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By proclaiming they'd leave if they can't comply, it might cause the EU regulators to "self-censor" the regulation such that it's "easy to comply". but tbh, i

• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  > I am a fan of no regulation unless actual harm has been shown first. I used to be, but some of the modern crop of CEOs has taken the wind out of that. They have done tremendous damage, very quickly, and the regulation has been unable to keep up, until severe damage has already been done. Once the bullet has left the gun, it can't be stuffed back in.
  • bionhoward 3y ago
    Can you be more specific, with examples? Who did what?
    • themitigating 3y ago
      You need an example of a bad thing happening because regulations didn't exist?
    • orwin 3y ago
      Uber and Airbnb?
      • chii 3y ago
        Uber brought ride sharing and cracked the taxi market wide open - perhaps to the benefit of riders. Airbnb is also a boon for travellers looking to stay cheap, and a boon for property owners to cash in on underutilized real estate. The "harm" that has been cited to have been caused by them are only the incumbents that do not move with the market or times.
        • jddj 3y ago
          It's like a necker cube. Glance at it and she looks like a renter or typical youth of a city with tourism but poor purchasing power/ social mobility, but stare a bit longer and relax your focus and she becomes an incumbent who doesn't move with the market or times
        • orwin 3y ago
          You don't live in a European city near the sea. Airbnb is a plague. We used to use a house sharing in summer, we did it for years, until Airbnb killed it. It was an exchange 1 to 1 in term of population, we now do x5 to x10 in summer. Now that the harm is done (speculation on housing priced out teachers and low income workers, old, niche stores turned into tourist traps), we finally have regulation. A bit too late. But at least the mayor is adding 20k housing units (+20%), driving the price down and making speculators eat a fat loss. Uber was regulated much faster so it's impact have mostly been positive, unless you've been raped by a predator as they used to not check their drivers. You have to regulate ahead of time, even if it's soft and toothless in the beginning. Check the EU proposal to regulate AI, it seems really, really soft.
    • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      Asbestos. Phthalates. Fen-phen. Chloroflorocarbons. Leaded gasoline. All were legal because no harm had been shown... yet.
      • nickpp 3y ago
        Was the potential harm well known and accepted before showing it existed? How?!
      • cm2012 3y ago
        "Modern crop of CEOs" All of those examples are primarily damage done pre 80s
        • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
          Phthalates? Aren't those currently an issue, right now, in water? Aren't they currently being used in plastic? Or did I get the name wrong?
          • revelio 3y ago
            The name is right but the claims of clear badness are suspect. https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/ https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/
    • epolanski 3y ago
      User privacy, cambridge analytica, facebook, and the impact those together had in several elections, most especially Trump 2016 and Brexit.
      • cm2012 3y ago
        Cambridge Analytica had basically no effect on any election. People who actually understand online advertising consider it a joke. The "organic" social stuff that helped Trump 2016 (leaked Democrat emails, etc) had nothing to do with privacy or ads.
        • epolanski 3y ago
          Cambridge Analytica's sold their services literally as "election management agency" and promised to be able to influence a large number of undecided voters. More than 87M people were profiled, and more than 3M people were targeted by Cambridge Analytica in 11 key states during the election to feed them the content that would swing their indecision towards Trump based on their psychological profile and preferences. Trump paid for that, and Michigan and Pennsylvania and New Hampshire were all very close. To boldly state that CA had no impact on US elections, Brexit and I don't remember which South American election when the people involved in it literally sold it and used previous results as evidence seems a bit of a stretch. I might be wrong, but there's no clear way of knowing unless votes were not anonymous.
          • cm2012 3y ago
            Imagine that someone says Trump hacked the voting computers by writing code on a piece of paper and slotting it into the machines. The CA thing is the same level of stupid. The targeting would just be senselessly bad based on CA's methodology.
      • nickpp 3y ago
        What was the actual, documented, damage on the "user privacy" issue though? The only effect I know is targeted ads which seems like a net benefit to me.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
      I can be, but, really, why should I? It would take about twenty seconds with Google, to come up with hundreds of examples. Some, better than others.
      • revelio 3y ago
        They may seem obvious to you, but to a lot of us, it's not obvious at all. Vague notions of "damage" could refer to anything, like harming competition. Different value systems and all that.
        • ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
          Well, the original post was "Stop me if you can." Basically, if there's no rule saying I can't do it, then I should do it, until rules are developed to stop it; regardless of the morality or danger. I suspect that one way to make people more careful, is to make future rules and regulations retroactive. For example, if I had developed a fintech product that was a legal ponzi scheme, or a downloader that is a legal way of accessing copyrighted material, because of loopholes, and those loopholes are closed, after the fact (happens all the time), then, if the new remedies can be applied to the "legal" implementations that were in effect before the closing of the loopholes, I suspect that it would make the "loopholer" a wee bit more cautious. But that won't happen. There's way too many ways that it could go off the rails. So people will keep on bending, folding, spindling, and mutilating, until they are stopped by a steel door, slamming down in front of them. I strongly suspect that a lot of companies are set up to harvest as much as possible, before the door slams, so they can reap the benefits.
          • chii 3y ago
            > if the new remedies can be applied to the "legal" implementations that were in effect before the closing of the loopholes, I suspect that it would make the "loopholer" a wee bit more cautious. and there's moral implications about applying new rules retroactively. What you do today that is completely legal, should not be punished tomorrow even if it was decided in the future that it is illegal. Otherwise, there would be a chilling effect on innovation.
    • dinvlad 3y ago
      [flagged]
  • chii 3y ago
    > the regulation has been unable to keep up it's because the gov't is not incentivized properly. I think they should be pressured to keep up. This isn't an argument to "pre-regulate", because incompetence at the gov't can be fixed! > Once the bullet has left the gun, it can't be stuffed back in. But once many people start shooting guns willy-nilly, you start regulating guns. But not before.
