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Cali's AG Tells AI Companies Almost Everything They're Doing Might Be Illegal
- sbszllr 2y agoMight is irrelevant and doesn't prevent any abuse, nor does it foster innovative environment. Both the EU and the US, need to pick a side. Either they should make it illegal and establish precedent, or just let go.
- GaggiX 2y ago>Either they should make it illegal and establish precedent At that point we just wait for the next Chinese open source model.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoThis is also why we won't get a Big Tech crackdown any time soon of any significance; and would not have even under the previous administration. Big Tech is the US' golden goose in the race against China. Deepseek shows China is at the doorstep, much closer and more capable than previously assumed. Any thoughts politically about how we can simultaneously crack down on Big Tech, while keeping China in check with sanctions, just went out the window.
- anonymousab 2y agoExpecting companies to actually license copyrighted material instead of mass infringement is fairly reasonable given they've demanded the same for decades from the populace. "China's not going to respect those laws" is kinda beside the point. If they suddenly decided to cut everyone in the nation's pay in half - or double it - that would have no bearing on what is right for you or I to do.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago> If they suddenly decided to cut everyone in the nation's pay in half - or double it - that would have no bearing on what is right for you or I to do. They literally did exactly that relative to the salaries of the rest of the world, and everyone took them up on it. In retrospect, keeping China a weak communist nation was so easy. There was even internal dissent in the late 80s. It simply required refusing to make trade deals. US and worldwide wages would have been higher, discontent would have continued fermenting, the party would have remained relatively weak, human rights would not have been so easily sold out to the lowest bidder, the US would probably not have lost 6 million manufacturing jobs in a decade (3x the number of jobs in SV), and we blew it.
- portaouflop 2y agoCapitalism doesn’t care about rights or how much you get paid — the only relevant metric is how much money you make so this was inevitable in capitalist America.
- myrmidon 2y ago> In retrospect, keeping China a weak communist nation was so easy. This is extremely naive, and fallacious. As policymaker, you do not know beforehand how countries are going to develop over a 40 year period (not even your own country :P). Thus the only realistic option would've been a catch-all sanction regime against... possible future geopolitical rivals? Non-democratic nations? States with different cultural values? No matter which you pick, sacrificing trade like that would've been extremely expensive and limiting for US growth (might've included India, Africa, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Europe, Russia, depending on what criteria you pick). You might have seen other countries jumping at the opportunity, filling the gap and benefitting immensely in the process, like the EU, or India, Russia, Japan, some pan-African Union... The only certainty in the outcome is that the US in such a scenario would NOT be as wealthy as it is today.
- thot_experiment 2y agoChina isn't meaningfully communist. In general them stealing our jobs is probably a good thing on the whole. It's a complex issue, and I would be happy if we were pressuring China hard because of it's human rights abuses but global wealth inequality going down is something to be celebrated, protectionism sucks. I know it's complicated, but I can't be too mad about our wealth being "stolen" to lift people out of poverty, it's something I think we should be doing willingly.
- GaggiX 2y agoYou can't license 20T of tokens, I guess it's hard to grasp how big these datasets are.
- runako 2y ago"Can't" or "don't want to"? OpenAI is talking about spending half a trillion US dollars, they have the money to license data. In music, there is compulsory licensing and companies that use recorded music are able to make the economics work. It needs to be repeated that these are not simply "tokens", they are the product of millions of individual people that are being appropriated for the financial gain of a very few other people.
- woah 2y agoImagine if the US (public and private sector), transferred 2% of GDP to Warner Bros
- GaggiX 2y ago>"Can't" or "don't want to"? Can't. Even if someone has the money (I truly doubt), you can't contact millions of copyright owners (as you report).
- hereweareagain 2y agoIf it's impossible to do it legally, then they shouldn't be able to do it. Violating one person's rights is illegal, but violating a billion's rights for profit is fine? I'm in support of them being able to do it, but the right avenue is by working and lobbying hard to change antiquated copyright laws. Being able to disregard copyright only if you have enough billions of dollars on hand is the worst outcome. It's literally laws that only apply to the poor.
- ghaff 2y agoBe careful where you're going here. If you maximally/strictly interpret copyright law, the Internet Archive (including Wayback Machine) is largely violating copyright all the time. (WAY beyond the ongoing dispute with the publishers over the lending library.) Most web content is non-permissively licensed.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoThere are other things about the AI industry that don't foster an "innovative environment": - companies being allowed to spin fairy tales about their products' capabilities - no real consequences to enabling scammers, copyright thieves, and misinformation factories That stuff might be good for securing short-term investment - and it befits a society obsessed with cryptocurrency and sports gambling. But it doesn't seem good for building meaningfully smarter computers, just dumber computer users.
- BoredPositron 2y agoForce them to open source it.
- philipov 2y agoForce them to open source it!
