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Excellent move by Newsom. We have a very active legislature, but it's been extremely bandwagon-y in recent years. I support much of Wiener's agenda, particularl
by worstspotgain 2y ago
Excellent move by Newsom. We have a very active legislature, but it's been extremely bandwagon-y in recent years. I support much of Wiener's agenda, particularly his housing policy, but this bill was way off the mark.
It was basically a torpedo against open models. Market leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic weren't really worried about it, or about open models in general. Its supporters were the also-rans like Musk [1] trying to empty out the bottom of the pack, as well as those who are against any AI they cannot control, such as antagonists of the West and wary copyright holders.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/26/elon-musk-unexpectedly-offers-support-for-californias-ai-bill/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/26/elon-musk-unexpectedly-off...
- SonOfLilit 2y agowhy would Google, Microsoft and OpenAI oppose a torpedo against open models? Aren't they positioned to benefit the most?
- worstspotgain 2y agoIf there was just one quasi-monopoly it would have probably supported the bill. As it is, the market leaders have the competition from each other to worry about. Getting rid of open models wouldn't let them raise their prices much.
- SonOfLilit 2y agoSo if it's not them, who is the hidden commercial interest sponsoring an attack on open source models that cost >$100mm to train? Or does Wiener just genuinely hate megabudget open source? Or is it an accidental attack, aimed at something else? At what?
- worstspotgain 2y agoLike I said, supporters included wary copyright holders and the bottom-market also-rans like Musk. If your model is barely holding up against Llama, what's the point of staying in.
- SonOfLilit 2y agoAnd two of the three godfathers of AI, and all of the AI notkillaboutism crowd. Actually, wait, if Grok is losing to GPT, why would Musk care about Llama more than Altman? Llama hurts his competitor...
- worstspotgain 2y agoThe market in my argument looks like OpenAI ~ Anthropic > Google >>> Meta (~ or maybe >) Musk/Alibaba. The top 3 aren't worried about the down-market stuff. You're free to disagree of course.
- ascorbic 2y agoHe can't compete with Anthropic and OpenAI because their models are much better. Llama is the competitor with the capability closest to Grok.
- gdiamos 2y agoClaude, SSI, Grok, GPT, Llama, … Should we crown one the king? Or perhaps it is better to let them compete? Perhaps advanced AI capability will motivate advanced AI safety capability?
- Maken 2y agoWhat are the economic incentives for AI safety?
- fat_cantor 2y agoIt's an interesting thought that as AI advances, and becomes more capable of human destruction, programmers, bots and politicians will work together to create safety for a large quantity of humans
- fifilura 2y ago"AI defense corps"
- jnaz343 2y agoYou think they want to compete? None of them want to compete. They want to be a protected monopoly.
- CSMastermind 2y agoThe bill included language that required the creators of models to have various "safety" features that would severely restrict their development. It required audits and other regulatory hurdles to build the models at all.
- llamaimperative 2y agoIf you spent $100MM+ on training.
- gdiamos 2y agoAdvanced technology will drop the cost of training. The flop targets in that bill would be like saying “640KB of memory is all we will ever need” and outlawing anything more. Imagine what other countries would have done to us if we allowed a monopoly like that on memory in 1980.
- llamaimperative 2y agoNo, there are two thresholds and BOTH must be met. One of those is $100MM in training costs. The other is measured in FLOPs but is already larger than GPT-4, so the “think of the small guys!” argument doesn’t make much sense.
- gdiamos 2y agoTell that to me when we get to llama 15
- llamaimperative 2y agoWhat?
- gdiamos 2y ago“But the big guys are struggling getting past 100KB, so ‘think of the small guys’ doesn’t make sense when the limit is 640KB.” How do people on a computer technology forum ignore the 10,000x improvement in computers over 30 years due to advances in computer technology? I could understand why politicians don’t get it. I should think that computer systems companies would be up in arms over SB 1047 in the same way they would be if the government was thinking of putting a cap on hard drives bigger than 1 TB. It puts a cap on flops. Isn’t the biggest company in the world in the business of selling flops?
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoYeah, I think the argument that "this just hurts open models" makes no sense given the supporters/detractors of this bill. The thing that large companies care the most about in the legal realm is certainty. They're obviously going to be a big target of lawsuits regardless, so they want to know that legislation is clear as to the ways they can act - their biggest fear is that you get a good "emotional sob story" in front of a court with a sympathetic jury. It sounded like this legislation was so vague that it would attract a hoard of lawyers looking for a way they can argue these big companies didn't take "reasonable" care.
- SonOfLilit 2y agoSob stories are definitely not covered by the text of the bill. The "critical harm" clause (ctrl-f this comment section for a full quote) is all about nuclear weapons and massive hacks and explicitly excludes "just" someone dying or getting injured with very clear language.
- benreesman 2y agoSome laws are just bad. When the API-mediated/closed-weights companies agree with the open-weight/operator-aligned community that a law is bad, it’s probably got to be pretty awful. That said, though my mind might be playing tricks on me, I seem to recall the big labs being in favor at one time. There are a number of related threads linked, but I’ll personally highlight Jeremy Howard’s open letter as IMHO the best-argued case against SB 1047. https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-04-29-sb1047.html https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-04-29-sb1047.html
- SonOfLilit 2y ago> The definition of “covered model” within the bill is extremely broad, potentially encompassing a wide range of open-source models that pose minimal risk. Who are these wide range of >$100mm open source models he's thinking of? And who are the impacted small businesses that would be scared to train them (at a cost of >$100mm) without paying for legal counsel?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- shiroiushi 2y agoIt's too bad companies big and small didn't come together and successfully oppose the passage of the DMCA.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 2y agoMy understanding is that tech was politically weaker back then. Although there were some big tech companies, they didn’t have as much of a lobbying operation.
