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Don't be simplistic. As technology gets better, you need to put constraints in place for essentially everything that can cause harm. And thankfully we do, as

Don't be simplistic. As technology gets better, you need to put constraints in place for essentially everything that can cause harm. And thankfully we do, as you can find out if you try to buy a machine gun, an ICBM, Sarin gas, a grenade, antipersonnel mines, a silencer, and so on. Reasonable people disagree on where the line should be, but nobody's being oppressed from not being able to buy an ICBM or antipersonnel mines or a machine gun.

waterheater 3y ago
> nobody's being oppressed from not being able to buy an ICBM or antipersonnel mines or a machine gun. Unless an oppressive adversary has such weapons (ICBMs, antipersonnel mines, or machine guns), wants control of your land, and decides to take it. In that situation, a country will seek to utilize such or more powerful weaponry for themselves to defend their people. If that country (1) did not manufacture such weaponry inside their borders and (2) were prevented from purchasing such weaponry from other countries by blockade, sanction, or other means, then yes, those people will be oppressed.
jazzyjackson 3y ago
You can buy a machine gun, it justs costs extra, so only the rich have machine guns. Same with everything else on your list ;)
- felixgallo 3y ago
  good luck buying Sarin gas :)
  - jazzyjackson 3y ago
    Bashar al-Assad managed to find a vendor, no?
  - tick_tock_tick 3y ago
    Why bother buying when it's so easy to make?
lannisterstark 3y ago
>not being able to buy [...] a machine gun Joke's on you, because I can absolutely buy one tomorrow. Thankfully you don't make the laws :D
- felixgallo 3y ago
  congrats on going through this process (https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/how-become-federal-firearms-licensee-10-easy-steps https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/how-become-federal-firea...) or buying 50-year old machine guns, thanks to the basic sops to common sense enshrined in the US laws today.
haldujai 3y ago
Borrowing your analogy: Except right now AI isn’t an ICBM or sarin gas, it’s a slingshot, and we don’t even know that current approaches will get us there. AI risk is a valid discussion but regulating AI in its infancy seems misguided at best.
- felixgallo 3y ago
  show your work. Even the existing version of AI clearly enables very high scale misinformation campaigns, the analog/basic/manual version of which (e.g. Fox, Newsmax, 4chan/QAnon, Facebook, etc.) has already put American democracy in a super dire situation. And that's before its impact on income inequality, jobs, and so on.
  - haldujai 3y ago
    I believe the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. Misinformation has been a problem for all of human history, in its current form dating back to at least the Spanish civil war. All the existing version of AI does is replace troll farms. This isn’t a new threat, it’s a faster bullet.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      No, it's a cheaper guided missile to stretch the analogy. The invention of accurate guided fire systems was revolutionary in warfare. It means you have to figure out a way to keep things working even though any large and valuable grouping of logistics or materiel or men can be destroyed with nearly no recourse. The only saving grace was that guided munitions are very expensive, so you couldn't really (other than America in the gulf but that's not a peer adversary) task each and every foot soldier of the enemy with a guided munition. Well, now we have $500 drones with an RPG strapped to it, and you CAN task a guided munition to each and every soldier and piece of equipment. There is no safe space in the field. You have to dig holes in the ground and hide from the sky. The lethality of war has gone way up. These "AI" models are the same way. Before, it was expensive and effort consuming to run a scam or phishing or anything that requires social engineering. That's why the target the soft and valuable targets, like grandma, or people on MLM mailing lists, or large and juicy companies. But now, the cost of a phishing or scam campaign can be heavily reduced. Think of how often companies fail internal phishing tests, and those emails are usually pretty basic, low effort, trivially identifiable as phishing. It's a massive upgrade to troll farms. They don't have to limit their targeting as much, because cracking harder targets will be cheaper to attempt. It doesn't matter if it isn't actually more efficient or more effective, just the fact that targeting someone and initiating a campaign against them is cheaper is all that was needed to make this situation brutal.
93po 3y ago
> nobody's being oppressed I would argue you're wrong, because there is a long, colorful history of rulers oppressing populations by making the possession of weapons illegal. If the populace has no means to fight then they can't revolt. I'm not saying my neighbor should be able to buy ICBMs, but it's definitely true there's some element, no matter how small, that he's being oppressed by not having access to the same level of force as his rulers (the government).