- lupusreal 2y agoCreation of new laws, and enforcement of existing laws usually trails behind the bleeding edge of tech. It's part of the risk tech companies accept when they're doing something new which might possibly be a bit dodgy.
- confidantlake 2y agoIf they continue they might get a strongly worded letter.
- nostradumbasp 2y agoFine of five hundred dollars and a personal donation to a re-election campaign required.
- KaiserPro 2y agoI mean yeah, but perhaps going after the provable and wholesale abuse of copyright laws might be a more fruitful approach. https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-used-copyrighted-books-ai-training-despite-its-own-lawyers-warnings-authors-2023-12-12/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-used-copyrighted-boo... After all its actually documented. Its also not likely to be fair use. The proving now harm bit is going to be difficult, and bad on the old trumpian optics. copyright at least forces some of his billionaires to fight with other billionares to come to a conclusion as to "what is good for America"
- voxic11 2y agoGoogle making a database of all web content and serving up snippets of that content in search results was ruled to be fair use. So it seems plausible that doing essentially the same thing but with an AI rather than a traditional database could be ruled to be fair use. Its hardly a sure thing but their position does seem to be at least somewhat supported by precedent.
- jcranmer 2y agohttps://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf is the most recent SCOTUS precedent covering the definition of "transformative" for the purposes of fair use. The tl;dr is that you have to look at the impact on the market for the use to figure out if it's transformative [1]... which means it's extremely unlikely that training for AI is going to be considered "transformative", and thus they lose the first factor. Given that AI is absolutely reamed on the fourth factor (especially now that they're paying people to use their content for training, that's basically a concession on the fourth factor), there isn't really any grounds for them to claim fair use. [1] Yes, it's pulling the fourth factor into the first factor, it is a rather garbage opinion, but it is precedent as of 3 years ago.
- spencerflem 2y agoUnfortunately, nowadays what the laws say and what's legal are two different things
- cscurmudgeon 2y agoNow compare this to the legal atmosphere that DeepSeek was created in.
- psunavy03 2y agoOh, the "we'll give you money under the table so you can appear cheap as hell, but you'd better give us all your data on the imperialists, Comrade" regime?
- doctorpangloss 2y agoEven though he’s right, Rob Bonta is going to get himself fired, while Scott Wiener will write a bill legalizing training on non expressly licensed data.
- mschuster91 2y agoFun fact: Germany's IP law has a provision that allows AI training by default for everything that's reachable on the Internet, if the website operator hasn't published a "nope" in machine-readable form (i.e. robots.txt). [1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__44b.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__44b.html
- NullPrefix 2y agoSo to legally copy a website, all you need is to just pass it through an AI filter and then you can legally publish the rip off?
- portaouflop 2y agoNo - data mining copyrighted material and republishing copyrighted material under your own name are two very different things
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoPassing data through an AI filter for "training" is a different thing (legally and ethically) from publishing the output.
- portaouflop 2y agoIf you read the law it says it’s only allowed if the rights holder doesn’t disallow it (in machine readable form) - I would argue robots.txt falls under machine readable
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago>will write a bill legalizing training on non expressly licensed data. Which should be assumed to be legal already, even without the expressly written bill. Copyright maximalism is anti-human.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoThis article seems like a pretty dishonest summary of a legal advisory that begins by saying: > AI systems are at the forefront of the technology industry, and hold great potential to achieve scientific breakthroughs, boost economic growth, and benefit consumers. As home to the world’s leading technology companies and many of the most compelling recent developments in AI, California has a vested interest in the development and growth of AI tools. The AGO encourages the responsible use of AI in ways that are safe, ethical, and consistent with human dignity to help solve urgent challenges, increase efficiencies, and unlock access to information—consistent with state and federal law. It's impossible to understand this as a statement that AI companies are a "legal clusterfuck" or "may be entirely based around criminal activity".
- tssva 2y agoThe actual warning seems to be not to do things with AI that are also illegal without AI. Don’t create illegal fake content, don’t make false claims regarding the accuracy of your AI and don’t produce AI systems which are discriminatory against a protected class.
- kalkin 2y agoSeriously. I did not realize Gizmodo was at that point with opportunistic clickbait, but apparently it is. edit to expand: from the headline I thought this was going to be Bonta coming out against the argument that AI training is fair use, which really would at least arguably apply to "almost everything" the companies make. But no, he's just saying not to do things that AFAICT they already all ban in TOS.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chrisbrandow 2y ago“Cali”? No.
- whimsicalism 2y agoHigh level CA politicians larp as national politicians way too much
- thot_experiment 2y agoGiven the economic contribution and population of California it seems appropriate. See "map of states with a population less than LA county"
- richwater 2y agoThat people want to pack in populated, dense urban counties in tiny apartments doesn't mean anything.
- immibis 2y agoIt means that county is doing better than many states.