- wrs 2y agoAs I remember it, among other reasons, tech companies really wanted “multimedia” (at the time, that meant DVDs) to migrate to PCs (this was called the “living room PC”) and studios weren’t about to allow that without legal protection.
- wrsh07 2y agoI would note that Facebook and Google were opposed to eg gdpr although it gave them a larger share of the pie. When framed like that: why be opposed, it hurts your competition? The answer is something like: it shrinks the pie or reduces the growth rate, and that's bad (for them and others) The economics of this bill aren't clear to me (how large of a fine would Google/Microsoft pay in expectation within the next ten years?), but they maybe also aren't clear to Google/Microsoft (and that alone could be a reason to oppose) Many of the ai safety crowd were very supportive, and I would recommend reading Zvi's writing on it if you want their take
- nisten 2y agoBecause it's a law that first intended to put opensource developers in jail.
- rllearneratwork 2y agobecause it was a stupid law which would hurt AI innovation
- mattmaroon 2y agoFirst they came for the open models…
- Cupertino95014 2y ago[flagged]
- arduanika 2y agoCome on, we're trying to have a productive discussion here. There's no need to just drop in and insult clowns.
- labster 2y agoTo be fair, clowning around is a lot more tractable than homelessness, housing prices, health care, or immigration.
- Cupertino95014 2y agoHear. Just keep getting reelected, since no one expects you to accomplish anything. People in the rest of the country push "term limits" as the solution to everything. I always point out that we've had them in CA for 20 years. It just means that they run for a different office after they're termed out. Or become lobbyists.
- labster 2y agoWe should do the same thing in software engineering. After 4 years in web dev, you have to switch to something else like embedded systems or DBA. Or be forced to become a highly paid consultant.
- dgellow 2y ago> After 4 years in web dev, you have to switch to something else like embedded systems or DBA Unironically, that would be awesome
- dragonwriter 2y ago> Excellent move by Newsom. [...] It was basically a torpedo against open models. He vetoed it in part because the threshold it applies to at all are well-beyond any current models, and he wants something that will impose greater restrictions on more and much smaller/lower-training-compute models that this would have left alone entirely. > Market leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic weren't really worried about it, or about open models in general. OpenAI (along with Google and Meta) led the institutional opposition to the bill, Anthropic was a major advocate for it.
- worstspotgain 2y ago> He vetoed it in part because the threshold it applies to at all are well-beyond any current models, and he wants something that will impose greater restrictions on more and much smaller/lower-training-compute models that this would have left alone entirely. Well, we'll see what passes again and when. By then there'll be more kittens out of the bag too. > Anthropic was a major advocate for it. I don't know about being a major advocate, the last I read was "cautious support" [1]. Perhaps Anthropic sees Llama as a bigger competitor of theirs than I do, but it could also just be PR. [1] https://thejournal.com/articles/2024/08/26/anthropic-offers-cautious-support-for-new-california-ai-regulation-legislation.aspx https://thejournal.com/articles/2024/08/26/anthropic-offers-...
- FeepingCreature 2y ago> I don't know about being a major advocate, the last I read was "cautious support" [1]. Perhaps Anthropic sees Llama as a bigger competitor of theirs than I do, but it could also just be PR. This seems a curious dichotomy. Can we at least consider the possibility that they mean the words they say or is that off the table?
- worstspotgain 2y agoJust two spitballing conjectures, not meant to be a dichotomy. If you have first-hand knowledge please contribute.
- dangitman 2y ago[dead]
- EasyMark 2y agoYes they definitely need to slow their roll and sit back and listen to both sides of this instead of those who think AGI will happen in a year or two and the T1000s are coming for them. I think LLM have a bright future, especially as more hardware is build specifically for them. The market can fix most of the problems and when it becomes evident we’re heading in the wrong direction or monopolies and abuses occur, that’s when the government needs to step in, no based some broad speculation from from the fringe of either side.
- pbreit 2y agoBills that could kill major new industries need to be reactive, if at all. This was a terrible bill. Thank you, Governor.
- fwip 2y agoIf the new industry is inherently unsafe, it is better to be proactive.
- pbreit 2y agoEven if I agreed in general I would not be sure about this case.
- fwip 2y agoYeah, this specific law sounds like not great law.
- reciprocity 2y agohttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/newsom-vetoes-sb-1047 https://thezvi.substack.com/p/newsom-vetoes-sb-1047 This link convinced me otherwise. I wasn't too sure before (I'm a little ashamed to admit I hadn't been following the development of SB 1047). I will also specifically share this talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ I think this passing this bill would have probably been a very good idea. Not perfect, but far, very far from broken. Edit: I'm actually not sure if we as a community gave this topic enough attention leading in the months leading up to the announcement of this decision.
- sshconnection 2y agoSame. I am generally very politically aligned with him (esp housing and transit), but this one ain’t it.