5 ms·

So this should be it for trying to regulate stable diffusion type tech, right? If these models and their inference infra can be shrunk down to be runnable on a

by samr71 3y ago

So this should be it for trying to regulate stable diffusion type tech, right? If these models and their inference infra can be shrunk down to be runnable on a PS2, it doesn't seem like it's possible to stop this tech without a totalitarian surveillance state (and barely even then!).

phh 3y ago
So this should be it for trying to regulate theft, right? If you can open a window without any tool other than your own body. It doesn't seem like it's possible to stop thefts without a totalitarian surveillance state (and barely event then!). Or same can be said about media "piracy". Or ransomwares. States have forever regulated things that are not possible to enforce purely technically.
- tavavex 3y ago
  But theft is quite a different thing, is it not? It's a physical act that someone can be caught engaging in - be it by another person, a guard or a security camera. Sure, the "barrier for entry" to commit it is low, but retailers et al. are doing as much as they can to raise it. Piracy most often isn't treated as a criminal matter, but a civil one - few countries punish piracy severely, but companies are allowed to sue the pirate. I agree with OP in principle - regulating generative AI use would be way harder than piracy or whatever, especially since all of it can be done purely locally and millions of people already have the software downloaded. And that's not getting into the reasoning behind a ban - piracy and similar "digital crimes" are banned because they directly harm someone, while someone launching Stable Diffusion on their PC doesn't do much of anything.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    > few countries punish piracy severely, but companies are allowed to sue the pirate. UNCLOS, Part VII, Section 1, Article 100 https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part7.htm https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc... >> Duty to cooperate in the repression of piracy >> All States shall cooperate to the fullest possible extent in the repression of piracy on the high seas or in any other place outside the jurisdiction of any State. We could have just added "private computer" to the definition of piracy, and it largely would have applied. >> Definition of piracy >> Piracy consists of any of the following acts: >> (a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed [...] on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;
    - tavavex 3y ago
      ..What? Digital piracy has absolutely no logical or legal connections to naval piracy, except for sharing the same name. No sane person could ever implement anything like this. This is like saying that we could "just" add the word "digital" to the laws prohibiting murder to make playing GTA illegal.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        An extra-territorial crime Mostly committed by private citizens in pursuit of profit That all nations of the world have an interest in suppressing to encourage free trade that economically benefits them But which some countries at various times have a geopolitical interest in supporting ... you're right, they have no logical or legal connections at all.
        tavavex 3y ago
        You could tie essentially any two crimes by assigning more broad descriptors to them that'd boil down to "this is what countries want to discourage". Not to mention, half of this is just wrong - digital piracy most often isn't extraterritorial (it very much falls under the jurisdiction of where the piracy took place), and most individuals pirate for personal needs, not profit. The point stands - no jurisdiction that I know of treats digital piracy similarly to naval piracy, and there is no strong argument in favor of doing so.
        ethbr1 3y ago
        > digital piracy most often isn't extraterritorial (it very much falls under the jurisdiction of where the piracy took place) The canonical eBay/PayPal fraud from eastern Europe example? > most individuals pirate for personal needs, not profit. But most piracy is done by individuals in pursuit of profit, not for personal need.
- ShrigmaMale 3y ago
