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Tech Titans Amass Multimillion-Dollar War Chests to Fight AI Regulation
https://archive.is/j1XTl https://archive.is/j1XTl
- conartist6 11mo agoGod forbid we protect people from the theft machine
- __MatrixMan__ 11mo agoThere's a lot of problems with AI that need some carefully thought out regulation, but infringing on rights granted by IP law still isn't theft.
- jasonsb 11mo agoAgreed. Regulate AI? Sure, though I have zero faith politicians will do it competently. But more IP protection? Hard pass. I'd rather abolish patents.
- TheAceOfHearts 11mo agoI think one of the key issues is that most of these discussions are happening at too high of an abstraction level. Could you give some specific examples of AI regulations that you think would be good? If we actually start elevating and refining key talking points that define the direction in which we want things to go, they will actually have a chance to spread. Speaking of IP, I'd like to see some major copyright reform. Maybe bring down the duration to the original 14 years, and expand fair use. When copyright lasts so long, one of the key components for cultural evolution and iteration is severely hampered and slowed down. The rate at which culture evolves is going to continue accelerating, and we need our laws to catch up and adapt.
- jasonsb 11mo ago> Could you give some specific examples of AI regulations that you think would be good? Sure, I can give you some examples: - deceiving someone into thinking they're talking to a human should be a felony (prison time, no exceptions for corporations) - ban government/law-enforcement use of AI for surveillance, predictive policing or automated sentencing - no closed-source AI allowed in any public institution (schools, hospitals, courts...) - no selling or renting paid AI products to anyone under 16 (free tools only)
- j16sdiz 11mo ago> - deceiving someone into thinking they're talking to a human This is gonna be as enforceable as the CANSPAM act. (i.e. you will get a few big cases, but it's nothing compared to the overall situation) How do you proof it in court? Do we need to record all private conversations?
- bcrosby95 11mo agoIf you think spam is bad now imagine if trillion dollar corporations could do it. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it doesn't help.
- __MatrixMan__ 11mo agoI like where you're going. How about we just ban closed source software of any kind from public institutions?
- patrick451 11mo ago> Could you give some specific examples of AI regulations that you think would be good? AI companies need to be held liable for the outputs of their models. Giving bad medical advice, buggy code etc should be something they can be sued for.
- __MatrixMan__ 11mo ago90% of the time I'm pro anything that causes a problem for the big corporations, but buggy code? C'mon. It's a pile of numbers. People need to take some responsibility for the extent to which they act on its outputs. Suing OpenAI for bugs in the code is like suing a palm reader for a wrong prediction. You knew what you were getting into when you initiated the relationship.
- faidit 11mo agoIt's theft. But not all IP theft, or theft in general, is morally equivalent. A poor person stealing a loaf of bread or pirating a movie they couldn't afford is just. A corrupt elite stealing poor farmers' food or stealing content from small struggling creators is not.
- jasonsb 11mo agoAsk yourself: who owns the IP you're defending? It's not struggling artists, it's corporations and billionaires. Stricter IP laws won't slow down closed-source models with armies of lawyers. They'll just kill open-source alternatives.
- faidit 11mo agoI never advocated "stricter IP laws". I would however point out the contradiction between current IP laws being enforced against kids using BitTorrent while unenforced against billionaires and their AI ventures, despite them committing IP theft on a far grander scale.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoUnder copyright laws, if HN's T's & C's didn't override it, anything I write and have written on HN is my IP. And the AI data hoarders used it to train their stuff.
- jasonsb 11mo agoLet's meet in the middle: only allow AI data hoarders to train their stuff on your content if the model is open source. I can stand behind that.
- philipwhiuk 11mo agoUh no. a) The model and the data b) Why are we meeting in the middle?
- SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
- terminalshort 11mo agoAnd it doesn't even infringe on IP rights.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- dartharva 11mo agoHow do you "protect" people from software?
- dist-epoch 11mo agoBut are they really the ones in control? It's not the tech titans, it's Capitalism itself building the war chest to ensure it's embodiment and transfer into its next host - machines. We are just it's temporary vehicles. > “This is because what appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources.”