waterheater 3y ago

> nobody's being oppressed from not being able to buy an ICBM or antipersonnel mines or a machine gun. Unless an oppressive adversary has such weapons (ICBMs, antipersonnel mines, or machine guns), wants control of your land, and decides to take it. In that situation, a country will seek to utilize such or more powerful weaponry for themselves to defend their people. If that country (1) did not manufacture such weaponry inside their borders and (2) were prevented from purchasing such weaponry from other countries by blockade, sanction, or other means, then yes, those people will be oppressed.

jazzyjackson 3y ago

You can buy a machine gun, it justs costs extra, so only the rich have machine guns. Same with everything else on your list ;)

felixgallo 3y ago
good luck buying Sarin gas :)
- jazzyjackson 3y ago
  Bashar al-Assad managed to find a vendor, no?
- tick_tock_tick 3y ago
  Why bother buying when it's so easy to make?

lannisterstark 3y ago

>not being able to buy [...] a machine gun Joke's on you, because I can absolutely buy one tomorrow. Thankfully you don't make the laws :D

felixgallo 3y ago
congrats on going through this process (https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/how-become-federal-firearms-licensee-10-easy-steps https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/how-become-federal-firea...) or buying 50-year old machine guns, thanks to the basic sops to common sense enshrined in the US laws today.

haldujai 3y ago

Borrowing your analogy: Except right now AI isn’t an ICBM or sarin gas, it’s a slingshot, and we don’t even know that current approaches will get us there. AI risk is a valid discussion but regulating AI in its infancy seems misguided at best.

felixgallo 3y ago
show your work. Even the existing version of AI clearly enables very high scale misinformation campaigns, the analog/basic/manual version of which (e.g. Fox, Newsmax, 4chan/QAnon, Facebook, etc.) has already put American democracy in a super dire situation. And that's before its impact on income inequality, jobs, and so on.
- haldujai 3y ago
  I believe the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. Misinformation has been a problem for all of human history, in its current form dating back to at least the Spanish civil war. All the existing version of AI does is replace troll farms. This isn’t a new threat, it’s a faster bullet.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    No, it's a cheaper guided missile to stretch the analogy. The invention of accurate guided fire systems was revolutionary in warfare. It means you have to figure out a way to keep things working even though any large and valuable grouping of logistics or materiel or men can be destroyed with nearly no recourse. The only saving grace was that guided munitions are very expensive, so you couldn't really (other than America in the gulf but that's not a peer adversary) task each and every foot soldier of the enemy with a guided munition. Well, now we have $500 drones with an RPG strapped to it, and you CAN task a guided munition to each and every soldier and piece of equipment. There is no safe space in the field. You have to dig holes in the ground and hide from the sky. The lethality of war has gone way up. These "AI" models are the same way. Before, it was expensive and effort consuming to run a scam or phishing or anything that requires social engineering. That's why the target the soft and valuable targets, like grandma, or people on MLM mailing lists, or large and juicy companies. But now, the cost of a phishing or scam campaign can be heavily reduced. Think of how often companies fail internal phishing tests, and those emails are usually pretty basic, low effort, trivially identifiable as phishing. It's a massive upgrade to troll farms. They don't have to limit their targeting as much, because cracking harder targets will be cheaper to attempt. It doesn't matter if it isn't actually more efficient or more effective, just the fact that targeting someone and initiating a campaign against them is cheaper is all that was needed to make this situation brutal.

93po 3y ago

> nobody's being oppressed I would argue you're wrong, because there is a long, colorful history of rulers oppressing populations by making the possession of weapons illegal. If the populace has no means to fight then they can't revolt. I'm not saying my neighbor should be able to buy ICBMs, but it's definitely true there's some element, no matter how small, that he's being oppressed by not having access to the same level of force as his rulers (the government).