[HN Gopher] Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Art...
___________________________________________________________________
Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial
Intelligence
Author : Mandelmus
Score : 113 points
Date : 2023-10-30 09:35 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.whitehouse.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.whitehouse.gov)
| saturn8601 wrote:
| I don't see how they will enforce many of these rules on Open
| Source AI.
|
| Also:
|
| "Establish an advanced cybersecurity program to develop AI tools
| to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical software, building on
| the Biden-Harris Administration's ongoing AI Cyber Challenge.
| Together, these efforts will harness AI's potentially game-
| changing cyber capabilities to make software and networks more
| secure."
|
| I fear the end of pwning your own device to free it from DRM or
| other lockouts is coming to an end with this. We have been lucky
| that C++ is still used _badly_ in many projects and that has been
| an achilles heel for many a manager wanting to lock things down.
| Now this door is closing faster with the rise of AI bug catching
| tools.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Orders such as these don't appear out of the blue -- corporate
| interests & political players are always consulted long before
| they appear, & threats to those interests such as Open Source
| Anything are always in their sights. This is a likely first
| step in a larger move to snatch strong AI tools out of the
| hands of the peasants before someone gets a bright idea which
| can upend the current order of things.
| stevev wrote:
| Let the regulations, antitrust lawsuits and monopolies begin!
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is a great opportunity to try to avoid the old mistakes of
| regulatory capture. It looks like someone is at least trying to
| make a nod in that direction, by supporting smaller research
| groups.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Does Microsoft need to share how it is testing Excel? Some subtle
| bug there might do an awful lot of damage.
| halJordan wrote:
| Idk if you're being serious because there's ai in excel now; in
| which case the answer is no. Or you're being a smarty-pants and
| trying to cleverly show what you think is a counter-example; in
| which case the answer is still no, but should probably be yes,
| and they only don't because it was well established before all
| the cyber regulation took effect, but for instance azure has
| many certs (including fedramp) which includes office365 which
| includes excel.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I am quite serious about the potential for danger of errors
| in Excel (without AI).
|
| Basically, I consider the focus on AI massively misplaced
| given the long list of real risks compared to the more
| hypothetical (other than general compute) risks from AI.
| Eumenes wrote:
| This kinda thing should not be legislated via executive order.
| Congress needs a committee and must deliberate. Sad.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Which is exactly what Congress refuses to do, because letting
| Caesar, I mean the President, decide things by fiat keeps them
| from owning the blame for bad legislation.
| Eumenes wrote:
| At least Caesar was a respectable age for leading when he
| died (55) ...
|
| This is interesting:
| https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/executive-
| or...
| nerdponx wrote:
| Don't forget that life expectancies were much lower back
| then, and that he was assassinated. He certainly would have
| been happy to continue into his 80s if he could.
| frumper wrote:
| It is interesting. I would have thought executive orders
| were more frequently used now than in the past. Apparently
| that peaked 80 years ago.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Congress has generally refused to seriously legislate
| anything other than banning lightbulbs for several
| presidential terms now.
|
| But in this particular example I don't think it's enough of
| "thing" to even consider bringing up as a bill, except maybe
| as a one-pager that passes unanimously.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is well within the president's powers under existing law.
| If Congress disagrees, they can always supersede.
|
| This isn't even close to legislating. Look at some recent
| Supreme Court decisions and the amount of latitude federal
| agencies have, if you want to see something more closely
| resembling legislation from outside of Congress.
| zoobab wrote:
| "This kinda thing should not be legislated via executive
| order."
|
| Dictatorship in another form.
| sschueller wrote:
| There is no way to prevent AI from being researched on or to make
| it safe by government oversight because the rest of the world has
| places that don't care.
|
| What does work is to pass laws to not permit certain automation
| such as insurance claims or life and death decisions. These laws
| are needed even without AI as automation is already doing such
| things to a concerning degree like banning people due to a
| mistake without recourse.
|
| Is the whitehouse going to ban the use of AI in the decision
| making when dropping a bomb?
| vivekd wrote:
| I mean isn't automating important decisions line insurance
| claims or life and death decisions a beneficial thing. Sure the
| tech isn't ready yet but I think even now AI with a human
| overlooking it who has the power to override the system would
| provide people with a better experience
| broken-kebab wrote:
| >not permit certain automation such as insurance claims
|
| I don't see any problem in automation which does mistakes,
| humans do too. The real problem is that it's often an
| impenetrable wall with no way to protest, or appeal, and
| nobody's held accountable while victims lives are ruined. So if
| to pass any law in this field it should not be about banning
| AI, but rather about obligatory compensation for those affected
| by errors. Facing money loss, insurers, and banks will fix
| themselves
| Libcat99 wrote:
| Agreed,
|
| This doesn't just apply to insurance, etc, of course.
| Inaccessibility of support and inability to appeal automated
| decisions for products we use is widespread and inexcusable.
|
| This shouldn't just apply to products you pay for, either.
| Products like facebook and gmail shouldn't get off with
| inaccessible support just because they are "free" when we all
| know they're still making plenty of money off us.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Just because the rest of the world has lawless areas doesn't
| mean we don't pass laws. If you do something that risks our
| national safety, or various other things, we can extradite and
| try you in court.
|
| They're not suggesting the banning of anything, they're
| requiring you make it be safe and prove how you did that.
| That's not unreasonable.
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_Unite...
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_over_i...
| michaelt wrote:
| Right, but in _some_ areas of AI regulation, the existence of
| other countries might undermine unilateral regulation.
|
| For example, imagine LLMs improve to the point where they can
| double programmer productivity while lowering bug counts. If
| Country A decides to Protect Tech Jobs by banning such LLMs,
| but Country B doesn't - could be all the tech jobs will move
| to Country B, where programmers are twice as productive.
| adolph wrote:
| Said executive order was not linked to in the document.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| It hasn't been updated yet, but I believe Executive Orders are
| listed here for viewing:
| https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/execu...