  no, this is a lousy analogy because there is a clear harm to others in the case of theft. we've tried regulating other difficult to regulate things where the harm is unclear or indirect (drugs being a good example) to no avail. your piracy example is better. consider that it's the rise of more convenient options (netflix and spotify) not some effective policy that curtailed the prevalence of piracy.
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    > consider that it's the rise of more convenient options (netflix and spotify) not some effective policy that curtailed the prevalence of piracy. The turning point was earlier than Netflix or Spotify – it was the iTunes Store. It was such a dramatic shift, people labelled Steve Jobs as “the man who persuaded the world to pay for content”. https://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/aug/28/steve-jobs-legacy-apple-ceo https://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/aug/28/s...
- leothecool 3y ago
  Theft has a clearance rate of only 15%. Sounds like we already stopped trying to regulate most theft, in practice.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    “Trying to regulate” and “succeeding in enforcing regulations” aren't the same thing. In fact, a low clearance rate can be evidence of trying to regulate far beyond one's capacity to consistently enforce; if you weren't trying to regulate very hard, it would be much easier to have a high clearance rate for violations of what regulations you do have.
- xcdzvyn 3y ago
  Yes, it is impossible to stop theft.
bmacho 3y ago
Not a surveillance state, but a stop on producing new, high performant chips should be enough.
Drakim 3y ago
The war on general computing has been ongoing but not made enough inroads to stop people from owning general computing devices (yet)
- bloaf 3y ago
  Indeed, the death knell could be tolling not for regulation of ai but for general purposes computers. In AI we have four horsemen: copyright infringement, illegal pornography, fake news generation, and democratization of capabilities that large companies would rather monetize.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Given the proliferation of illegal downloads (I can get a bad cam rip of the Barbie movie on release weekend just fine, plus a VPN would protect me from DCMA takedowns), and illegal pornography (just ask a torrent tracker for the fappening), and the proliferation of fake news (esp on eg, Facebook) despite a lack of it needing to be ML model generated, and companies and OSS in the space doing the democratizing and releasing complete model weights, and not just lone individuals trying to do the work in isolation, (aka stability.ai), are they really four horsemen, or four kids on miniature ponys?
- pphysch 3y ago
  That is virtually impossible because Turing-complete systems are everywhere
  - FloatArtifact 3y ago
    Can you explain that context a little bit of Turing complete?
    - dartos 3y ago
      You can’t regulate the ownership of computing devices. It’s too generic. There are too many of them.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> If these models and their inference infra can be shrunk down to be runnable on a PS2, it doesn't seem like it's possible to stop this tech without a totalitarian surveillance state (and barely even then!). The original requirement for these is 16GB of RAM, which can be had for less than $20. They run much faster on a GPU, which can be had for less than $200. Millions of ordinary people already have both of these things.
jayd16 3y ago
Copyright infringement is quite cheap as well. Ease and illegality are tangential. You'd still stop commercial acts even if it's impossible to fully stop something. That said, I don't think blanket regulation is all that likely anyhow.
cortesoft 3y ago
What sort of regulations on the tech are you talking about? It really depends on what you are trying to do whether you can or not.
natdempk 3y ago
I thought most of the regulatory efforts were focused on training runs getting bigger and bigger rather than generation with existing models. Is there regulation you’re aware of around use of models?
skyyler 3y ago
The PS2 only had 32 MB of ram. Even the PS3 only had 256 MB. I know it was a bit of a funny hyperbolic example, but you'd need to shrink this down way further to run it on a PS2.

