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HN does skew towards skeptical of government regulation and control of AI. People are concerned about government usage of AI, particularly in the realms of faci

HN does skew towards skeptical of government regulation and control of AI. People are concerned about government usage of AI, particularly in the realms of facial recognition, automated sentencing, algorithmic bias, and security (LLMs are pretty insecure right now and there are companies trying to sell the US government on using them in the military). There's obviously a lot to be concerned about on the subject of government abuse of AI, and that gets conversation on HN. However, given that this specific article is about selling access to an AI girlfriend, I think we're probably OK to talk more about the corporate angle than the government angle. Unless you're predicting that the 2024 election is about to get real weird, "what if the US government starts offering AI girlfriends" is not going to be at the top of my worry list any time soon.

CamperBob2 3y ago
HN does skew towards skeptical of government regulation and control of AI. Which HN is that? Certainly not this one.
- danShumway 3y ago
  Quite genuinely, I don't think I've ever posted a comment on HN where I've expressed support for open, locally running LLMs and had it been downvoted. Am I missing something here? You want to point me to all of the articles where people criticize Huggingface? But regardless of how you interpret HN sentiment towards uncontrolled AI access, it doesn't change the fact that "what about the government" is a profoundly weird thing to ask in the middle of a conversation about people doing erotic roleplays with a text bot. Is that something people are worried about? Do we think that the US Post Office is going to suddenly start advertising a sex bot service? Yes, government abuse of facial recognition exists, regulatory capture exists, etc. But that's not really relevant to a conversation about companies offering AI girlfriends; AI girlfriends do seem to be mostly a corporation thing.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Not so much against open-source local LLMs, but you can bet those will be on the list for regulation as soon as they become as good as GPT4 is now. Meanwhile, here on HN, take a look at the recent story where someone uses 100 lines of Python to instantiate David Attenborough. You'd be burned as a witch if you built the system behind that demo 10 years ago, and you'd be treated as a God-level hacker if you built it 5 years ago. Today, virtually the whole HN thread is full of comments advocating that regulators step in. "Buh..b..b..buhtwhataboutmahCOPYRIGHT?" It's fucking disgusting. Who are these people? They're not hackers; what are they doing here?
    - danShumway 3y ago
      ...is the government planning on turning David Attenborough into a sex bot? If not, is the David Attenborough thread closed or something? Are people not able to comment on it anymore?
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        The point is, a thread that should be full of technical conversation and speculation is full of pearl-clutching Karens calling for the government to step in. It refutes your point about HN being "skeptical of government regulation and control of AI" very effectively. Of course, it's fallacious for either of us to refer to "HN" as if it were a monolithic bloc... but having spent some time in that thread, I have to wonder.
        danShumway 3y ago
        > But regardless of how you interpret HN sentiment towards uncontrolled AI access, it doesn't change the fact that "what about the government" is a profoundly weird thing to ask in the middle of a conversation about people doing erotic roleplays with a text bot. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the government is not producing AI-generated David Attenborough pornography, right? And if it's not, then... I don't know what to tell you, the thread is still open, I just checked. You can still post there and tell everyone that they're wrong.
- mymusewww 3y ago
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CamperBob2 3y ago

HN does skew towards skeptical of government regulation and control of AI. Which HN is that? Certainly not this one.

danShumway 3y ago
Quite genuinely, I don't think I've ever posted a comment on HN where I've expressed support for open, locally running LLMs and had it been downvoted. Am I missing something here? You want to point me to all of the articles where people criticize Huggingface? But regardless of how you interpret HN sentiment towards uncontrolled AI access, it doesn't change the fact that "what about the government" is a profoundly weird thing to ask in the middle of a conversation about people doing erotic roleplays with a text bot. Is that something people are worried about? Do we think that the US Post Office is going to suddenly start advertising a sex bot service? Yes, government abuse of facial recognition exists, regulatory capture exists, etc. But that's not really relevant to a conversation about companies offering AI girlfriends; AI girlfriends do seem to be mostly a corporation thing.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Not so much against open-source local LLMs, but you can bet those will be on the list for regulation as soon as they become as good as GPT4 is now. Meanwhile, here on HN, take a look at the recent story where someone uses 100 lines of Python to instantiate David Attenborough. You'd be burned as a witch if you built the system behind that demo 10 years ago, and you'd be treated as a God-level hacker if you built it 5 years ago. Today, virtually the whole HN thread is full of comments advocating that regulators step in. "Buh..b..b..buhtwhataboutmahCOPYRIGHT?" It's fucking disgusting. Who are these people? They're not hackers; what are they doing here?
  - danShumway 3y ago
    ...is the government planning on turning David Attenborough into a sex bot? If not, is the David Attenborough thread closed or something? Are people not able to comment on it anymore?
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      The point is, a thread that should be full of technical conversation and speculation is full of pearl-clutching Karens calling for the government to step in. It refutes your point about HN being "skeptical of government regulation and control of AI" very effectively. Of course, it's fallacious for either of us to refer to "HN" as if it were a monolithic bloc... but having spent some time in that thread, I have to wonder.
      - danShumway 3y ago
        > But regardless of how you interpret HN sentiment towards uncontrolled AI access, it doesn't change the fact that "what about the government" is a profoundly weird thing to ask in the middle of a conversation about people doing erotic roleplays with a text bot. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the government is not producing AI-generated David Attenborough pornography, right? And if it's not, then... I don't know what to tell you, the thread is still open, I just checked. You can still post there and tell everyone that they're wrong.
mymusewww 3y ago
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