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Ex-FTC boss Khan: break out the handcuffs for AI CEOs, citing 1934 precedent
- throwworhtthrow 2mo agoSource: https://x.com/linamkhan/status/2099204390548639960 https://x.com/linamkhan/status/2099204390548639960 (seems like a single post, so you don't need to log in and see replies) I can't tell if Khan is being realistic when she says laws against “unfair or deceptive [acts]” or “unfair methods of competition” apply to AI labs. Her 2-sentence justifications aren't enough to convince me. But maybe it's sufficient for state AG's who want to start investigations.
- devindotcom 2mo agoShe is a former FTC Chair so she knows what she's talking about, although her approach to enforcement was more expansive than others. The FTC would investigate, likely along the lines she summarizes, build a case in writing, and refer it to the Justice Dept, which would actually prosecute the case. Not going to happen under this administration, but Khan is saying it's entirely possible that such an enforcement action could be brought to bear, now or later. Personally I hope she gets her job back at some point and does it herself.
- throwworhtthrow 2mo agoI would point out that someone having been FTC Chair does not inherently mean that they know what they are talking about, as demonstrated by the current FTC Chair. I certainly wish for this to be a productive line of attack against the AI labs, but I'd like to read a more thorough argument showing that it would hold up in court. (It's academic anyway; we'll all be paperclip'd by the time there's a change in administration and a prosecution can be brought and worked through appeals.)
- devindotcom 2mo agothat's certainly fair - it doesn't necessarily follow. her specifically, being an expert before and having spent time as chair though, does tell me she is on target here.
- Nasrudith 2mo agoShe isn't above demagoguery and bullshit slinging so I wouldn't treat her as infallible. Any more than the idiot with an axe to grind against Backdoor in a failed attempt to bolster a career.
- georgemcbay 2mo ago> I can't tell if Khan is being realistic when she says laws against “unfair or deceptive [acts]” or “unfair methods of competition” apply to AI labs. Her 2-sentence justifications aren't enough to convince me. As I read it, her whole point is that those laws apply to everyone, including AI Labs. She isn't saying AI Labs are in violation of those laws (though she is implying they should be scrutinized for possibly being so), she's just saying that if they do violate those laws... well, those laws are already on the books and AI Labs aren't special unicorns for which existing laws somehow don't apply.
- chrisjj 2mo agoI see nothing unrealistic about classing these so-called AI bots as "dangerous and defective product".
- fwlr 2mo agoThe passage banning “unfair competition” is utterly marvellous: A trader may not, by pursuing a dishonest practice, force his competitors to choose between its adoption or the loss of their trade. A method of competition [is ‘unfair’ when it] casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal… It is true that the statute does not authorize regulation which has no purpose other than that of relieving merchants from troublesome competition … But here the competitive method is shown to exploit [those] who are unable to protect themselves. It employs a device [that has] met with condemnation throughout the community. Without inquiring whether [other criminal statues apply] … it is clear that the practice is of the sort which the common law and criminal statutes have long deemed contrary to public policy. For these reasons a large share of the industry holds out against the device, despite ensuing loss in trade, or bows reluctantly to what it brands unscrupulous. It would seem a gross perversion of the normal meaning of the word … to hold that the method is not 'unfair.' Apply it immediately!
- homeonthemtn 2mo ago^ further evidence that the problem with democracy isn't democracy, it's that we lack politicians willing to enforce it
- collingreen 2mo agoIsn't that just the human problem for every possible form of government?
- Tractor8626 2mo agoJust elect correct politicians doh
- zhivota 2mo agoI was reading a post about the life of a congressman and it's actually horrifying, on the level of the stores of salarymen in Japan who sacrifice everything for the company. For me personally being famous is a curse already, pile on top of that the endless fundraising, constant travel, the reality that you're a tiny cog in a huge party machine, and it's a recipe for only attracting the type who has a plan to parlay it into something else - a higher office, a lucrative career in lobbying, outright corruption, etc. We're not going to get good government without addressing this issue, and we can't because of another issue, ad nauseam.
- afavour 2mo agoIt won’t happen, but if it did the CEOs have no one but themselves to blame. They’re hyping up their products as being able to destroy the human race then are somehow surprised at the level of anti-AI sentiment out there in the world.
- mikrl 2mo agoI honestly don’t know what anyone expected given all the labs started building self-driving malware at about the same time. I remember lots of people talking about running agents in VMs or on whole dedicated machines, yet barely anyone talking about how they were using mundane OS access controls.
- pjc50 2mo agoIf the nuclear power or life sciences people were putting out press releases saying "our product may kill us all", they'd be dragged into endless Congressional inquiries.
- nfujd7 2mo agoWasnt the Oppenheimer story basically that?
