4 ms·

As I understand this law does not mandate you to ensure anything. It requires you to follow best practices (to be determined), report safety incidents, etc. You

As I understand this law does not mandate you to ensure anything. It requires you to follow best practices (to be determined), report safety incidents, etc. You are not even liable for safety incidents, you just need to report them, although it may be embarrassing. Overall, it seems highly reasonable.

echelon 2y ago
> requires you to follow best practices (to be determined) Trigger happy regulation for a field that hasn't even come into full swing. It's indicative of an over-active immune system; lawmakers with nothing better to do. Pass laws against improper use and go after the malicious users. Don't ban the technology, the research, or even the applications. (Of which there will be abundant good uses. Many of which we've yet to even see or predict.) Our culture has become obsessed with regulating and limiting freedom on the very principle that it might be harmful. We should be punishing actual measurable, physical and monetary harms. Not imaginary or hypothetical ones. If California passes this, AI companies should leave California behind.
- realce 2y ago
  > Don't ban the technology, the research, or even the applications. Where is the ban here?
  - echelon 2y ago
    Some highlights from the text of the bill [1], > Other relief as the court deems appropriate, including monetary damages damages, including punitive damages, to persons aggrieved aggrieved, punitive damages, and an order for the full shutdown of a covered model. > A civil penalty in an amount not exceeding 10 percent of the cost, excluding labor cost, to develop the covered model for a first violation and in an amount not exceeding 30 percent of the cost, excluding labor cost, to develop the covered model for any subsequent violation. [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
- sanxiyn 2y ago
  That's like saying we should punish when bridge collapses, before that any bridge should be able to be built. You can argue that, but not many will agree.
  - sgift 2y ago
    Because we know how to build bridges so that they don't collapse. The laws of physics that govern bridge-building are well known. The equivalent for AI systems? Not really.
    - sanxiyn 2y ago
      Best practices will say things like "you should test it". While we are ignorant, there are just many reasonable things to do. Human biology is not completely understood, but that does not mean medical checklists are useless.
      - Auracle 2y ago
        Test it how? What makes it fail? The ability to tell people how to make a bomb? Being able to say what (few) good things Hitler accomplished for Germany? Giving medical advice? Where’s the line?
        sanxiyn 2y ago
        One thing law explicitly says is full shutdown capability. So it should be tested whether it can autonomously hack computers on the internet and propagate itself. In fact Anthropic tested this. See https://metr.org/ https://metr.org/ for more.
    - Analemma_ 2y ago
      We don't know how to make safe AI systems, so we should be more cavalier and anything-goes than if we did? Madness.
      - sgift 2y ago
- tyingq 2y ago
  >Pass laws against improper use and go after the malicious users. I think they are having to deal with things like sales to countries outside of their legal reach. So, while I understand the tack here, there's probably more to it than this.
- spamizbad 2y ago
  > Trigger happy regulation for a field that hasn't even come into full swing. Of little concern in the US legal system. Might be problematic in the EU perhaps, but in the United States the courts have consistently been tremendously deferential to the interests of small and large businesses vs consumers.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  > Trigger happy regulation for a field that hasn't even come into full swing. It's indicative of an over-active immune system; lawmakers with nothing better to do. I guess they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. We constantly complain about slow lawmaking, "Look at how out of touch Congress are! XYZ technology is moving so fast, and they're always 10-20 years behind!" Finally, someone is actually on the ball and up-to-date with a current technology, and now the other complainers complain that they're jumping the gun and regulating too soon. Lawmakers can't win.
  - echelon 2y ago
    > We constantly complain about slow lawmaking I don't think I've ever complained about slow lawmaking. I've complained about a lack of rights and a lack of enshrined rights.
jahewson 2y ago
Nothing drives fear into my heart like the phrase “best practices”. Never in my career has it ever meant anything remotely reasonable.
- derefr 2y ago
  "Best practices" means something sensible in most subfields of capital-E Engineering. (In fact, I think that's where the term originates from, with all other usages being a corruption of the original concept.) In Engineering, "best practices" are the set of "just do X" answers that will let you skip deriving every answer about what material or design to use from first principles for cases where there's a known dominant solution. For example, "for a load-bearing pillar, use steel-reinforced concrete, in a cylindrical shape, with a cross-sectional diameter following formula XYZ given the number of storeys of the building." You can (and eventually must!) still do a load simulation for the building, to see that the pillar can hold things up without cracking — but you don't have to model the building when selecting what material to use; and you don't have to randomly fiddle with the shape or diameter of the pillar until the load holds. You can slap a pillar into the design and be able to predict that it'll hold the load (while not being overly costly in material use!), because "best practices."