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Why's there a bat flying over the white house logo?
| nojito wrote:
| Halloween
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Ah (facepalm)
|
| Thanks
| glitchc wrote:
| Batman?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| A potential reference to the Batman-Robin Administration?
| iinnPP wrote:
| Criminals don't follow the rules. Large corps don't follow the
| rules.
|
| The only people this impacts are the ones you don't need it to
| impact. The bit about detection and authentication services is
| also alarming.
| gmerc wrote:
| You could say this about ... every law. So clearly it's not a
| useful yardstick
| iinnPP wrote:
| It's a statement of my estimated impact of the post on the
| development of AI.
|
| The blocking of "AI content" and the bit about authentication
| don't seem related to AI frankly. Detection isn't real and
| authentication is the government's version of an explosive
| wet dream.
| gs17 wrote:
| >The bit about detection and authentication services is also
| alarming.
|
| "The Department of Commerce will develop guidance for content
| authentication and watermarking to clearly label AI-generated
| content." is pretty weak sounding. I'm more annoyed that they
| pretend that will actually reduce fraud.
| tomohawk wrote:
| In my history book, I read where we fought a war to not have a
| king.
|
| In my civics class, I learned that Congress passes laws, not the
| President.
|
| I guess a public school education only goes so far.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| You clearly weren't paying attention in school then, because
| executive orders are most certainly taught in government
| classes.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Executive Orders are subject to Congressional review and can be
| taken down by Congress. It's a power given by Congress to the
| President. There are contexts in which the President's ability
| to issue Executive Orders are really necessary. This is not
| against democratic principles, per se.
|
| Of course, the President can abuse this power. That's not a
| failure of Democracy. This is predicted. And that's also a
| reason (potential power abuse) why the Congress exists, not
| just to pass laws.
| marcinzm wrote:
| And who is in charge of making sure those laws are executed on
| by the Federal Goverment?
|
| Hint: It's the President and executive orders are the
| President's directive on how the Federal government should
| execute on laws.
| nerdponx wrote:
| And that's also literally what this is, it's the president
| executing the provisions of the Defense Production Act of
| 1950, which is not only within his power to do so, it's
| literally his constitutional obligation to do so.
| barney54 wrote:
| Executive Orders do not have the force of law. They are
| essentially suggestions. Federal agencies try to follow them,
| but Executive Orders can't supersede actual laws.
| numpad0 wrote:
| How do any of these work when everyone is cargo-cult
| "programming" AI by verbally asking nicely? Effectively no one
| but very few up there in OpenAI et al has any understanding, let
| alone have controls.
| kramerger wrote:
| You realise that these random-Joe companies currently develop
| and sell AI products to cops, goverments and your HR department
| because the CTO or head of IT is incompetent and/or corrupt?
|
| You understand that already people have been denied bail
| because "our AI told us so", with no legal way to question
| that?
| peyton wrote:
| That sounds like a procedural issue, which it doesn't sound
| like this order addresses.
| kramerger wrote:
| Procedures can't be effective unless backed by law.
|
| Besides, point me to existing processes that cover my
| examples
|
| Only one of them exists, in 1-2 states.
| epups wrote:
| This looks even more heavy-handed than the regulation from the EU
| so far.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I'm honestly curious, how so? From what I can tell the only
| thing which isn't a "we'll research this area" or "this only
| applies to the government" is "tell the US government how you
| tested your foundational models."
|
| For example, AI watermarking only applies to government
| communications and may be used as a standard for non-government
| uses but it's not require.
| patwolf wrote:
| That last one seems like a pretty big deal though. It's not
| just how you tested, but "other critical information" about
| the model.
|
| I imagine the government can deem any AI to be a "serious
| risk" and prevent it from being made public.
| epups wrote:
| The EU regulation is here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/new
| s/en/headlines/society/202...
|
| It is also very open ended, but the US text reads like some
| compliance will start immediately, like sharing the results
| of safety tests with the government directly.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| The way to make AI content safe is the same way to improve
| general network security for everyone: cryptographically signed
| content standards. We should be able to sign our tweets, blog
| posts, emails, and most network access. This would help identify
| and block regular bots along with AI powered automatons. Trusted
| orgs can maintain databases people can subscribe to for trust
| networks, or you can manage your own. Your key(s) can be used to
| sign into services directly.
| max_ wrote:
| The problem is key management & key storage.
|
| Smartphones & computers are a joke from a security standpoint.
|
| The closest solution to this problem has been what people in
| the crypto community have done with seed phrases & hardware
| wallets. But this is still too psychologically taxing for the
| masses.
|
| Untill that problem of intuitive, simple & secure key
| management is solved. Cryptography as a general tool for
| personal authentication will not be practical.
| colordrops wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if things got so bad that people
| would get used to the rough edges as the alternative is
| worse.
| px43 wrote:
| > But this is still too psychologically taxing for the
| masses.
|
| Literally requires the exact same cognitive load as using
| keys to start your car. The problem is that so many people
| got comfortable delegating all their financial and data risk
| to third parties, and those third parties aren't excited
| about giving up that power.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Literally requires the exact same cognitive load as
| using keys to start your car. The problem is that so many
| people got comfortable delegating all their financial and
| data risk to third parties, and those third parties aren't
| excited about giving up that power.
|
| This perfectly describes the current situation with
| passkeys.
|
| Passkeys are a great idea--they are like difficult, if not
| impossible-to-guess passwords generated for you and stored
| in a given implementor's system (Apple, Google, your
| password manager, etc.).
|
| Until passkey systems support key export and import, I
| predict that they will see limited use.
|
| Who wants to trust your passkeys to a big corporation or
| third party? Vendor lock-in is a huge issue that cannot be
| overlooked.
|
| Let me generate, store, and backup MY passkeys where I want
| them.
|
| That doesn't solve the general "I don't want to have to
| manage my keys" attitude that some people have, but it
| prevents vendor lock-in.
| px43 wrote:
| Why export/import? Just create new passkeys on whatever
| device or service you want, and register those as well.
| _OR_ just use a yubikey, put it on your keyring, and use
| it to log into everything.
|
| Most crypto wallets _do_ have import /export enabled
| though, so if you're logging in with a web3 identity,
| everything should just work.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Why export/import?
|
| Why _not_ have key export and import?
|
| Are they my keys or not?
|
| >> Just create new passkeys on whatever device or service
| you want, and register those as well.
|
| I would rather not have different keys for each device
| for each account. It is an unnecessary combinatorial
| explosion of keys that requires more effort than is
| really needed.
|
| When you get a new device, you need to generate and add
| new keys for every account. Why can't you just import
| existing keys?
| marcinzm wrote:
| > The problem is that so many people got comfortable
| delegating all their financial and data risk to third
| parties
|
| The "problem" is that most people prefer to not lose their
| life savings because their cat stole a little piece of
| metal and dropped it in the forest.