- stickfigure 2y agoExcept people and companies can change their resident state much easier than they can change their nationality. Nation-level policies do not necessarily work at state levels.
- ang_cire 2y agoThey are national politicians (as is every politician in the nation). I think you mean "Federal". That aside, state governments are supposed to heavily augment federal laws with their own state laws and regulations. California doesn't need or want input from a bunch of states with little to no AI (or even IT in general) industry footprint about how those companies should operate.
- bpodgursky 2y agoIf the government cannot give you a definitive opinion whether you are breaking the law, the government has no mandate to rule. Rule of law means having clear guidance on what is or isn't illegal. Vague guidance that everyone in the industry "might" be breaking the law isn't responsible, it's setting up a mechanism to trade favors and selectively prosecute enemies to reward friends. Be better, guys. This isn't the right take.
- throwway120385 2y agoRule of law means that an unbiased judge with an understanding of the relevant precedents allows two litigants to argue their cases on the merits of the case and of the evidence, and then when the judge or jury renders a judgement, the society accepts the judgement and allows any consequences to be carried out without regard for who the judgement is for or against. It has nothing to do with "clear guidance" because what is clear as day to one person may be totally unfathomable to another. I guarantee that you or I could find two statutes together that make perfect sense to me but which you do not understand, and vice-versa. That's why we have attorneys and judges.
- bpodgursky 2y agoPeople have a right to know, in advance of an action, whether the AG or DOJ will wish to prosecute it. If the AG or DOJ haven't made their position clear, you should be able to ask, and they will give a clear answer. That is an extremely basic rule of civilized governance. You can't wordplay around it. This is not the entire legal system, but it is a critical part of it.
- tacitusarc 2y agoThis is pretty inaccurate. Absent actual laws that people are aware of, you described rule of man, the opposing governance form. Rule of laws means there are known laws everyone has to follow no matter who they are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
- nradov 2y agoNo, that's not how it's supposed to work. Laws are supposed to comply with the vagueness doctrine. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vagueness_doctrine https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vagueness_doctrine
- htk 2y agoWhat is being argued in the article that AI Companies could be doing illegally: -Using AI to “foster or advance deception.” -Falsely advertising “the accuracy, quality, or utility of AI systems.” -Create or sell an AI system or product that has “an adverse or disproportionate impact on members of a protected class, or create, reinforce, or perpetuate discrimination or segregation of members of a protected class.“
- hermannj314 2y agoWhat kind of standard is disproportionate impact? Do not build an AI system that discovers the best way to target men to get a prostate exam, or the elderly to enroll in a program that may benefit them? I understand "adverse", but disproportionate implies don't even try to help classes of people. AT ALL!
- foxyv 2y agoWhat they are talking about is using AI as a proxy for racial, gender, and age discrimination. For instance, if you use AI for an adverse decision regarding employment, housing, education, or financial decisions you need to justify those decisions against persons from a protected class. If you cannot explain why you have made such decisions, then the state will look at disproportionate impact. EG: You hired/lent to/rented to black people 25% less often than you did to white people. "Because the AI said so." doesn't cut it.
- hermannj314 2y agoYour argument makes it sound like the statement says "adverse and disproportionate". I'm seeing that it says OR, meaning you don't have to do anything adverse. I don't like when laws are worded such that we told we shouldn't care what the words say, we all know what we meant, this is a law for getting the bad guys, so don't worry about the actual words we use. You shouldn't need a law degree to know what OR means.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lerp-io 2y agothe cat is of the bag, there is no point in trying to fight it at this point if data is accessible. models will be built on top of models and will become cheaper to train. in fact, u can fight these battles now only bc they are big companies and training is expensive. if training/inference improves and becomes more at the edge in the hands of users, nobody will stop anyone else from consuming whatever data they want (raw data, other models, whatever) into their own models just like we consume whatever data we hav access to and build our own mental models. all you can do is simply not share your data.
- nohat00 2y agothere seems to be an error in the headline – Cali is a city in Colombia, but the article is about California?
- teqsun 2y agoHN's title character limit is 80 (and the title is exactly 80 characters), so it was abbreviated to fit.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoCA would have made more sense as its an actual acronym.
- riffic 2y agoIt was abbreviated incorrectly and it is ambiguous or even misleading in its current form. > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading..
- quesera 2y agoI would vote for: "California AG to AI Corps: Practically Everything You’re Doing Might Be Illegal"
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThe last thing we need is for California to keep adding more regulations, as CA’s incredibly bloated government has for a couple decades, and irresponsibly killing American prospects in the race for technology superiority. Rob Bonta is already a bad AG for his repeated blatant violation of constitutional rights. If this headline is truly his stance, he needs to go, and immediately. We have no time as a nation to tolerate people like him at this critical time.
