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All sorts of tools try to prevent dangerous/destructive uses In fact probably every single piece of commercial software you use had you sign a contract saying

All sorts of tools try to prevent dangerous/destructive uses In fact probably every single piece of commercial software you use had you sign a contract saying you wouldn’t do it

ryandrake 6mo ago
> All sorts of tools try to prevent dangerous/destructive uses But they don't threaten their users or have an "N strikes and you're out" policy. I take those safety caps off of all the chemicals in my garage because I'm a grown-ass adult and those caps are a pain in the butt. I would not expect the manufacturer of a solvent to show up at my house lecturing me about safety and threatening to ban me from buying his products.
- estearum 6mo ago
  Sure but they would if they could. If they knew idiots were doing idiot things with their products (or evils doing evil things) and did not utilize available methods to prevent them, then the company ends up holding liability. And no, this is not easily signed away in a contract.
  - kelnos 6mo ago
    There actually is a very important distinction between "would if they could" and "they can and do", though.
    - estearum 6mo ago
      Uhh right, but describing that as "dystopian" is frankly hysterical. It's an obvious corollary of good things (like product liability). Virtually everyone I've heard complain about these safety rails was up to antisocial (at best) stuff. I've never heard a sympathetic use-case. It's objectively good that companies can be held responsible for misuse of their products and that they are therefore incentivized to mitigate misuse. "My inability continuously attack product guardrails to enable my super esoteric (and probably antisocial) use-case is dystopian" is just... not a compelling argument.
      - ryandrake 6mo ago
        Yes, my safety cap policy is definitely anti-social.
        estearum 6mo ago
        "These safety rails" was referring to LLMs, which have far more nuanced and capable safety rails than chemical caps do, and accordingly also have much more assertive ways to enforce them.
        ryandrake 6mo ago
        It's the same underlying principle. If I want to ask a software tool what the suicide rate is for my county, I do not expect it to come back with: "Naughty boy! You said an unsafe word! You're getting a strike, and if you get two more, you're banned." This is totally out of the ordinary for a software product, and is absolutely a modern invention. Replace "suicide" with whatever the "AI Safety" obsession word is today.
        estearum 6mo ago
        > If I want to ask a software tool what the suicide rate is for my county, I do not expect it to come back with: "Naughty boy! You said an unsafe word! You're getting a strike, and if you get two more, you're banned." Did this happen? I just tested this query in Grok, Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT and 0% of them admonished me or refused to return an answer. Just like every single conversation I've ever had on this topic, you have to make up examples that aren't even true. Why don't you just share what you were doing that you feel you were unfairly prevented from? (I have an inkling why you won't do that...)
        ryandrake 6mo ago
        That's why I said: > Replace "suicide" with whatever the "AI Safety" obsession word is today I don't know what those queries are, but original-OP made one and got a "strike", which is what spawned this thread.

All sorts of tools try to prevent dangerous/destructive uses In fact probably every single piece of commercial software you use had you sign a contract saying you wouldn’t do it

ryandrake 6mo ago

> All sorts of tools try to prevent dangerous/destructive uses But they don't threaten their users or have an "N strikes and you're out" policy. I take those safety caps off of all the chemicals in my garage because I'm a grown-ass adult and those caps are a pain in the butt. I would not expect the manufacturer of a solvent to show up at my house lecturing me about safety and threatening to ban me from buying his products.

estearum 6mo ago
Sure but they would if they could. If they knew idiots were doing idiot things with their products (or evils doing evil things) and did not utilize available methods to prevent them, then the company ends up holding liability. And no, this is not easily signed away in a contract.
- kelnos 6mo ago
  There actually is a very important distinction between "would if they could" and "they can and do", though.
  - estearum 6mo ago
    Uhh right, but describing that as "dystopian" is frankly hysterical. It's an obvious corollary of good things (like product liability). Virtually everyone I've heard complain about these safety rails was up to antisocial (at best) stuff. I've never heard a sympathetic use-case. It's objectively good that companies can be held responsible for misuse of their products and that they are therefore incentivized to mitigate misuse. "My inability continuously attack product guardrails to enable my super esoteric (and probably antisocial) use-case is dystopian" is just... not a compelling argument.
    - ryandrake 6mo ago
      Yes, my safety cap policy is definitely anti-social.
      - estearum 6mo ago
        "These safety rails" was referring to LLMs, which have far more nuanced and capable safety rails than chemical caps do, and accordingly also have much more assertive ways to enforce them.
        ryandrake 6mo ago
        It's the same underlying principle. If I want to ask a software tool what the suicide rate is for my county, I do not expect it to come back with: "Naughty boy! You said an unsafe word! You're getting a strike, and if you get two more, you're banned." This is totally out of the ordinary for a software product, and is absolutely a modern invention. Replace "suicide" with whatever the "AI Safety" obsession word is today.
        estearum 6mo ago
        > If I want to ask a software tool what the suicide rate is for my county, I do not expect it to come back with: "Naughty boy! You said an unsafe word! You're getting a strike, and if you get two more, you're banned." Did this happen? I just tested this query in Grok, Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT and 0% of them admonished me or refused to return an answer. Just like every single conversation I've ever had on this topic, you have to make up examples that aren't even true. Why don't you just share what you were doing that you feel you were unfairly prevented from? (I have an inkling why you won't do that...)
        ryandrake 6mo ago
        That's why I said: > Replace "suicide" with whatever the "AI Safety" obsession word is today I don't know what those queries are, but original-OP made one and got a "strike", which is what spawned this thread.