- pjc50 2mo agoThere was https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/09/12/the_fear_that_a_nuclear_bomb_could_ignite_the_atmosphere.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/09/12/the_fear_th... , but that was (validly) dismissed by other scientists working on it, and also wasn't a discussion that was happening in public because the entire program was secret. "This will kill a lot of (other) people" was explicit in the building of the bomb, but then so was the entire war effort.
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- verdverm 2mo ago> level of anti-AI sentiment out there in the world. I'd caution about projecting Western Ai attitudes onto the rest of the world. Some countries are very excited and optimistic about the future it brings, cultures and circumstances give rise to differences in opinions. One of many results showing a similar pattern, largely bifurcated along "the west" vs "the rest", or "modern economies" vs "third world" ("common terms" used even though I'm not a fan of them) https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report/public-opinion https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report/publi...
- int32_64 2mo agoAaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years for wire fraud and hacking for swiping some JSTOR documents, and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.
- gruez 2mo ago>and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics. For good reason. Courts have so far ruled AI training is fair use, and it doesn't look likely to be overturned by the supreme court. Theres also the matter of some labs pirating books to get training data, which is illegal (they lost in civil court), but it's unclear whether that can be criminally prosecuted.
- adastra22 2mo agoHacking other companies is illegal as far as I understand.
- gruez 2mo ago1. OP specifically mentioned "IP violating antics", not hacking 2. All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent, which so far as we can tell didn't exist in those cases. At best you can try some "reckless" or "negligent" angle, but that would a novel legal argument and would be risky to prosecute
- someothherguyy 2mo ago> All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent No, they don't, see laws that make negligent behavior illegal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
- crote 2mo agoBut officer, I didn't mean for my autonomous bank vault busting robot to autonomously bust any bank vaults!
- VCFundedGenYer 2mo agoIt’s definitely happening in 2029 if the election goes a certain way. They all know that too. There WILL be an end to this.
- DarmokTanagra 2mo ago[dead]
- verdverm 2mo agoThe most extreme Dems are not winning primaries, just like MAGA. Most people do not want the extremes of either side, both political parties are shrinking because they are so out of touch. 2029 is a long way away, I hope to see the White House restored to its former glory over today's perspective on what Ai regulation should be, by a long shot, one is tangible, the other is based in theoretical fears. Context, I volunteer in my local Indivisible, the tone is changing because the anti-ai people are now also finding certain uses of Ai really nice and now acceptable. It's no longer ban Ai and data centers, it's craft reasonable legislation. Expect to see more after the midterms, we'll be working with the Washington State legislature to craft laws we hope are a model for other states / countries, as WA has done in other areas like voting rights and civil liberties.
- xnx 2mo agoAI is a very competitive market where consumers are getting the product for much less than it costs. This does not seem like an area where the government needs to butt in. Attention would be better spent on long list of other poorly behaved companies: cable ISP monopolies, health insurance companies, home insurance companies, etc.
- lenerdenator 2mo agoBear with me here: we could do all of them. You can get these companies under control. You just have to, y'know, try.
- seemaze 2mo agowe could do all of them, but they all seem to be up to date on their tithe. AI has a somewhat mixed record of tribute.
- NewJazz 2mo agoWhy wouldn't the government have incentive to intervene to end a market inefficiency like the one you described?
- stale2002 2mo agoBecause the goal of government policy is to help consumers, thats why.
- WalterBright 2mo agoKhan has never been employed by a business nor ever run a business. She's never had to meet a payroll, nor prepared a P&L statement. Her entire career has been spent in research, academia, public policy, and government oversight.
- adestefan 2mo agoSo what.
- WalterBright 2mo agoTheory and practice are different things.
- collingreen 2mo agoAnd therefore shouldn't be allowed to have opinions on crime and antitrust? Is that your argument?
- int3 2mo agoduh? why would you want someone with no experience making decisions?
- seemaze 2mo agoDepends on if you're referring to experience defrauding the American public, or protecting the American public. That can have different answers depending on what which side of the transaction you sit.
- throwaway_7274 2mo agoWhat does experience mean? Does only private-sector experience "count?" Should we remove Alito from the bench on those grounds?
- WalterBright 2mo ago
- EGreg 2mo agoIf you execute a ponzi scheme with thousands of degens — but it’s magic crypto tokens When you perpetrate a huge hacking job with thousands of attackers — but it’s magic agent swarms
- arjie 2mo agoAll these things do is market a preemptive universal Presidential pardon - Hunter Biden style. And this President successfully sells those. So I suppose it’s marketing to enrich him.
- xhevahir 2mo agoYou're suggesting that Lina Khan is trying to give Trump an opportunity to pardon AI company people?