• ChrisLTD 3y ago
  This is a normal negotiation tactic on the part of OpenAI. Businesses often say they will leave a jurisdiction or be forced to shut down if X regulation is put in place.
  • themitigating 3y ago
    It's a tactic of all businesses. In the US they play states against each other to get higher and higher tax breaks for moving.
    • robertlagrant 3y ago
      It's not a tactic. It's just reality. If all the expense of coping with regulation is too much, then it's not worth doing. It seems almost too facile for Sam Altmann to have said, but perhaps it's worth reminding people that regulatory compliance is an expensive business in and of itself, even if your product already fully complies.
    • Tangurena2 3y ago
      The name for it is Boulwarism [0]. It is a "take it or leave it" attitude. You see it every day when presented with an "I agree" checkbox/button. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulwarism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulwarism
      • MichaelZuo 3y ago
        I don't see the difference from normal pricing, it's take it or leave it in nearly all retail contexts nowadays.
        • themitigating 3y ago
          Businesses are not animals, it's immoral
• avidphantasm 3y ago
  This is a nonsensical statement. All markets, and thus all goods sold on a market are regulated. You can’t have markets without regulations.
  • robertlagrant 3y ago
    This is just thinking about the wrong level of regulation. Not all goods need to have CE marking, or get audited regularly, or anything like that. I can go to someone who makes furniture in their shop and buy that furniture without them ever contacting the British Standards Institute.
    • Tangurena2 3y ago
      You can't buy it if you can't agree about what money is. That's one of those pesky regulations.
      • robertlagrant 3y ago
        As I say, the wrong level of regulation.
      • revelio 3y ago
        The regulations forbid competing currencies (sorta), but people create currencies for trade even when no government is doing so.
  • chii 3y ago
    You're not making a point on the argument being made. It's not about _not_ having regulations. It's about not introducing new regulations without demonstrating harm first. The current crop of regulations, i argue, is sufficient, and no new ones introduced for AI.
• ho_schi 3y ago
  … no regulation unless actual harm has been shown first. What? It is the duty of politics to protect the citizens and environment - also proactively. From reckless CEOs, greedy shareholders and lawyers which claim that it wasn’t strictly forbidden to cause harm. Politics isn’t doing always right. The Cookie-Directive tried to make misuse of Cookies illegal. Actually it made web browsing horrible and created further questionable businesses like “cookie cloud storage providers aggregating cookies of several websites”. On the other hand this people require ABS and ESP in cars. Banned Teslas “Autopilot” and had smart ideas like type certification for aircraft’s. And then they forbid stuff which can cause cancer…that was smart! What comes next? Acting against monopolies and oligopolies like Microsoft and Apple?
  • fallingknife 3y ago
    Regulation without known harm is a case of we need to do something and this is something. The rules will be arbitrary and expensive to comply with and will most likely have no preventative effect on any negative effects.
  • chii 3y ago
    vaccines are like the medicine analogy to regulation. You have to first prove that it is not going to do more harm than good. And without knowing what sort of harm AI's do - it's all theoretical at the moment - any regulation is merely speculating a harm, and the cost of prevention might be high (or stifling). ABS and ESP in cars came _after_ harm was shown. And so is emission controls, and crash-related safety measures and testing/certification. > And then they forbid stuff which can cause cancer…that was smart! which makes sense, as those stuff has been shown to cause cancer. In other words, harm has to be shown, rather than speculated, before regulation is desirable.
    • RandomLensman 3y ago
      We know certain possible high risk applications already (e.g., dosage recommendation for medication), so it is not all about figuring if something is risky or can cause harm. The question then is more: regulate those within the particular area of use or have something that generally aims to regulate risky use.
• themitigating 3y ago
  Why wait until harm occurs to regulate?
  • chii 3y ago
    Why pay a cost to regulate, if it may not ever be needed?
    • themitigating 3y ago
      Assuming there's reasonable probability that something could go wrong you don't wait. It's better to be proactive instead of reactive
• Tangurena2 3y ago
  As quoted in the article: > He called for some regulation “between the traditional European approach and the traditional U.S. approach,” whatever that means. And you phrase it: > I am a fan of no regulation unless actual harm has been shown first. This is the "traditional US approach". As has been shown far too often, by the time actual harm has been shown, it is far too late. Especially as large industries like to use their economic clout to pervert things with propaganda like "oh, the science isn't settled yet". The "traditional US approach" is why cigarettes were sold for 100 years after they had been shown to cause cancer along with other major medical issues. And why cigarettes are still sold. And another HN story from today discusses this exact issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36067401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36067401 The European approach is "show us that it is safe before you put this stuff on the market". They use the 'Precautionary Principle'. > The precautionary principle is the idea that when there is the chance of negative consequences from an industrial practice, that the burden of proof lies with the inventors/implementers of the process to prove that there are no negative (ecological and environmental) consequences of it. The principle is often cited by "technological conservatives" and/or environmental activists when there is a perceived lack of evidence showing that a technology is absolutely safe. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle Is AI "safe enough" to be sold/marketed to people? Many people say it isn't. The people who tend to get into executive positions at companies have a visible lack of concern about anything other than their personal wealth. So while AI might be "safe enough", the people who tend to get to the top will make even the safest things unsafe.
  • chii 3y ago
    And yet, the empirical results is that the US is now wealthier than the EU (at least, in totality). And not to mention that such regulations (on AI) might not be adhered to by countries such as China, which would make it all but moot - except it causes harm to western companies looking to profit. A cautious approach is valid only if you have unlimited budget and you are not in a natural darwinian selection process of elimination.