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> "products and services that use or claim to be produced using artificial intelligence (AI)..." Imagine a government agency that has oversight over "products

> "products and services that use or claim to be produced using artificial intelligence (AI)..." Imagine a government agency that has oversight over "products and services that use or claim to be produced using electricity..." This may become the largest power grab in US history.

bruce343434 3y ago
Pretty much e.g. all electric chargers do have a certification, yes
andylynch 3y ago
But every functioning government regulates electrical networks and devices in some way. People think it’s mostly reasonable since they don’t like being electrocuted or having things explode and catch on fire?
- chii 3y ago
  And those regulations only happened _after_ the dangers and harms were shown to be true and actually happens. I would be wary of pre-emptive regulations.
  - nameless912 3y ago
    AI has already hurt plenty of people though; we already have examples of biased "AI policing", artists and writers are getting their work stolen left and right, and I've heard tell of several instances of seriously vulnerable code making it to production and revealing folks' private information due to bugs introduced by AI assistants. This regulation is almost certainly too far reaching and written by bureaucrats rather than experts, but the need for regulation is already there.
    - chii 3y ago
      Bad code making into production has nothing to do with ai, and everything to do with the incompetence of the coder. As for "stolen" work, i am still not convinced that ai produced works are a derivative of the training data. And AI policing is just as bad as human policing - the regulation isn't with AI, but with policing.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        >i am still not convinced that ai produced works are a derivative of the training data. Then what are they?
        jjk166 3y ago
        If you read a bunch of books and then write your own book, is that book a derivative of the books you have read throughout your life? I doubt too many artists have never experienced nor been influenced by other works in their medium prior to making their works, but that's not what we are referring to by derivative work. Typically derivative work means something like a movie based on a book, or a translation, or a parody, etc where something of the new work is clearly coming from a previous work. While an AI could certainly produce a derivative work, for example if you only trained an AI on a specific artist's style to produce new works that specifically emulated that style, at some point the link between a new work and those that influenced it is so tenuous that the new work is original.
        thfuran 3y ago
        >If you read a bunch of books and then write your own book, is that book a derivative of the books you have read throughout your life? I doubt too many artists have never experienced nor been influenced by other works An LLM isn't an artist and I'm not a piece of software. But if you think the LLM output other to be copyrightable in its own right, who should hold the copyright? The person who wrote the prompt? The person who picked which entropy source the model used? The owner of the GPU that ran inference? The last person to provide input for fine-tuning the network?
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      > artists and writers are getting their work stolen left and right Please show me a few examples where a work was copied by an AI and the copy is so good it violates copyright law. All I have seen is someone used a pirated dataset to train AIs. Suing over that is like suing Seagate because someone tested a prototype hard disk by storing pirated books on it.
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      > I've heard tell of several instances of seriously vulnerable code making it to production and revealing folks' private information due to bugs introduced by AI assistants. By this standard, we should ban all integrated development environments because, like the AIs you mention, they allow programmers to produce hugely buggy code.
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      > AI has already hurt plenty of people though; we already have examples of biased "AI policing" Cops hurt innocent people. That's not the fault of the Chevrolet they are driving or the AI they are using. Criminals will seek to obfuscate blame for their crimes to avoid getting caught, so police will frequently get the wrong person. Libertarians would rather leave it to lynch mobs, while statists want to fund better tools for the police. No solution is perfect.
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      > the need for regulation is already there. We need regulation that holds people accountable. I see too many 1%ers claiming they were not responsible for something their algorithm did. In old sci-fi, a computer was the legal agent of its operator/owner and anything that computer did was 100% the fault of its owner/operator. If we simply say "you are responsible for what your AI does," then the problem is solved. We could solve the problem if not being able to bring corporations to justice at the same time. Forxe them to beck e proprietorships. Every owner/partner is culpable for crimes committed by that proprietorship. Did a cop arrest an obviously innocent person? It's the cop's fault. Did my web site plagiarize a painting? Then it's my fault. Did a startup release venerable software? Then the crook that exploited the bug is responsible but so it the entity that released the software. If we get back to common sense and stop blaming the Twinkie for the murder, things get a lot simpler. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    I get what you’re saying that perhaps the verdict is not yet in. But it feels kind of bizarre that the position is “gotta wait until after enough people die.”
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      Should we arrest you for murder today, or should we wait until after enough people die?
iudqnolq 3y ago
The FTC already has the power you're worried about, this isn't a power grab. The FTC is a government agency that has oversight over all products, period. They then choose subsets to focus on.
brookst 3y ago
Bigger than the department of commerce?