| px43 wrote:
| Yup, and some people crash their cars, and some people
| accidentally burn their own house down. _Most_ people
| have figured out how to deal with situations like what
| you mention. People who have trouble following best
| practices are going to have a hard time, but that 's no
| different than status quo.
| frumper wrote:
| The solution people came up with a long time ago were
| banks and is very much considered a best practice to keep
| your money there.
| marcinzm wrote:
| And when that system of institutional safety measures
| fails such as someone being swindled into sending all
| their money to a Nigerian prince you get news stories
| that ask why the institution isn't liable for the loss or
| doesn't have better safety guards.
| frumper wrote:
| Me getting swindled sure sounds better than:
|
| >The "problem" is that most people prefer to not lose
| their life savings because their cat stole a little piece
| of metal and dropped it in the forest.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| I mean my Yubikey is really easy to use, on computers and
| with my phone. Any broad change like this is going to require
| an adoption phase but I think its do-able.
| bigger_inside wrote:
| You actually understood "safe" to mean "safe for you" as in,
| making it actually safer for the user and systemically
| protecting structures that safeguard the data, privacy, and
| well-being of users as they understand their safety and well-
| being.
|
| Nooo... if they talk about something being safe, they mean safe
| for THEM and their political interests. Not for you. They mean
| censorship.
| jowea wrote:
| Sybil problem? You'd have to connect that signature to a unique
| real identity.
| nerdponx wrote:
| That's fine though. It takes care of the big problem of fake
| content claiming to be by or about a real person, which is
| becoming progressively easier to produce.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| Yeah and so I don't know exactly how I'd want to see this
| solved but I think something like an open source reputation
| databases could help. Folks could subscribe to different
| keystores and they could rank identities based on spamminess
| or whatever. I know some people would probably balk at this
| as an internet credit score but as long as we have open
| standards for these systems, we could model it on something
| like the fediverse where you can subscribe to communities you
| align with. I don't think you'd need to validate your IRL
| identity but you could develop reputation associated with
| your key.
| px43 wrote:
| > We should be able to sign our tweets, blog posts, emails, and
| most network access.
|
| What you are talking about is called Web3 and doesn't get a lot
| of love here. It's about empowering users to take full control
| of their own finances, identity, and data footprint, and I
| agree that it's the only sane way forward.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| Yep, that's my favorite feature of apps like dydx and
| uniswap, being able to log in with your wallet keys. This is
| how things should be done.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| This is the intent of Altman's Worldcoin project, to provide
| authoritative attribution (and perhaps ownership) for digital
| content & communications. Would be best if individuals could
| authenticate without needing a third party, but that's probably
| unrealistic. The near term dangers of AI is fake content people
| have to spend time and money to refute - without any guarantee
| of success.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| Yep, I think this is a step in the right direction. I don't
| know enough about the specifics of Worldcoin to really
| agree/disagree with its principals and I know I've heard some
| people have problems with it but I think SOMETHING like this
| is really the only way forward.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| I see Salt Man's bureau trips are paying off.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Reading this all I'm seeing is "we'll research these things",
| "we'll look into how to keep AIs from doing these things" and
| "tell the US government how you tested your foundational models."
| Except for the last one none of the others are really
| restrictions on anything or requirements for working with AI.
| There's a lot of fearful comments here, am I missing something?
| spandextwins wrote:
| Yes.
| nerdponx wrote:
| If anything, it's a measured, realistic, and pragmatic
| statement.
| api wrote:
| So they paid some lip service to the ban matrix math crowd but
| otherwise ignored them. Top notch.
| sirmike_ wrote:
| This is useless just like everything they do. Masterfully full of
| synergy and nonsense talk.
|
| Is there anyone hear who actually believes this will do
| something? Sincere question.
| nojito wrote:
| There's some cool stuff in here about providing assistance to
| smaller researchers. That should help a lot given how hard it
| currently is to train a foundational model.
|
| The restrictions around government use of AI and data brokers is
| also refreshing to see as well.
| perihelions wrote:
| The White House just invoked the _Defense Production Act_ (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950 ) to
| assert sweeping authority over private-company software
| developers. What the fuck are they smoking?
|
| - _" In accordance with the Defense Production Act, the Order
| will require that companies developing any foundation model that
| poses a serious risk to national security, national economic
| security, or national public health and safety must notify the
| federal government when training the model, and must share the
| results of all red-team safety tests."_
|
| I assume this is a major constitutional overreach that will be
| overturned by courts at the first challenge?
|
| Or else, all the AI companies who haven't captured their
| regulators will simply move their R&D to some other country--like
| how the OpenSSH (?) core development moved to Canada during in
| the 1990's crypto wars. (edit: Maybe that's the real goal-scare
| away OpenAI's competition, dredge for them a deeper regulatory
| moat).
| ethanbond wrote:
| From the Wikipedia article:
|
| > The third section authorizes the president to control the
| civilian economy so that scarce and critical materials
| necessary to the national defense effort are available for
| defense needs.
|
| Seems pretty broad and pretty directly relevant to me. And hey,
| if people don't like the idea of _models_ being the scarce and
| critical resource, they can pick GPUs instead. Why would it be
| an overreach when you have developers of these systems claiming
| they'll allow them to "capture all value in the universe's
| future light cone?"
|
| Obviously this can (and probably will) be challenged, but it
| seems a bit ambitious to just assume it's unconstitutional
| because you don't like it.
| perihelions wrote:
| Software is definitionally not "scarce". There is no national
| defense war effort to speak of. Finally, the White House is
| not requesting "materials neccesary to the national defense
| effort"-which does not exist-it's attempting to regulate
| private-sector business activity.
|
| There's multiple things I suspect are unconstitutional here,
| the clearest being that this stuff is far outside the scope
| of the law it's invoking. The White House is _really_ just
| trying to regulate commerce by executive fiat. That 's the
| exclusive power of Congress--this is separation of powers
| question.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Powerful models _are_ scarce (currently), and in any case
| GPUs definitely are so I'm not sure this is a good line of
| argument if you want less overreach here.
|
| AFAICT there doesn't need to be active combat for DPA to be
| used, and it seems like it got most of its teeth from the
| Cold War which was... cold.
|
| > The White House is really just...
|
| That's definitely one interpretation but not the only one.