- verdverm 2mo agoby suggesting criminal prosecution of his "friends" (has none in reality) after he is not president, Khan is indirectly giving Trump an excuse to use Biden's excuse for his son (which I still support him having done given the other petty uses of the US govt Donald the Trump has use in 2.0)
- arjie 2mo agoNo. I think I was quite clear. Lina Khan is providing marketing for Trump's paid pardon by pre-registering a procedure for a government aligned with her interests to prosecute AI CEOs. What she is trying to do or trying not to do was not something I addressed. She does have a track record of achieving things she probably did not intend: e.g. ensuring total Chinese dominance of US household robotics.
- overfeed 2mo ago> She does have a track record of achieving things she probably did not attend: e.g. ensuring total Chinese dominance of US household robotics. Why should the FTC consider the policy of another sovereign when investigating domestic anti-trust violations? Either you have the rule of law that binds everyone equally, or you have the rule of man who chooses which parties are allowed to break the law for outcomes in random market slices, like avoiding the dominance of US household robotics.Where would that end?
- rustcleaner 2mo agoGod I would love to see Sam Altman behind bars for cornering the DRAM silicon market. Even though there were other factors, I uniquely place him as the destroyer of home computing this decade!
- nl 2mo agoThe Register of course take what Kahn says (where he is arguing that no new laws need to be created to regulate AI) and taking extending it to say "breakout the handcuffs". Kahn doesn't even imply that. Instead he's making a well reasoned point about using existing tools (as many in this discussion point out existing laws could be applied to inadequately controlled cyber incidents)
- georgemcbay 2mo agoLina Khan is a woman. Not that it is particularly relevant here, but just letting you know.
- nl 2mo agoThanks - I didn't realise and it was lazy of me to write like that.
- chneu 2mo agoKahn is a woman.
- jiaosdjf 2mo agoWe will get back at these CEOs by stealing their IP. China is already doing so and releasing weights, China of all people is playing modern Robbin Hood, albeit because they don't have the compute or trust. It is non-negotiable that humanity "owns" AI and that LLMs, future model architectures and modern robotics are used by all to build a better world for all. This doesn't mean there can't be proprietary tech but it does mean that any corporation who attempts to rip the positive vision of humans not having to do any work from us - must be ripped to shreds themselves. The alternative is absolute surveillance of all citizens at all times and robot armies keeping us from protesting, while globalists squeeze every last drop out of the planet for themselves and we are forced to own nothing and eat the bugs. You will have to fight for this, there will be no laws or government intervention.
- roughly 2mo agoThe “agents” framing around the frontier labs is obscuring the truth: OpenAI and Anthropic built software systems that were then used to commit cybercrime at a massive scale, which they’ve subsequently bragged about. Talk about “agents” as a way of deflecting blame is obfuscatory at best - LLMs are software algorithms, not conscious entities, and responsibility for their actions is on the company that made them and the employee or user who operated them.
- DoctorOetker 2mo agoI'm surprised nobody makes a connection with animal ownership / responsibility. If your dog maims someone else, you are responsible for the dog's actions, unless it was self-defense. On the other hand, if people start arguing that if LLM's are like animals, some will start arguing they're like Godzilla..., or at least a panther, but there's probably laws against keeping arbitrarily dangerous / powerful animals as pets. Perhaps animal welfare should intervene and house ChatGPT,etc. in better conditions?
- ben_w 2mo ago> Perhaps animal welfare should intervene and house ChatGPT,etc. in better conditions? I first saw a headline to the effect that this was a PETA some decades ago. I cannot recall now if this was April 1st, an instance of Gell-Mann amnesia, or sincere.
- illwrks 2mo agoWhile I agree, that isn’t true of all pets. It doesn’t apply to cats for example. I’ve pasted an extract from a UK guide on legal responsibilities of cat ownership below, which to me sounds similar to AI. If the inbuilt behaviour is ‘it’s nature’ then perhaps there is less legal repercussions if the tool does something outside of its known guardrail/guidelines to meet its goal. “Cat owners are generally not responsible for the 'normal' behaviour of cats because the law accepts that cats tend to wander into other properties and have instincts which, for example, lead them to prey on small birds. So cat owners should be reassured that the simple fact of their cat trespassing onto a neighbour's land would not make them responsible if, for example, the cat kills a pigeon or garden bird, urinates on plants or flowers, or defecates in a neighbour's soil. These would be 'normal' cat behaviours that would be expected” https://www.gccfcats.org/ownership-health-welfare/owning-a-cat/cats-and-the-law/ https://www.gccfcats.org/ownership-health-welfare/owning-a-c...
- hypercube33 2mo agoThat's a highly weird law. Someone let the cat outside or feeds/keeps it there thus should accept the way cats are as their responsibility.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoEvery frontier exec: “KHAAAAAAN!!” Sorry. Couldn’t resist. (Star Trek reference)
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- MadrasTh0rn 2mo agoYes the federal government can assert itself if laws are broken. The federal government won't smother nascent technology. I think that trigger point is far into the future.
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