- dfilppi 2y ago[dead]
- myheartisinohio 2y agoWow, now that's what I call lawfare! Vol. 23
- ecshafer 2y ago> Use AI to foster or advance deception. For example, the creation of deepfakes, chatbots, and voice clones that appear to represent people, events, and utterances that never existed or occurred would likely be deceptive.4 > Likewise, in many contexts it would likely be deceptive to fail to disclose that AI has been used to create a piece of media. Under this logic a company making pencils is illegal.
- Rygian 2y agoCould you please develop your idea? I don't see the link between pencils and deepfakes.
- ecshafer 2y agoI can write a letter for propaganda purposes already. I can draw a picture of someone and say "This is the president doing a nefarious act!". They are confusing a tool possibly being used for a purpose as making the tool illegal and not the purpose. If writing propaganda via AI makes AI illegal, then we should ban pencils since they can be used for write propaganda. Pencils can be used to forge documents, but again they are legal.
- ADeerAppeared 2y agoFirstly, do note that the original text is talking about use of AI, this one line doesn't seem to be about banning AI so much as banning a use. Secondly: The implied basis here is that AI isn't just a product, it's also a service. This isn't you buying a pencil, it's you commissioning the drawing. Most of these products are cloud based SaaS. And there's also the matter that "it's just a tool" doesn't really apply to foreseeable problems. If a suspicious person shows up out of nowhere buying large quantities of fertilizer, you don't get to go "Well he could be using that fertilizer for anything, not my problem". (This is relevant to AI as pretty much all AI services already have heavy restrictions on their output, this isn't a bunch of researchers publishing a paper and having bad actors implement their own AI based on that. We have companies openly advertising deepfake services.)
- 2y ago
- riffic 2y agothe original title uses "California", not "Cali".
- kachapopopow 2y agoIf the US doesn't do it, China will and this argument has nothing to do with deepseek although it does prove the point.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago"China does it" is not an argument for allowing things which are unethical.
- kachapopopow 2y agoThere's levels to that, it's not an argument that can be dismissed that easily.
- karmasimida 2y agoCan Cali's AG copy this letter to DeepSeek, lol?
- tolerance 2y agoThis smells like a proxy maneuver against Big Tech for their posturing toward the Trump Administration.
- intalentive 2y agoThomas Sowell definitively disproved the idea that disparate outcomes are ipso facto proof of discrimination. It's past time this line of jurisprudence was put to bed.
- advisedwang 2y agoI assume you are referring to this section: > Create or sell an AI system or product that has “an adverse or disproportionate impact on members of a protected class, or create, reinforce, or perpetuate discrimination or segregation of members of a protected class.“ It's a straw man to characterize that as saying disparate outcomes ALONE are why AI systems might be discriminatory. They may well can be, and likely are, actually embedding biases in the models. The simple examples of how many systems often prefer "he" for doctors and "her" for nurses shows that bias in datasets results in bias in the models. Yes, that is a result of the dataset and reflects the dataset (and maybe even real world statistics on doctors and nurses!) but it does mean the system may treat women and men differently when there is no legal justification to do so.
- intalentive 2y agoI reject the notion that legal justification is necessary. Your LLM prefers "he" for doctors and "her" for nurses, and therefore you can be prosecuted by the state? That's ridiculous. All such Harrison Bergeron-style speech-policing is antithetical to a free society.
- advisedwang 2y agoNo, I'm not saying the he/she thing is worthy of prosecution. Straw man #2, nice. It is just an undeniable illustration that bias is encoded in machine learning models. Of course it requires some actual harm before the law is involved. Perhaps AI recruiting systems favour resumes that match the "correct" gender to profession. Perhaps a hypothetical AI sentencing recommender gives stiffer penalties to people that live in high crime areas; after all, statistically they are more likely to re-offend - that's just not an acceptable sentencing factor. Perhaps a house appraisal AI accidentally recreates redlining. These are just hard to prove, so my example is there to demonstrate that even though it's hard to demonstrate we should take the risk seriously.
- Synaesthesia 2y agoPeople fundamentally misunderstand how "AI's" work. They merely regurgitate statistically what is fed to them, and that includes vast corpus of data, and they are a black box. Hence of course they will disseminate false and misleading information. They don't actually have "intelligence" or agency. There's also not much we can do about the hallucination problem.
- anigbrowl 2y agoSo much like people then.
- cbm-vic-20 2y ago> here's also not much we can do about the hallucination problem. Call them what they are: errors.
- rexpop 2y ago"These tools suck; QED no one should be held accountable." I must have misunderstood you.
- tim333 2y agoThe code of federal regulations has over 185,000 pages and no one has time to read it all and anything anyone does ever may thus be illegal.
- immibis 2y agoThey're usually not secret. You want to sell a product in California and lie in your advertising - you should probably check the laws about false advertising in California. The bigger you are, the more you can afford to hire a lawyer to know that for you.