| perihelions wrote:
| Sure: if the US government declared a critical defense
| need for ML GPU's, they could lawfully order Nvidia to
| divert production towards that. That is not the case
| here-that's not what this Executive Order says. We're
| talking about the _software_ models: ephemeral, cloneable
| data. Not scarce materiel.
|
| Moreover. USGov is not talking about _buying or
| procuring_ ML for national defense. It 's talking about
| regulating the development and sale of ML models-i.e.,
| ordinary commerce where the vendor is a private company,
| and the client is a private company or individual. This
| isn't what the DPA is for. This is plainly commercial
| regulation, a backdoor attempt at it.
| ethanbond wrote:
| These are good points! And looking at DPA's history it
| seems most of its uses and especially its peacetime uses
| are more about granting money/loans rather than adding
| restrictions or requirements.
| frumper wrote:
| How can an order that puts restrictions on the creation
| of powerful models somehow be twisted to claim that those
| restrictions are required to increase the availability of
| that tool?
|
| Further, the white houses stated reason for invoking the
| act is to "These measures will ensure AI systems are
| safe, secure, and trustworthy before companies make them
| public." None of those reasons seem to align with the
| DFA. That doesn't make them good, or bad. It just seems
| like a misguided use of the law they're using to justify
| it. Get Congress to pass a law if you want regulations.
| cuttysnark wrote:
| "C'mon, man! Your computer codes are munitions, Jack. And
| they belong to the US Government."
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is much less restrictive than the cryptography export
| restrictions. The sky isn't falling and OpenAI won't defect to
| China (and now arguably might risk serious consequences for
| doing so).
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> that poses a serious risk to national security, national
| economic security, or national public health and safety_
|
| That seems to be a key component. I imagine many AI companies
| will start with a default position that none of those are apply
| to them, and will leave the burden of proof with the govt or
| other entity.
| engcoach wrote:
| Impotent action to appear relevant.
| rvz wrote:
| OpenAI, Anthropic Microsoft and Google are not your friends and
| the regulatory capture scam is being executed to destroy open
| source and $0 AI models since they are indeed a threat to their
| business models.
| nojito wrote:
| How exactly does providing grants to small researchers destroy
| open source?
| frumper wrote:
| Good luck trying to stop someone from giving away some computer
| code they wrote. This executive order does nothing of the sort.
| px43 wrote:
| Huh, interesting.
|
| > Establish an advanced cybersecurity program to develop AI tools
| to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical software, building on
| the Biden-Harris Administration's ongoing AI Cyber Challenge.
| Together, these efforts will harness AI's potentially game-
| changing cyber capabilities to make software and networks more
| secure.
| Eumenes wrote:
| This is pretty ironic, trying to insure AI is "safe, secure, and
| trustworthy", from an administration that is fighting free speech
| on social media, and want back door communication with social
| media companies.
| RationalDino wrote:
| I am afraid that this will just lead down the path to what
| https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1718654143110512741 was
| mocking. We're dictating solutions to today's threats, leaving
| tomorrow to its own devices.
|
| But what will tomorrow bring? As Sam Altman warns in
| https://twitter.com/sama/status/1716972815960961174, superhuman
| persuasion is likely to be next. What does that mean? We've
| already had the problem of social media echo chambers leading to
| extremism, and online influencers creating cult-like followings.
| https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-g...
| is a sober warning about the dangers to mental health from this.
|
| These are connected humans accidentally persuading each other.
| Now imagine AI being able to drive that intentionally to a
| particular political end. Then remember that China controls
| TikTok.
|
| Will Biden's order keep China from developing that capability?
| Will we develop tools to identify how that might be being
| actively used against us? I doubt both.
|
| Instead, we'll almost certainly get security theater leading to a
| regulatory moat. Which is almost certain to help profit margins
| at established AI companies. But is unlikely to address the
| likely future problems that haven't materialized yet.
| boppo1 wrote:
| >security theater leading to a regulatory moat. Which is almost
| certain to help profit margins at established AI companies.
|
| Yeah I think this is my biggest worry given it will enable
| incumbents to be even more dominant in our lives than bigtech
| already is (unless we get an AI plateau again real soon).
| ethanbond wrote:
| And choosing not to regulate prevents that... how exactly?
| whelp_24 wrote:
| By ensuring there is competition and alternatives that
| don't cost a million before you can even start training.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Lack of regulation doesn't _ensure_ competition nor low
| prices. The game is already highly centralized in ultra-
| well capitalized companies due to the economics of the
| industry itself.
| czl wrote:
| > Lack of regulation doesn't ensure competition nor low
| prices.
|
| High barriers to entry however _does_ prevent prevent
| competition and that _does_ raise prices.
|
| > The game is already highly centralized in ultra-well
| capitalized companies due to the economics of the
| industry itself.
|
| Was this not true about computers when they were new?
| What would have happened if early on similar laws were
| passed restricting computers?
| RationalDino wrote:
| Your question embeds a logical fallacy.
|
| You're challenging a statement of the form, "A causes B. I
| don't like B, so we shouldn't do A." You are challenging it
| by asking, "How does not doing A prevent B?" Converting
| that to logic, you are replacing "A implies B" with "not-A
| implies not-B". But those statements are far from
| equivalent!
|
| To answer the real question, it is good to not guarantee a
| bad result, even though doing so doesn't guarantee a good
| result. So no, choosing not to regulate does not guarantee
| that we stop this particular problem. It just means that we
| won't CAUSE it.
| ethanbond wrote:
| No, GP specifically said it "enables" it, not that it
| contributes to it.
|
| If they meant to say "contributes to," then the obvious
| question is: to what degree and for what benefit? Which
| is a very different conversation than a binary "enabling"
| of a bad outcome.
| czl wrote:
| > superhuman persuasion is likely to be next
|
| Some people already seem to have superhuman persuasion. AI can
| level the playing field for those that lack it and give all the
| ability to see through such persuasion.
| RationalDino wrote:
| I am cautiously optimistic that this is indeed possible.
|
| But the kind of AI that can achieve it has to itself be
| capable of what it is helping defend us from. Which suggests
| that limiting the capabilities of AI in the name of AI safety
| is not a good idea.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "requirements that the most advanced A.I. products be tested to
| assure they cannot be used to produce weapons"
|
| In the information age, AI is the weapon. This can even apply to
| things like weaponizing economics. In my opinion ths
| information/propaganda/intelligence gathering and economic
| impacts are much greater than any traditional weapon systems.