bruce343434 3y ago

Pretty much e.g. all electric chargers do have a certification, yes

andylynch 3y ago

But every functioning government regulates electrical networks and devices in some way. People think it’s mostly reasonable since they don’t like being electrocuted or having things explode and catch on fire?

chii 3y ago
And those regulations only happened _after_ the dangers and harms were shown to be true and actually happens. I would be wary of pre-emptive regulations.
- nameless912 3y ago
  AI has already hurt plenty of people though; we already have examples of biased "AI policing", artists and writers are getting their work stolen left and right, and I've heard tell of several instances of seriously vulnerable code making it to production and revealing folks' private information due to bugs introduced by AI assistants. This regulation is almost certainly too far reaching and written by bureaucrats rather than experts, but the need for regulation is already there.
  - chii 3y ago
    Bad code making into production has nothing to do with ai, and everything to do with the incompetence of the coder. As for "stolen" work, i am still not convinced that ai produced works are a derivative of the training data. And AI policing is just as bad as human policing - the regulation isn't with AI, but with policing.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      >i am still not convinced that ai produced works are a derivative of the training data. Then what are they?
      - jjk166 3y ago
        If you read a bunch of books and then write your own book, is that book a derivative of the books you have read throughout your life? I doubt too many artists have never experienced nor been influenced by other works in their medium prior to making their works, but that's not what we are referring to by derivative work. Typically derivative work means something like a movie based on a book, or a translation, or a parody, etc where something of the new work is clearly coming from a previous work. While an AI could certainly produce a derivative work, for example if you only trained an AI on a specific artist's style to produce new works that specifically emulated that style, at some point the link between a new work and those that influenced it is so tenuous that the new work is original.
        thfuran 3y ago
        >If you read a bunch of books and then write your own book, is that book a derivative of the books you have read throughout your life? I doubt too many artists have never experienced nor been influenced by other works An LLM isn't an artist and I'm not a piece of software. But if you think the LLM output other to be copyrightable in its own right, who should hold the copyright? The person who wrote the prompt? The person who picked which entropy source the model used? The owner of the GPU that ran inference? The last person to provide input for fine-tuning the network?
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    > artists and writers are getting their work stolen left and right Please show me a few examples where a work was copied by an AI and the copy is so good it violates copyright law. All I have seen is someone used a pirated dataset to train AIs. Suing over that is like suing Seagate because someone tested a prototype hard disk by storing pirated books on it.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    > I've heard tell of several instances of seriously vulnerable code making it to production and revealing folks' private information due to bugs introduced by AI assistants. By this standard, we should ban all integrated development environments because, like the AIs you mention, they allow programmers to produce hugely buggy code.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    > AI has already hurt plenty of people though; we already have examples of biased "AI policing" Cops hurt innocent people. That's not the fault of the Chevrolet they are driving or the AI they are using. Criminals will seek to obfuscate blame for their crimes to avoid getting caught, so police will frequently get the wrong person. Libertarians would rather leave it to lynch mobs, while statists want to fund better tools for the police. No solution is perfect.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    > the need for regulation is already there. We need regulation that holds people accountable. I see too many 1%ers claiming they were not responsible for something their algorithm did. In old sci-fi, a computer was the legal agent of its operator/owner and anything that computer did was 100% the fault of its owner/operator. If we simply say "you are responsible for what your AI does," then the problem is solved. We could solve the problem if not being able to bring corporations to justice at the same time. Forxe them to beck e proprietorships. Every owner/partner is culpable for crimes committed by that proprietorship. Did a cop arrest an obviously innocent person? It's the cop's fault. Did my web site plagiarize a painting? Then it's my fault. Did a startup release venerable software? Then the crook that exploited the bug is responsible but so it the entity that released the software. If we get back to common sense and stop blaming the Twinkie for the murder, things get a lot simpler. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  I get what you’re saying that perhaps the verdict is not yet in. But it feels kind of bizarre that the position is “gotta wait until after enough people die.”
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    Should we arrest you for murder today, or should we wait until after enough people die?

iudqnolq 3y ago

The FTC already has the power you're worried about, this isn't a power grab. The FTC is a government agency that has oversight over all products, period. They then choose subsets to focus on.

brookst 3y ago

Bigger than the department of commerce?