in Racket: https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/

soegaard 4y ago
Butterick has written several typography related tools in Racket: https://git.matthewbutterick.com/explore/repos?sort=recentupdate https://git.matthewbutterick.com/explore/repos?sort=recentup...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

z82s3 4y ago

This essay advances, but does not really analyze, the legalist argument against generative AI. I found it uncompelling. It would be more interesting to discuss the moral and ethical arguments rather than discuss old laws that were never designed to answer questions about AI.

maximejkb 4y ago

I think it's particularly interesting to see this debate play out as AI starts to reproduce code. As in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35643715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35643715 -- I find that people who work on these systems are fine with exposing all kinds of artists and writers to the dangers of automation, but when that comes home to roost and AI starts to be able to reproduce their own work, suddenly it's a problem. It just makes me wonder why should software engineers should represent some special protected class from the dangers of automation. Not saying this author is 100% right, just saying I understand the spirit of it.

GaggiX 4y ago
Most software engineers I know are happy to use ChatGPT.
Jeff_Brown 4y ago
Political influence, like just about everything, is distributed unequally. I doubt software engineers have much more pull than artists. But once AI is threatening to obsolete lots of labor, it might run into problems. The strategic way to introduce it, therefore, would be in ways that help a lot of people without (at least initially) destroying many jobs. But it seems like firms would have to cooperate beyond what they are capable of to pull that off.

throwawayadvsec 4y ago

[flagged]

kneebonian 4y ago
Please keep comments constructive and engage with the subject of discussion rather than ad hominem attacks.

mindslight 4y ago

All of these "will AI destroy X" articles are so weird. It's not as if unbridled late stage capitalism [0] hasn't been undermining our longstanding institutions and values. It's not as if corporate bureaucracies aren't artificial intelligences that we've been ceding control to for decades, while they increasingly become paperclip maximizers. I fully expect "AI" to turn the screws on existing power imbalances even harder, but to frame things as if we're at some watershed moment strikes me as utterly myopic. [0] as distinct from distributed free market activity. I'm coming from a libertarian perspective here.

jay_kyburz 4y ago
Perhaps off topic, but I thought late stage capitalism is the what you get as a result of libertarianism. To avoid wealth and power imbalances you need to effectively wield our democratic powers and take money from winners and redistribute it to the losers. (As taxes and regulation)
- mindslight 4y ago
  Thorough corporate welfare and regulatory capture across all industries, including the government routinely giving away trillions of dollars to banks, is not what I'd call libertarian at all. I'm open to the possibility that centralized capital accretion is inevitable, it's just not my null hypothesis and it's not the experiment we're running. Overall I identify with libertarianism because individual freedom is a powerful perspective. It's most certainly not the only perspective, but it seems to be one of the easiest to lose sight of. And notice how I left the 'l' lower case - I'd say that the US "Libertarian" party is set up to be the exact same type of corporatist bait and switch as the other parties.
  - jay_kyburz 4y ago
    Corporate welfare and regulatory capture is just corruption in my mind. It's a symptom of individuals having too much power. When I think if late stage capitalism I imagine a world where all our millions of individual businesses and are merged into just a few super conglomerates. Winners snowballing power, hovering up smaller players, all perfectly legal. That's the result of not taxing enough and blocking mergers. I don't identify with libertarianism because, although I acknowledge that some people work harder than others, there is a multitude of factors outside our own control that effect our ability to succeed.

gavinhoward 4y ago

Betteridge's Law of Headlines is wrong here because the answer is "yes, unless we do something about it." The problem is that AI centralizes control [1], even "democratic" uses of AI, and the scale of AI will make it so entities that have resources will be able to scale their use of AI more. And once an entity becomes large enough, they become a law unto themselves. Thus, they will ignore the rule of law and impose rules on us. To those who claim that AI "Luddites" are hindering AI, would you be so eager to go that direction if you could see the future, and the future with AI was dystopian? I promise you that it will be because those with control will toss us aside once they think they don't need us. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2022/10/dispelling-ai-myths-and-rhetoric/ https://gavinhoward.com/2022/10/dispelling-ai-myths-and-rhet...