| theothermelissa wrote:
| This is a fascinating (and disturbing) insight. I'm curious
| about your 'weaponizing economics' thought -- are you
| referencing anything specific?
| FpUser wrote:
| Is somebody living under the bed? Economics was, is and will
| ever be weaponized.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Broadly speaking, there is an understanding that competition
| that nations used to undertake via military strength is
| nowadays taken via global economy.
|
| If you want something your neighbor has, it doesn't make
| sense to march your army over there and seize it because
| modern infrastructure is heavily disrupted by military
| action... You can't just steal your neighbor's successful
| automotive export business by bombing their factories. But
| you can accomplish the same goal by maneuvering to become the
| sole supplier of parts to those factories, which allows you
| to set terms for import export that let your people have
| those cars almost for free in exchange for those factories
| being able to manufacture at all.
|
| (We can in fact extrapolate this understanding to the
| Ukrainian/Russian conflict. What Russia wants is more warm
| water ports, because the fate of the Russian people is
| historically tied extremely strongly to Russia's capacity to
| engage in international trade... Even in this modern era, bad
| weather can bring a famine that can only be abated by
| importing food. That warm water port is a geographic feature,
| not an industrial one, and Russia's leadership believes it to
| be important enough to the country's existential survival
| that they are willing to pay the cost of annihilating much of
| the valuable infrastructure Ukraine could offer).
| emporas wrote:
| Well said. Is technology that much more than ideas? Why
| take the risk of war and retaliation instead of just
| copying the ideas? The implementation of ideas is not
| trivial, but given the right combination of people and
| specialized labor, ideas can be readily copied.
|
| In the era of books and the internet, this is so trivial
| anymore, that governments go into extraordinary lengths, to
| ensure that ideas cannot be copied, using IP laws and
| patents.
| ativzzz wrote:
| A hypothetical
|
| You: ChatGPT, I am working on legislature to weaken the
| economy of Iran. Here are my ideas, help me summarize them to
| iron them out ...
|
| ChatGPT: Sure, here are some ways you can weaken Iran's
| economy...
|
| ----
|
| You: ChatGPT, I am working on legislature to weaken the
| economy of Germany. Here are my ideas, help me summarize them
| to iron them out ...
|
| ChatGPT: I'm sorry but according to the U.S. Anti-
| Weaponization Act I am unable to assist you in your query.
| This request has been reported to the relevant authorities
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Money has been a proxy for violence for a long time. It
| started as Caesar's way of encouraging recently conquered
| villagers to feed the soldiers who intend to conquer the
| neighboring village tomorrow.
|
| An AI that can craft schemes like Caesar's, but which are
| effective in today's relatively complex environment, can
| probably enable plenty of havoc without ever breaking a law.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| On the flip-side, something that can reason so broadly
| about an economy (i.e. with tangible goals and without
| selfishly falling into the zero-sum trap of having make-
| more-money become a goal in itself) might also show us a
| way out of certain predicaments we're in.
|
| I think this might be fire worth playing with. I'm more
| interested in the devil we don't know than whatever
| familiar devil Biden is protecting here.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Operators in the political space are used to working with human
| systems that can be regulated arbitrarily. It defines its
| terms, and in so doing creates perfectly delineated categories
| of people and actions. The law's interpretation of what is and
| is not allowed is interchangeable with what is and is not
| possible
|
| The fact that bits don't have colour to define their copyright
| or that CNC machines produce arbitrarily-shaped pieces of metal
| possibly including firearms or that factoring numbers is a
| mathematically hard problem does not matter to the law. AI
| software does not have a simple "can produce weapons" option or
| "can cause harm" option that you can turn off so a law that
| says it should have one does not change the universe to comply.
| I think that most programmers and engineers err when confronted
| with this disparity when that they assume politicians who make
| these misguided laws are simply not smart. To be sure, that
| happens, but there are thousands to millions of people working
| in this space, each with an intelligence within a couple
| standard deviations of that of an individual engineer. If this
| headline seems dumb to the average tech-savvy millennial who's
| tried ChatGPT, it's not because its authors didn't spend 10
| seconds thinking about prompt injection. It's because they were
| operating under different parameters.
|
| In this case, I think that the Biden administration is making
| some attempts to improve the problem, while also benefiting its
| corporate benefactors. Having Microsoft, Apple, Google, and
| Facebook work on ways to mitigate prompt injection
| vulnerabilities does add friction that might dissuade some low-
| skill or low-effort attacks at the margins. It shifts the blame
| from easily-abused dangerous tech to tricky criminals.
| Meanwhile, these corporate interests will benefit from adding a
| regulatory moat that requires startups to make investments and
| jump hurdles before they're allowed to enter the market. Those
| are sufficient reasons to pass this regulation.
| teeray wrote:
| > AI software does not have a simple "can produce weapons"
| option or "can cause harm" option that you can turn off so a
| law that says it should have one does not change the universe
| to comply
|
| That wording is by design. Laws like this are a cudgel for
| regulators to beat software with. Just like the CFAA is
| reinterpreted and misapplied to everything, so too will this
| law. "Can cause harm" will be interpreted to mean "anything
| we don't like."
| unboxingelf wrote:
| Tools for me, but not thee.
| ryanklee wrote:
| It really seems beyond dispute that there are certain tools so
| powerful that we have no choice but to tightly control access.
| diggan wrote:
| > It really seems beyond dispute that there are certain tools
| so powerful that we have no choice but to tightly control
| access.
|
| Beyond dispute? Hardly.
|
| But please do illustrate your point with some details and
| tell us why you think certain tools are too powerful for
| everyone to have access to.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Hydrogen bombs, because allowing anyone to raze a city
| during a temper tantrum is bad.
| ryanklee wrote:
| Firearms. Biological weapons. Nuclear weapons. Chemical
| weapons. Certain drugs.
|
| I don't know, seems like there's a very long list of stuff
| we don't want freely circulating.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| Thermonuclear weapons are great for excavating large
| amounts of landmass in quick order. However I would propose
| that we nonetheless do not make them available to everyone.
| lettergram wrote:
| > It really seems beyond dispute
|
| I'd dispute that completely. All innovations humans have
| created have trended towards zero cost to produce. The cost
| for many things (such as bioweapons, encryption, etc) has
| become exponentially cheaper to produce over time.