by samr71 3y ago

phh 3y ago

So this should be it for trying to regulate theft, right? If you can open a window without any tool other than your own body. It doesn't seem like it's possible to stop thefts without a totalitarian surveillance state (and barely event then!). Or same can be said about media "piracy". Or ransomwares. States have forever regulated things that are not possible to enforce purely technically.

tavavex 3y ago
But theft is quite a different thing, is it not? It's a physical act that someone can be caught engaging in - be it by another person, a guard or a security camera. Sure, the "barrier for entry" to commit it is low, but retailers et al. are doing as much as they can to raise it. Piracy most often isn't treated as a criminal matter, but a civil one - few countries punish piracy severely, but companies are allowed to sue the pirate. I agree with OP in principle - regulating generative AI use would be way harder than piracy or whatever, especially since all of it can be done purely locally and millions of people already have the software downloaded. And that's not getting into the reasoning behind a ban - piracy and similar "digital crimes" are banned because they directly harm someone, while someone launching Stable Diffusion on their PC doesn't do much of anything.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  > few countries punish piracy severely, but companies are allowed to sue the pirate. UNCLOS, Part VII, Section 1, Article 100 https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part7.htm https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc... >> Duty to cooperate in the repression of piracy >> All States shall cooperate to the fullest possible extent in the repression of piracy on the high seas or in any other place outside the jurisdiction of any State. We could have just added "private computer" to the definition of piracy, and it largely would have applied. >> Definition of piracy >> Piracy consists of any of the following acts: >> (a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed [...] on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;
  - tavavex 3y ago
    ..What? Digital piracy has absolutely no logical or legal connections to naval piracy, except for sharing the same name. No sane person could ever implement anything like this. This is like saying that we could "just" add the word "digital" to the laws prohibiting murder to make playing GTA illegal.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      An extra-territorial crime Mostly committed by private citizens in pursuit of profit That all nations of the world have an interest in suppressing to encourage free trade that economically benefits them But which some countries at various times have a geopolitical interest in supporting ... you're right, they have no logical or legal connections at all.
      - tavavex 3y ago
        You could tie essentially any two crimes by assigning more broad descriptors to them that'd boil down to "this is what countries want to discourage". Not to mention, half of this is just wrong - digital piracy most often isn't extraterritorial (it very much falls under the jurisdiction of where the piracy took place), and most individuals pirate for personal needs, not profit. The point stands - no jurisdiction that I know of treats digital piracy similarly to naval piracy, and there is no strong argument in favor of doing so.
        ethbr1 3y ago
        > digital piracy most often isn't extraterritorial (it very much falls under the jurisdiction of where the piracy took place) The canonical eBay/PayPal fraud from eastern Europe example? > most individuals pirate for personal needs, not profit. But most piracy is done by individuals in pursuit of profit, not for personal need.
ShrigmaMale 3y ago
no, this is a lousy analogy because there is a clear harm to others in the case of theft. we've tried regulating other difficult to regulate things where the harm is unclear or indirect (drugs being a good example) to no avail. your piracy example is better. consider that it's the rise of more convenient options (netflix and spotify) not some effective policy that curtailed the prevalence of piracy.
- JimDabell 3y ago
  > consider that it's the rise of more convenient options (netflix and spotify) not some effective policy that curtailed the prevalence of piracy. The turning point was earlier than Netflix or Spotify – it was the iTunes Store. It was such a dramatic shift, people labelled Steve Jobs as “the man who persuaded the world to pay for content”. https://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/aug/28/steve-jobs-legacy-apple-ceo https://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/aug/28/s...
leothecool 3y ago
Theft has a clearance rate of only 15%. Sounds like we already stopped trying to regulate most theft, in practice.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  “Trying to regulate” and “succeeding in enforcing regulations” aren't the same thing. In fact, a low clearance rate can be evidence of trying to regulate far beyond one's capacity to consistently enforce; if you weren't trying to regulate very hard, it would be much easier to have a high clearance rate for violations of what regulations you do have.
xcdzvyn 3y ago
Yes, it is impossible to stop theft.

bmacho 3y ago

Not a surveillance state, but a stop on producing new, high performant chips should be enough.

Drakim 3y ago

The war on general computing has been ongoing but not made enough inroads to stop people from owning general computing devices (yet)

bloaf 3y ago
Indeed, the death knell could be tolling not for regulation of ai but for general purposes computers. In AI we have four horsemen: copyright infringement, illegal pornography, fake news generation, and democratization of capabilities that large companies would rather monetize.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Given the proliferation of illegal downloads (I can get a bad cam rip of the Barbie movie on release weekend just fine, plus a VPN would protect me from DCMA takedowns), and illegal pornography (just ask a torrent tracker for the fappening), and the proliferation of fake news (esp on eg, Facebook) despite a lack of it needing to be ML model generated, and companies and OSS in the space doing the democratizing and releasing complete model weights, and not just lone individuals trying to do the work in isolation, (aka stability.ai), are they really four horsemen, or four kids on miniature ponys?
pphysch 3y ago
That is virtually impossible because Turing-complete systems are everywhere
- FloatArtifact 3y ago
  Can you explain that context a little bit of Turing complete?
  - dartos 3y ago
    You can’t regulate the ownership of computing devices. It’s too generic. There are too many of them.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> If these models and their inference infra can be shrunk down to be runnable on a PS2, it doesn't seem like it's possible to stop this tech without a totalitarian surveillance state (and barely even then!). The original requirement for these is 16GB of RAM, which can be had for less than $20. They run much faster on a GPU, which can be had for less than $200. Millions of ordinary people already have both of these things.

jayd16 3y ago

Copyright infringement is quite cheap as well. Ease and illegality are tangential. You'd still stop commercial acts even if it's impossible to fully stop something. That said, I don't think blanket regulation is all that likely anyhow.

cortesoft 3y ago

What sort of regulations on the tech are you talking about? It really depends on what you are trying to do whether you can or not.

natdempk 3y ago

I thought most of the regulatory efforts were focused on training runs getting bigger and bigger rather than generation with existing models. Is there regulation you’re aware of around use of models?

skyyler 3y ago

The PS2 only had 32 MB of ram. Even the PS3 only had 256 MB. I know it was a bit of a funny hyperbolic example, but you'd need to shrink this down way further to run it on a PS2.