echelon 2y ago

> requires you to follow best practices (to be determined) Trigger happy regulation for a field that hasn't even come into full swing. It's indicative of an over-active immune system; lawmakers with nothing better to do. Pass laws against improper use and go after the malicious users. Don't ban the technology, the research, or even the applications. (Of which there will be abundant good uses. Many of which we've yet to even see or predict.) Our culture has become obsessed with regulating and limiting freedom on the very principle that it might be harmful. We should be punishing actual measurable, physical and monetary harms. Not imaginary or hypothetical ones. If California passes this, AI companies should leave California behind.

realce 2y ago
> Don't ban the technology, the research, or even the applications. Where is the ban here?
- echelon 2y ago
  Some highlights from the text of the bill [1], > Other relief as the court deems appropriate, including monetary damages damages, including punitive damages, to persons aggrieved aggrieved, punitive damages, and an order for the full shutdown of a covered model. > A civil penalty in an amount not exceeding 10 percent of the cost, excluding labor cost, to develop the covered model for a first violation and in an amount not exceeding 30 percent of the cost, excluding labor cost, to develop the covered model for any subsequent violation. [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
sanxiyn 2y ago
That's like saying we should punish when bridge collapses, before that any bridge should be able to be built. You can argue that, but not many will agree.
- sgift 2y ago
  Because we know how to build bridges so that they don't collapse. The laws of physics that govern bridge-building are well known. The equivalent for AI systems? Not really.
  - sanxiyn 2y ago
    Best practices will say things like "you should test it". While we are ignorant, there are just many reasonable things to do. Human biology is not completely understood, but that does not mean medical checklists are useless.
    - Auracle 2y ago
      Test it how? What makes it fail? The ability to tell people how to make a bomb? Being able to say what (few) good things Hitler accomplished for Germany? Giving medical advice? Where’s the line?
      - sanxiyn 2y ago
        One thing law explicitly says is full shutdown capability. So it should be tested whether it can autonomously hack computers on the internet and propagate itself. In fact Anthropic tested this. See https://metr.org/ https://metr.org/ for more.
  - Analemma_ 2y ago
    We don't know how to make safe AI systems, so we should be more cavalier and anything-goes than if we did? Madness.
    - sgift 2y ago
tyingq 2y ago
>Pass laws against improper use and go after the malicious users. I think they are having to deal with things like sales to countries outside of their legal reach. So, while I understand the tack here, there's probably more to it than this.
spamizbad 2y ago
> Trigger happy regulation for a field that hasn't even come into full swing. Of little concern in the US legal system. Might be problematic in the EU perhaps, but in the United States the courts have consistently been tremendously deferential to the interests of small and large businesses vs consumers.
ryandrake 2y ago
> Trigger happy regulation for a field that hasn't even come into full swing. It's indicative of an over-active immune system; lawmakers with nothing better to do. I guess they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. We constantly complain about slow lawmaking, "Look at how out of touch Congress are! XYZ technology is moving so fast, and they're always 10-20 years behind!" Finally, someone is actually on the ball and up-to-date with a current technology, and now the other complainers complain that they're jumping the gun and regulating too soon. Lawmakers can't win.
- echelon 2y ago
  > We constantly complain about slow lawmaking I don't think I've ever complained about slow lawmaking. I've complained about a lack of rights and a lack of enshrined rights.

jahewson 2y ago

Nothing drives fear into my heart like the phrase “best practices”. Never in my career has it ever meant anything remotely reasonable.

derefr 2y ago
"Best practices" means something sensible in most subfields of capital-E Engineering. (In fact, I think that's where the term originates from, with all other usages being a corruption of the original concept.) In Engineering, "best practices" are the set of "just do X" answers that will let you skip deriving every answer about what material or design to use from first principles for cases where there's a known dominant solution. For example, "for a load-bearing pillar, use steel-reinforced concrete, in a cylindrical shape, with a cross-sectional diameter following formula XYZ given the number of storeys of the building." You can (and eventually must!) still do a load simulation for the building, to see that the pillar can hold things up without cracking — but you don't have to model the building when selecting what material to use; and you don't have to randomly fiddle with the shape or diameter of the pillar until the load holds. You can slap a pillar into the design and be able to predict that it'll hold the load (while not being overly costly in material use!), because "best practices."