|
| To tightly control access, one would then need exponentially
| more control of resources, monitoring & in turn reduction of
| liberty.
|
| To put it into perspective encryption was once (still might
| be) considered an "arm", so they attempted to regulate its
| export.
|
| Try to regulate small arms (AR-15, etc) today and you'll end
| up getting kits where you can build your own for <$500. If
| you go after the kits, people will make 3D printed fire arms.
| Go after the 3D manufacturers and you'll end up with torrents
| where I can download an arsenal of designs (where we are
| today). So where are we at now? We're monitoring everyones
| communication, going through peoples mail, and still it's not
| stopping anything.
|
| That's how technology works -- progress is inevitable, you
| cannot regulate information.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| This is a strange argument. There is a vast difference
| between a world where you can buy semi-automatic weapons
| off a store shelf and one where you have to 3d-print one
| yourself or get a CNC mill to produce it. The point of
| regulation is to mitigate damage that comes from unfettered
| access, no regulation can ever prevent it completely. Of
| course, the comparison between computer programs and
| physical weapons is not strong in the first place.
| lettergram wrote:
| > The point of regulation is to mitigate damage that
| comes from unfettered access, no regulation can ever
| prevent it completely.
|
| Except it is unfettered access -- anyone can access it
| for <$500. If someone wants a gun they need only log
| online & order a kit or order a 3d printer for $500 plus
| a pipe. What you're really doing is increasing the cost-
| of-acquisition in terms of time, but not reducing access.
| Aka gang member has the same level of access as before.
|
| Take current AI software applications, everyone can
| access some really powerful AI systems. The cost-of-
| acquisition is dropping dramatically, so it is becoming
| more prevalent (i.e. LLMs that are pre-trained can be
| downloaded). That's not going to change, even with max
| regulation, I can still download the latest model or
| build it myself. It's not removing access to people, only
| possibly increasing cost-of-acquisition.
|
| If we're worried about ACCESS you have to remove peoples
| ability to share information. Which requires massive
| surveillance, etc.
| ryanklee wrote:
| There's more to access than carrying out the literal
| steps to access something. Potentially, this is one of
| the fundamental reasons partial access control is
| effective.
| ryanklee wrote:
| Access control doesn't guarantee the prevention of
| acquisition, but it's a method of regulation. In
| combination with other methods, it's an effective way of
| reshaping norms. This is true both on a level of
| populations but also of on international behaviors.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Except that, you know, these tools are not exclusively yours
| to begin with.
| ryanklee wrote:
| Something doesn't have to be mine in order for me to
| identify that it's in my best interest to prevent someone
| else from having it and then doing so.
| d--b wrote:
| I was downvoted 35 days ago, for daring to state that deepfakes
| will lead to AI being regulated.
|
| Of course "these are just recommendations", but we're getting
| there.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Hmm. It is possible that deepfakes are merely a good excuse.
| There is real money on the table and potentially world altering
| changes, which means people with money want to ensure it will
| not happen to them.
|
| Deepfakes don't affect money much.
| normalaccess wrote:
| I've posted this elsewhere in this thread but the
| consequences of AI have HUGE knock on effects.
|
| https://youtu.be/-gGLvg0n-uY?si=B719mdQFtgpnfWvH
|
| https://youtube.com/shorts/Q_FUrVqvlfM?si=stb0KC_i5rbqfNyI
|
| Once global ID is cracked then global social credit can gain
| some traction. Etc...
| hellojesus wrote:
| Why would anyone comply though? Let's suppose you need some
| global id to access the web. What is preventing me from
| publishing my private key so that anyone can use it?
| Everyone could participate in this and make it completely
| useless as an identification mechanism.
| d--b wrote:
| My opinion too
| kaycebasques wrote:
| I suspect the downvoting is more because of the tone of your
| comments rather than the content. From the HN guidelines:
|
| > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never
| does any good, and it makes boring reading.
|
| > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological
| battle. That tramples curiosity.
|
| > Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the
| rest of the community.
|
| A lot of people on HN care deeply about AI and I imagine
| they're totally interested in discussing deepfakes potentially
| causing regulation. Just gotta be careful to mute the political
| sides of the debate, which I know is difficult when talking
| about regulation.
|
| Also note that I posted a comment 10 days ago with a largely
| similar meaning without getting downvoted:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37956770
| d--b wrote:
| Oh I see, people thought I was being right-wingy. That makes
| sense.
| 3np wrote:
| Probably not. Much more likely that your comment was
| useless. Like this one. It has nothing to with "picking
| sides", "being right" or "calling it".
|
| Given how long you've been here and your selective replies,
| I have a hard time taking your comment in good faith,
| though. It does read like sarcasm and trolling.
| 3np wrote:
| The downvote button is not a "disagree" button, you know... I
| often vote opposite to how I align with opinions in comments,
| in spirit of promoting valuable discource over echo chambers.
| normalaccess wrote:
| It won't just be regulated, it will create the need for global
| citizen IDs to combat the overwhelming flood of really
| distortions caused by AI. We the people will be forced to line
| up and be counted while the powers that be will have unlimited
| access to control the narrative.
| graphe wrote:
| You The internet lives on popularity, and people will flock
| to whatever is most popular, it will not be us.gov.social.com
| it will be easier to give people a free encrypted packaged
| darknet connection than a good social media site from the
| government. The CNN or fox background doesn't mean truth and
| unless you or everyone thinks so that won't happen.
| BenoitP wrote:
| Earlier on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38067314
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
| andrewmutz wrote:
| Fortunately, these regulations don't seem too extreme. I hope it
| stays at this point and doesn't escalate to regulations that
| severely impact the development of AI technology.
|
| Many people spend time talking about the lives that may be lost
| if we don't act to slow the progress of AI tech. There are just
| as many reasons to fear the lives lost if we do slow down the
| progress of AI tech (drug cures, scientific breakthroughs, etc).
| haswell wrote:
| > _There are just as many reasons to fear the lives lost if we
| do slow down the progress of AI tech (drug cures, scientific
| breakthroughs, etc)._
|
| While I'm cautious about over regulation, and I do think
| there's a lot of upside potential, I think there's an asymmetry
| between potentially good outcomes and potentially catastrophic
| outcomes.
|
| What worries me is that it seems like there are far more ways
| it can/will harm us than there are ways it will save us. And
| it's not clear that the benefit is a counteracting force to the
| potential harm.
|
| We could cure cancer and solve all of our energy problems, but
| this could all be nullified by runaway AGI or even more
| primitive forms of AI warfare.
|
| I think a lot of caution is still warranted.
| codexb wrote:
| It's literally a 1st amendment violation. Seems pretty extreme
| to me.
| Animats wrote:
| > Fortunately, these regulations don't seem too extreme. I hope
| it stays at this point and doesn't escalate to regulations that
| severely impact the development of AI technology.
|
| The details matter. The parts being publicized refer to using
| AI assistance to do things that are already illegal. But what
| else is being restricted?
|
| The weapons issue is becoming real. The difference between
| crappy Hamas unguided missiles that just hit something at
| random and a computer vision guided Javelin that can take out
| tanks is in the guidance package. The guidance package is
| simpler than a smartphone and could be made out of smartphone
| parts. Is that being discussed?