- faidit 11mo agoYes, these decisions are being made by flesh-and-blood humans at the top of a social pyramid. Nick Land's deranged (and often racist) word-salad sci-fi fantasies tend to obfuscate that. If robots turn on their creators and wipe out humanity then whatever remains wouldn't be a class society or a market economy of humans any more, hence no longer the social system known as capitalism by any common definition.
- dist-epoch 11mo agoIf there is more than one AI remaining, they will have some sort of an economy between them.
- faidit 11mo agoI mean, that could be drone swarms blasting each other to bits for control of what remains of the earth's charred surface though. That wouldn't be capitalism any more than dinosaurs eating each other. I don't see post-human AI selling goods to consumers and prices being set through competition.
- jrflowers 11mo ago>We are just it's temporary vehicles. > “This is because what appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources.” I see your “roko’s basilisk is real” and counter with “slenderman locked it in the backrooms and it got sucked up by goatse” in this creepypasta-is-real conversation
- TheAceOfHearts 11mo agoArchive: https://archive.is/j1XTl https://archive.is/j1XTl I cannot help but feel that discussing this topic under the blanket term "AI Regulation" is a bit deceptive. I've noticed that whenever this topic comes up, almost every major figure remains rather vague on the details. Who are some influential figures actually advancing clearly defined regulations or key ideas for approaching how we should think about AI regulation? What we should be doing is surfacing well defined points regarding AI regulation and discussing them, instead of fighting proxy wars for opaque groups with infinite money. It feels like we're at the point where nobody is even pretending like people's opinions on this topic are relevant, it's just a matter of pumping enough money and flooding the zone. Personally, I still remain very uncertain about the topic; I don't have well-defined or clearly actionable ideas. But I'd love to hear what regulations or mental models other HN readers are using to navigate and think about this topic. Sam Altman and Elon Musk have both mentioned vague ideas of how AI is somehow going to magically result in UBI and a magical communist utopia, but nobody has ever pressed them for details. If they really believe this then they could make some more significant legally binding commitments, right? Notice how nobody ever asks: who is going to own the models, robots, and data centers in this UBI paradise? It feels a lot like Underpants Gnomes: (1) Build AGI, (2) ???, (3) Communist Utopia and UBI.
- jasonsb 11mo ago> I cannot help but feel that discussing this topic under the blanket term "AI Regulation" is a bit deceptive. I've noticed that whenever this topic comes up, almost every major figure remains rather vague on the details. Who are some influential figures actually advancing clearly defined regulations or key ideas for approaching how we should think about AI regulation? There's a vocal minority calling for AI regulation, but what they actually want often strikes me as misguided: "Stop AI from taking our jobs" - This shouldn't be solved through regulation. It's on politicians to help people adapt to a new economic reality, not to artificially preserve bullshit jobs. "Stop the IP theft" - This feels like a cause pushed primarily by the 1%. Let's be realistic: 99% of people don't own patents and have little stake in strengthening IP protections.
- piva00 11mo ago
- metalman 11mo ago[flagged]
- nis0s 11mo agoWe don’t know what kind of insecure systems we’re dealing with here, and there’s a pervasive problem of incestuous dependencies in a lot of AI tech stacks, which might lead to some instability or security risks. Adversarial attacks against LLMs are just too easy. It makes sense to let states experiment and find out what works and doesn’t, both as a social experiment and technological one.
- cmiles8 11mo agoThey need to be more worried about creating a viable economic model for the present AI craze. Right now there’s no clear path to making any of the present insanity a profitable endeavor. Yes NVIDIA is killing it, but with money pumped in from highly upside down sources. Things will regulate themselves pretty quickly when the financial music stops.
- philipwhiuk 11mo agoNvidia's biggest mistake is investing money selling shovels into prospecting firms. If not for that they'd be fine.
- throwaway48476 11mo agoThat's the only way the bubble hasn't popped yet.
- HPsquared 11mo agoMaybe there's enough of a "money multiplier" to make it worth their while. Then again, possibly more likely, their entry could spook other investors.
- myrmidon 11mo agoDo you mean that they need to find better ways to create value by using AI, or that they need better ways to extract value from end-users of AI? I'd argue that "value creation" is already at a decent position considering generative AI and the usecase as "interactive search engine" alone. Regarding "value extraction": Advertising should always be an option here, just like it was for radio, television and online content in general in the past. Preventing smaller entities (or private persons even) from just doing their own thing and making their own models seems like the biggest difficulty long term to me (from the perspective of the "rent seeking" tech giant).
