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I'm sorry but I cannot see how to view this charitably. To me it clearly seems to be a way to enact further unjustified regulation on something that would other

I'm sorry but I cannot see how to view this charitably. To me it clearly seems to be a way to enact further unjustified regulation on something that would otherwise be hard to create public support for, by using big new scary words like AI, even though it has massive overreach into more traditional programs.

mcpackieh 3y ago
If you tell people the computer program that profiled them as a probable scumbag and denied them credit or a job was using methods from the 1980s instead of the newest neural nets, that won't change how they feel about it. Objecting to regulation of such systems because you think the term "AI" should be reserved for the newest and trendiest systems very "HN" and misses the forest for the trees. The EU is rightly concerned about the ways that computers empowered to make important decisions might impact people's lives might perpetrate injustice; that's what is important here. Not some whiny semantic nitpicks about what to call those programs.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  If you tell people it was a program using methods from the 1980s instead of the newest neural nets, it likely would change how they feel about the newest neural nets. Clarity is the only way to avoid cutting off our nose to spite our face.
moritzwarhier 3y ago
But don't you think that there should be regulation saying that delegating decisions to a technology system should make you fully responsible, and that growing capability of these systems make it more important to clarify that any "mistrusted the machine by accident" argument is null and void? For me, it's not important if the legal definition requires this term. It's not like automation and computer programs are being banned. It's the decision part that justifies this legal definition IMO. It's like the difference between a human or an automated car running over people. Quite literally even.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > But don't you think that there should be regulation saying that delegating decisions to a technology system What is a "decision"? My computer is making billions of decisions per second. If nothing else, I could see this crippling FOSS. No one is going to want to be "responsible" to some EU bureaucrat pursuing a personal political agenda, certainly not for work you've done for free.
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    Yeah I wanted to expand but got tired: Of course any computation can be considered a decision in some way. But this is conflating a narrow and IT-specific meaning of that word with legalese and philosophy, or my intended meaning of the word. This reminds me of the ancient catastrophic Therac-25 software bug, and other such cases. Maybe this case is a good example for thinking about what part of the responsibility is on the side of the operator, apart from the obvious failure of the implementer. For more modern examples involving actual ML, look at Meta, TikTok and their recommendations: where is the line to draw, what excuses are allowed, when the outcome is obviously negative, and the algorithm claims to fulfill a goal? It doesn't matter if it's a rule-based system without "intelligence" or ML. What matters is the responsibility of the human operator. And making assumptions about correctness. Humans make egregious errors as well, but the kind of errors AI causes are a significant concern where current legislation is insufficient. It's one thing to have a bug in your airplane controller code or whatever. It's another to knowingly accept malicious errors, either unpredictable or even intentional, but without proper responsibility?
    - candiodari 3y ago
      > It's another to knowingly accept malicious errors, either unpredictable or even intentional, but without proper responsibility? Is this law making the users of software responsible (e.g. law enforcement, government departments) ? It seems to me to make authors of software responsible, absolving the users. Not the other way around. They keep the law secret, of course, so anyone can claim what they want, but the article talks directly about the accountability of OpenAI. It seems to focus on rules on authors of AI software, presumably to mostly absolve governments and users of that software. "Rules around generative AI", "transparency requirements for any developer of a large language model" ... nothing that would make governments responsible for abusing AI software. Which is strange, because that's the concern the last paragraph of the article focuses on. I must say ... this "complete ban" voted by the EU parliament last spring, doesn't seem to have stopped governments from using live facial recognition [1]. [1] https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/02/21/new-french-facial-recognition-reveals-identity-in-a-click-ahead-of-paris-2024-olympics https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/02/21/new-french-facial-r...

mcpackieh 3y ago

If you tell people the computer program that profiled them as a probable scumbag and denied them credit or a job was using methods from the 1980s instead of the newest neural nets, that won't change how they feel about it. Objecting to regulation of such systems because you think the term "AI" should be reserved for the newest and trendiest systems very "HN" and misses the forest for the trees. The EU is rightly concerned about the ways that computers empowered to make important decisions might impact people's lives might perpetrate injustice; that's what is important here. Not some whiny semantic nitpicks about what to call those programs.

slowmovintarget 3y ago
If you tell people it was a program using methods from the 1980s instead of the newest neural nets, it likely would change how they feel about the newest neural nets. Clarity is the only way to avoid cutting off our nose to spite our face.

moritzwarhier 3y ago

But don't you think that there should be regulation saying that delegating decisions to a technology system should make you fully responsible, and that growing capability of these systems make it more important to clarify that any "mistrusted the machine by accident" argument is null and void? For me, it's not important if the legal definition requires this term. It's not like automation and computer programs are being banned. It's the decision part that justifies this legal definition IMO. It's like the difference between a human or an automated car running over people. Quite literally even.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
> But don't you think that there should be regulation saying that delegating decisions to a technology system What is a "decision"? My computer is making billions of decisions per second. If nothing else, I could see this crippling FOSS. No one is going to want to be "responsible" to some EU bureaucrat pursuing a personal political agenda, certainly not for work you've done for free.
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  Yeah I wanted to expand but got tired: Of course any computation can be considered a decision in some way. But this is conflating a narrow and IT-specific meaning of that word with legalese and philosophy, or my intended meaning of the word. This reminds me of the ancient catastrophic Therac-25 software bug, and other such cases. Maybe this case is a good example for thinking about what part of the responsibility is on the side of the operator, apart from the obvious failure of the implementer. For more modern examples involving actual ML, look at Meta, TikTok and their recommendations: where is the line to draw, what excuses are allowed, when the outcome is obviously negative, and the algorithm claims to fulfill a goal? It doesn't matter if it's a rule-based system without "intelligence" or ML. What matters is the responsibility of the human operator. And making assumptions about correctness. Humans make egregious errors as well, but the kind of errors AI causes are a significant concern where current legislation is insufficient. It's one thing to have a bug in your airplane controller code or whatever. It's another to knowingly accept malicious errors, either unpredictable or even intentional, but without proper responsibility?
  - candiodari 3y ago
    > It's another to knowingly accept malicious errors, either unpredictable or even intentional, but without proper responsibility? Is this law making the users of software responsible (e.g. law enforcement, government departments) ? It seems to me to make authors of software responsible, absolving the users. Not the other way around. They keep the law secret, of course, so anyone can claim what they want, but the article talks directly about the accountability of OpenAI. It seems to focus on rules on authors of AI software, presumably to mostly absolve governments and users of that software. "Rules around generative AI", "transparency requirements for any developer of a large language model" ... nothing that would make governments responsible for abusing AI software. Which is strange, because that's the concern the last paragraph of the article focuses on. I must say ... this "complete ban" voted by the EU parliament last spring, doesn't seem to have stopped governments from using live facial recognition [1]. [1] https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/02/21/new-french-facial-recognition-reveals-identity-in-a-click-ahead-of-paris-2024-olympics https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/02/21/new-french-facial-r...