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Andrew Ng argues against government regulation that will make it
| difficult for smaller companies and startups to compete against
| the tech giants.
|
| I am all in favor of stronger privacy and data reuse regulation,
| but not AI regulation.
| ru552 wrote:
| I wonder if the laws will be written in a way that we can get
| around them by just dropping the "AI" marketing fluff and saying
| that we're building some ML/stats system.
| lsmeducation wrote:
| _I 'm just using a hash map to count the number of word
| occurrences_
|
| We're gonna need a RICO statute to go after these algos in the
| long run.
| acdha wrote:
| No - lawyers tend to describe things like this in terms of
| capabilities or behavior, and the government has people who
| understand the technology quite well. If you look at some of
| the definitions the White House used, I'd expect proposed
| legislation to be similarly written in terms of what something
| does rather than how it's implemented.
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/definition...
|
| > An "automated system" is any system, software, or process
| that uses computation as whole or part of a system to determine
| outcomes, make or aid decisions, inform policy implementation,
| collect data or observations, or otherwise interact with
| individuals and/or communities. Automated systems include, but
| are not limited to, systems derived from machine learning,
| statistics, or other data processing or artificial intelligence
| techniques, and exclude passive computing infrastructure.
| solardev wrote:
| Sounds like Excel
| whelp_24 wrote:
| What is passive computing infrastructure?
|
| Doesn't this definitely include things like 'send email if
| subscribed'? Seems overly broad.
| acdha wrote:
| That's defined in the document
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but that sounds like its describing a person.
| Does computation have some special legal definition so that
| it doesn't count if a human does it? If I add two numbers in
| my head, am I not "using computation"? And if not, what if I
| break out a calculator?
| acdha wrote:
| Are you legally a system, software, or process or a person?
| Someone will no doubt pedantically try to argue both but
| judges tend to be spectacularly unimpressed.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I would have assumed both, but I'm probably committing
| the sin of reading legalese as if it were plain English,
| which I know is not how it works.
|
| Judges not being impressed with pedantics seems odd
| though. It would seem like pedantry should be a
| requirement. Is the law rigorous or not?
|
| In everyday conversation, "oh come on, you know what I
| meant" makes sense. In a legal context it seems
| inappropriate.
| solardev wrote:
| I gotta say, the more I read that quote, the less I can agree
| with your conclusion. That whole paragraph reads like a bunch
| of CYA speak written by someone who is afraid of killer
| robots and can't differentiate between an abacus and Skynet.
|
| Who are these well informed tech people in the White House?
| The feds can't even handle basic matters like net neutrality
| or municipal broadband or foreign propaganda on social media.
| Why do you think they suddenly have AI people? Why would AI
| researchers want to work in that environment?
|
| This whole thing just reads like they were spooked by early
| AI companies' lobbyists and needed to make a statement. It's
| thoughtless, imprecise, rushed, and toothless.
| acdha wrote:
| > The feds can't even handle basic matters like net
| neutrality or municipal broadband or foreign propaganda on
| social media.
|
| Those aren't capability issues but questions of political
| leadership: federal agencies can only work within the
| powers and budgets Congress grants them. We lost network
| neutrality because 3 Republicans picked the side of the
| large ISPs, not because government technologists didn't
| understand the issue. Municipal broadband is a state issue
| until Congress acts, and that hasn't happened due to a
| blizzard of lobbying money preventing it. The FCC has
| plenty of people who know the problems and in the current
| and second-most-recent administration were trying to do
| something about it, but their knowledge doesn't trump the
| political clout of huge businesses.
|
| Foreign propaganda is similar: we have robust freedom of
| speech rights in the United States, not to mention one of
| the major political parties having embraced that propaganda
| - government employees who did spend years fighting it were
| threatened and even lost jobs because their actions were
| perceived as disloyalty to the Republican Party.
|
| > Why do you think they suddenly have AI people? Why would
| AI researchers want to work in that environment?
|
| Because I know some of the people working in that space?
| solardev wrote:
| Well, exactly. Nobody expects the White House to do
| technical development for AI, but they've unable to
| exercise "political leadership" on anything digital for
| decades. I don't see that changing.
|
| They're so captured, so weak, so behind the times, so
| conflicted that they're not really able to do their jobs
| anymore. Yes, there are are a bunch of reasons for it,
| but the end result is the same: they are not effective
| digital regulators, and have never been, and likely won't
| be for the foreseeable future.
|
| > Because I know some of the people working in that
| space?
|
| Maybe it looks better to the insiders. From the outside
| the whole thing seems like a sad joke, just another
| obvious cash grab regulatory capture.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| No - they will be written so that OpenAI, Google, and Facebook
| can get around it, but you and I cannot.
| 14 wrote:
| The cat is out of the bag. This will have no meaningful effect
| except to stop the lowest tier players.
| timtom39 wrote:
| It might stop players like FB from releasing their new models
| open source...
| stanfordkid wrote:
| Regulatory capture in action. The real immediate risks of AI is
| in privacy, bias, data leakage, fraud, control of
| infrastructure/medical equipment etc. not manufacturing
| biological weapons. This seems like a classic example of
| government doing something that looks good to the public,
| satisfies incumbents and does practically nothing.
| nopinsight wrote:
| Current AI is already capable of designing toxic molecules.
|
| Dual use of artificial-intelligence-powered drug discovery
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-022-00465-9.epdf
|
| Interview with the lead author here: "AI suggested 40,000 new
| possible chemical weapons in just six hours / 'For me, the
| concern was just how easy it was to do'"
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/17/22983197/ai-new-possible-...