- sofixa 11mo ago> I'd argue that "value creation" is already at a decent position considering generative AI and the usecase as "interactive search engine" alone. > Regarding "value extraction": Advertising should always be an option here, just like it was for radio, television and online content in general in the past. Not at the actual price it's going to cost though. The cost of an "interactive search" (LLM) vs a "traditional search" (Google) is exponentially higher. People tolerate ads to pay Google for the service, but imagine how many ads would ChatGPT need, or how much it will have to cost, to compensate an e.g. 10x difference. Last time I read about this a few months ago, ChatGPT were losing money on their paid tier because the people paying for it were using it a lot. It's more likely that ChatGPT will just be spamming ads sprinkled in the responses (like you ask for a headphone comparison, and it gives you the sponsored brand one, from a sponsored vendor, with an affiliate link), and hope it's enough.
- twodave 11mo agoWhat is so novel about LLMs (I assume this is the form of AI being discussed) that they require regulation? It’s a dataset, an algorithm and some UI. Almost all the problems brought on by the scale-up are just supply/demand type things. Every problem people point at AI are also problems on some scale with computer software in general, so I’m wary of any regulation (and don’t kid yourself thinking it would be for the people) bleeding over.
- zwnow 11mo agoWe solved regulations everyone, a gun is just some metal, bombs are just some chemicals mixed together, we dont need regulations for this stuff!
- twodave 11mo agoIt was a genuine question. Do you have anything besides ridicule to offer the discussion?
- snowwrestler 11mo agoSome proposed regs would cover uses of AI outside LLMs, some of which tech folks might call “machine learning” these days to distinguish them from LLMs. Using algorithms to provide personalized pricing would be an example, where like a landlord, retailer, or airline would use an ML service trained on your personal data and aggregated purchase history to decide how much to charge you for a short-term rental, Nintendo Switch, or a plane ticket. Basically, instant underwriting at scale for every single purchase. Just got a new job with a raise? Your next vacation will cost you 26% more for the same experience.
- twodave 11mo agoThis fundamentally doesn’t work unless there is collusion involved, which we already have laws against.
- SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
- AmbroseBierce 11mo agoOh they aren't conspiring against democratically made decisions about AI, instead they are "ammassing war chests to fight AI regulation", how submissively worded, but that's expected when they have a grip on all mayor communication channels.
- stego-tech 11mo agoThis is why I’ve refused to buy into the argument from these ghouls that AI would make the world a better place, and their occasional lip-service of requesting AI regulation for “human safety”: their own actions paint a dystopian world of mass surveillance, even heavier labor exploitation, the return of company scrip and stores, and the wholesale neglect of human well-being, all while blocking the very regulation they claim to want and/or need to succeed safely. If these people genuinely believed in the good of AI, they wouldn’t be blocking meaningful regulation of it. https://green.spacedino.net/ai-will-never-create-utopia/ https://green.spacedino.net/ai-will-never-create-utopia/
- terribleidea 11mo ago> their clamoring for AI regulation for “human safety” > they wouldn’t be blocking regulation of it Which is it? Do they want regulation or not? The answer is, in fact, they do want regulation. They want to define the terms of the regulations to gain a competitive advantage.
- stego-tech 11mo agoThat’s quite literally the point I was making. They’re lying to everyone while demanding protective backstops for their highly speculative investment. None of these companies, investors, or executives are making AI that’s actually going to improve humanity. They never, ever were, and people need to stop taking them at their word that they are.
- bilsbie 11mo agoThe government is far more dangerous than anything that you want it to regulate.
- LastTrain 11mo agoCorporations and individuals with more capital and power than medium sized states are more dangerous than my tiny state and local governments, where I actually personally know some and have taken part in choosing my representatives.
- rexpop 11mo agoOnly insofar as it's subject to regulatory capture by monied interests.
- throwaway48476 11mo agoAI regulation should wait until after the crash. That way AI can be regulated for what it does and not the fever dream pushed by marketers.
- andy99 11mo agoAt that point nobody will care though. People pushing for regulation (not uniquely) want power- those that can write the regulation will be in a position to exert a lot of power over a lot of people/companies, making it an attractive thing to push for.
- jeffbee 11mo agoIs that a lot?
- Deegy 11mo agoThey know that LLMs as a product are racing towards commoditization. Bye bye profit margins. The only way to win is regulation allowing a few approved providers.
- delusional 11mo agoWhat profit margins?
- kibwen 11mo agoIt's still technically a profit margin if it's less than zero...
- Deegy 11mo agoIt is unclear. Everyday I seem to read contradictory headlines about whether or not inference is profitable. If inference has significant profitability and you're the only game in town, you could do really well. But without regulation, as a commodity, the margin on inference approaches zero. None of this even speaks to recouping the R&D costs it takes to stay competitive. If they're not able to pull up the ladder, these frontier model companies could have a really bad time.
- adam_arthur 11mo agoProbably it's "operationally profitable" when ignoring capex, depreciation, dilution and other required expenses to stay current. Of course that means it's unprofitable in practice/GAAP terms. You'd have to have a pretty big margin on inference to make up for the model development costs alone. A 30% margin on inference for a GPU that will last ~7 years will not cut it
- JKCalhoun 11mo agoPerhaps P/E ratios?
- SoftTalker 11mo agoThe ones they hoped for.
- boh 11mo agoThey're also fighting for regulation to keep the competition at bay.
- skywhopper 11mo agoI like how building up millions of dollars to bribe elected officials is reported on in such neutral terms.
- decremental 11mo ago[dead]
- amelius 11mo agoModern times. I wouldn't be surprised if you learn about it in business school.
- glitchc 11mo agoEvery generation has its own copyright war. First file sharing, then blockchains, now LLMs. As long as digital comouters are copy-on-write, this debate shall continue. It will only get solved once we have viable quantum computers.
- yonatron 11mo ago"multi-million dollar warchests" Millions, lol. Wrong era, Dr. Evil!
- ramblenode 11mo agoHere is my (hot take) proposal for regulation: 1) *All major players open source their unobfuscated training data.* a) The evidence so far shows that every major AI company engaged in intentional and historically unprecedented copyright violation to obtain their training data. b) LLMs have now poisoined future data for any new players. This is a massive negative externality, and we shouldn't accept this externality as a moat locking out future players from competition. 2) *Levy a 20% royalty on all future genAI revenue to authors and artists who appear in the dataset and exempt genAI from future copywright violations.* a) The current copyright model is bad for both authors and AI companies. It's hard for authors to collect from violations, and it's expensive and tedious for AI companies to comply with innumerable individual copyrights. Simplify the regime for everyone, and properly reward the people whose work is the foundation of these models. b) The specifics can be worked out, but, among other things, the royalty should be proprotional to the token count of a work, not just number of works.
- neilv 11mo agoOnly "multi-million"? Someone once told me about being a new journalist, on the city beat. They said something like: I wasn't surprised to find that bribery was going on; I was just surprised the bribes were so small.
- jordanb 11mo agoSomeone always makes this kind of comment and I've always found it being pretty middle-brow. I think there's a classic comment that the USA spends more on potato chips than on lobbying. I think the best explanation is that there's a pushing a rope phenominum where there's still a limit on the amount of money the American political corruption system can absorb. We have long had robust laws that prevent people outright paying for political or regulatory outcomes (which used to be much stronger under honest services). We also had robust laws limiting the amount of campaign contributions. As that system has been torn down, we've seen the amount of money flowing in increase.
- bawolff 11mo agoThe thing is, lobbying isn't literally a bribe. Lobbying involves all sorts of expensive activities, like compiling reports, doing research, etc in addition to the more sketchy semi-bribe stuff. All that adds up. How many FTE lobbyists is a few million dollars? It just doesn't seem like all that much if they are trying to do a hard core lobbying campaign.
- nradov 11mo agoThe tech industry lobbyists should be able to eat their own dog food by using AI to do all the research and report writing now (half joking).
- michaelt 11mo ago> there's still a limit on the amount of money the American political corruption system can absorb. Wikipedia tells me [1] to win a seat in the House of Representatives (one of 435) costs on average $2.79 million, while a seat the Senate (one of 100) costs $26.53 million. So the political system can absorb $3.8 billion in 'donations' from 'supporters'. That might sound small compared to nvidia's $4.3 trillion market cap, but to a lot of folks $3.8 billion is serious money. And that's just spending by the winners - often there will be a loser who spent almost as much. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United...
- jmyeet 11mo agoAs a reminder, Princeton did a study and found that public support for a bill has almost zero impact on whether or not that bill passes [1]. This government is bought and paid for by the ultra-wealthy and large corporations with a system of legalized corruption that began long before the disastrous Citizens United decision [2] but that decision put things into overdrive. When this bubble bursts as I firmly believe it will, it's going to get much worse because Congress will launch into action... by bailing out those that invested billions into AI without any prospect of ever recouping that money. [1]: https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem-tmp https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem-tmp [2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...
- jmward01 11mo agoI believe that the right regulation makes a difference, but I honestly don't know what that looks like for AI. LLMs are so easy to build/use and that trend is accelerating. The idea of regulating AI is quickly becoming like the idea of regulating hammers. They are ubiquitous general purpose tools and putting legislation specifically about hammers would be deeply problematic for, hopefully, obvious reasons. Honest question here, what is practical AND effective here? Specifically, what problems can clearly be solved and by what kinds of regulations?
- parliament32 11mo agoThe most sane version of regulation IMO is the (already passed) EU AI Act. It's less about control of AI itself, more about controlling inputs/outputs. Tell users when they're interacting with an AI, mark/disclaimer AI-generated content, don't use AI in high-risk scenarios, etc. Along the lines of "we don't regulate hammers, but we regulate you hitting people with a hammer". https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/ https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/
- nradov 11mo agoWhy should a user care whether the entity they're interacting with meets some arbitrary political definition of "AI"? Does it matter whether an article that I'm reading was written by AI or by a monkey randomly banging on a keyboard? Regulations seem totally pointless, just another excuse to shovel taxpayer money to a bunch of bureaucrats with fancy degrees who are incapable of finding real jobs.
- mrdevlar 11mo agoThis is silly. Regulation exists to help balance out the power disparity between consumers and corporations that sell AI. The EU wrote a good AI law, it's mainly focused on access to goods and services and the impact that AI can have in those domains. Among other things, it almost entirely bans surveillance pricing. Makes companies liable if an AIs discriminate on their behalf. Also restricts the use of facial recognition. This is it's role, to equalize the power disparity by prohibiting companies that do business within the EU from engaging in these predatory practices.
- mertleee 11mo ago[dead]
- bawolff 11mo agoThe headline says that as if a few million is a lot of money to spend on lobbying.
- Animats 11mo agoAre we seeing lobbying for liability exemptions for AI errors? That's probably the biggest practical concern on the consumer side.
- _spduchamp 11mo agoOh wow! I think I found part of the problem. I replied earlier about algorithmic accountability, and the need for Algorithm Impact Assessments, and I got a snarky reply and down voted like I've never seen before. I guess accountability hits a nerve. So I'll just say... Algorithm Impact Assessments Algorithm Impact Assessments Algorithm Impact Assessments
- nradov 11mo agoI down voted you because this is a stupid idea which wouldn't do anything for accountability. There's no need for algorithm impact assessments. I don't want my tax dollars wasted on more bureaucratic garbage. It would end up being totally politicized and subjective because there's no consensus on impacts.
- _spduchamp 11mo agoThank you for the confirmation.
- SilverElfin 11mo agoFighting regulation and taxation of the big tech megacorps is why the leaders and big investors / owners of these companies are looking the other way and being friendly with an administration that is increasingly supremacist and now even discussing denaturalization of legal immigrants (taking away citizenship). It’s despicable cowardice.
- siliconc0w 11mo agoThe problem is that the conversation gets sidetracked on ASGI while ignoring the very real actual harms that are already currently happening - like AI "companions" addicting and harming kids, deepfakes, IP-theft, etc. I also worry about malicious AI used to socially engineer and attack people at scale. We have an aging population that is already getting constantly getting scammed by really amateur attacks, what happens when the AI can perfectly emulate your grandkid's voice?
- anthem2025 11mo ago[dead]
- BrenBarn 11mo agoEvery so often we see titans of some sort amassing large amounts of money to influence regulations, laws, and society in general. This is another in that tradition. The lesson is that what we need to regulate is not "tech" or "AI" but wealth, so that no one can amass a "war chest" to do anything.
- nine_zeros 11mo ago[dead]