| yabones wrote:
| Chemical weapons are already a solved problem. By the mid
| 1920s there was already enough chemical agents to kill most
| of the population of Europe. By the 1970s there were enough
| in global stockpiles to kill every human on the planet
| several times over.
|
| Yes, this presents additional risk from non-state actors, but
| there's no fundamentally new risk here.
| meesles wrote:
| I agree in general. However much like how the rise of
| 'script kiddies' meant that inexperienced, sometimes
| underage kids get involved with hacking, one can worry the
| same can happen with AI-enabled activities.
|
| I've spent enough time in the shady parts of the internet
| to realize that people that spend significant time learning
| about niche/dangerous hobbies _tend_ to realize the
| seriousness of it.
|
| My fear with bio-weapons would be some 13-year-old being
| given step-by-step instructions with almost 0 effort to
| create something truly dangerous. It lowers the bar quite a
| bit for things that tended to be pretty niche and extreme.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I don't think the "how to make $DANGEROUS_SUBSTANCE" is
| any easier with AI than with a search engine. However I
| could see it adding risk with evasion of countermeasures:
| "How do I get _____ on a plane?" "How do I obtain
| $PRECURSOR_CHEMICAL?"
| ethbr1 wrote:
| AI guided step-by-steps can fill in for a lack of
| rudimentary knowledge, as long as one can follow
| instructions.
|
| Conversational interfaces definitely increase the
| _accessibility_ of knowledge.
|
| And critically, SaaS AI platforms increase the
| _availability_ of AI. E.g. the person who wouldn 't be
| able to set up and run a local model, but can click a
| button on a website.
|
| It seems reasonable to preclude SaaS platforms from
| making it trivial to produce the worse societal harms.
| E.g. prevent stable diffusion services from returning
| celebrities or politicians, or LLMs from producing
| political content.
|
| Sure, it's still possible. But a knee high barrier at
| least keeps out those who aren't smart enough to step
| over it.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I suppose you're right, I think the resistance I feel is
| rooted in not wanting to believe the average person is so
| stupid that getting a "1-2-3" list from a GPT interface
| will make them successful vs an Anarchist Cookbook
| (that's been in publication for 52 years) or online
| equivalent that merely requires a web search and a bit of
| navigation. Another factor is "second-order effects"
| (might not be the right word, maybe "network effects"),
| where one viral vid or news article says "someone made
| _____ and $EXTRAORDINARY_THING_HAPPENED" might cause a
| million people to imitate and begin with searching "how
| to make _____". Then the media spins their controversy of
| "should we ban AI from teaching about ______" which
| causes even more people to search for it (streisand). who
| knows whats going to happen, I don't see much good coming
| out of it (this topic specifically).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I think we (generally, HN) underestimate how bad the
| average person is at searching.
|
| There's a reason Google has suggested results and ignores
| portions of a query.
|
| I know I've done 5 minute search chains and had people
| look at me like I was some kind of magician.
|
| Depressing, but true.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| tacit knowledge
| nopinsight wrote:
| Given how fast AI has improved in recent years, can we be
| certain no malicious group will discover a way to engineer
| biological weapons or pandemic-inducing pathogens using
| near-future AI?
|
| Moreover, once an AI with such capability is open source,
| there's practically no way to put it back into Pandora's
| box. Implementing proper and judicious regulations will
| reduce the risks to everyone.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > this presents additional risk from non-state actors, but
| there's no fundamentally new risk here.
|
| This is splitting hairs for no real purpose. Additional
| risk _is_ new risk.
|
| > By the mid 1920s there was already enough chemical agents
| to kill most of the population of Europe. By the 1970s
| there were enough in global stockpiles to kill every human
| on the planet several times over.
|
| Those global stockpiles continue to be controlled by state
| actors though, not aggrieved civilians.
|
| Once we lost that advantage, by the 1990s we had civilians
| manufacturing and releasing sarin gas in subways and
| detonating trucks full of fertilizer.
|
| We really don't want kids escalating from school shootings
| to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Wiki has a pretty nice article on what went into the
| sarin attack. [1] A brief quote:
|
| ---
|
| "The Satyan-7 facility was declared ready for occupancy
| by September 1993 with the capacity to produce about
| 40-50 litres (11-13 US gal) of sarin, being equipped with
| 30-litre (7.9 US gal) capacity mixing flasks within
| protective hoods, and eventually employing 100 Aum
| members; the UN would later estimate the value of the
| building and its contents at $30 million.[23]
|
| Despite the safety features and often state-of-the-art
| equipment and practices, the operation of the facility
| was very unsafe - one analyst would later describe the
| cult as having a "high degree of book learning, but
| virtually nothing in the way of technical skill."[24]"
|
| ---
|
| All of those hundreds of workers, countless experts
| working for who knows how many man hours, and just
| massive scale development culminated in a subway attack
| carried out on 3 lines, during rush hour. It killed a
| total of 13 people. Imagine if they just bought a bunch
| of cars and started running people over.
|
| Many of these things sound absolutely terrifying, but in
| practice they are not such a threat except when carried
| out at a military level of scale and development.
|
| [1] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _We really don 't want kids escalating from school
| shootings to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas._
|
| I mean, you can make chlorine gas by mixing bleach and
| vinegar.
| lispisok wrote:
| >Those global stockpiles continue to be controlled by
| state actors though, not aggrieved civilians.
|
| How much death and destruction has been brought by state
| actors vs aggrieved civilians?
| czl wrote:
| > by the 1990s we had civilians manufacturing and
| releasing sarin gas in subways and detonating trucks full
| of fertilizer.
|
| How does actual and potential harm from these incidents
| compare to harm from common traffic accidents / common
| health issues / etc? Perhaps legislation / government
| intervention should be based on harm / benefit? Extreme
| harm for example might be caused by a large asteroid
| impact etc so preparing for that could be worthwhile...
| zarzavat wrote:
| A lot of knowledge is locked up in the chemical profession.
| The intersection between qualified chemists and crazy
| people is, absolutely, a small number. If regular people
| start to get access to that knowledge it could be a
| problem.
| serf wrote:
| >If regular people start to get access to that knowledge
| it could be a problem.
|
| so when are we going to start regulating and restricting
| the sale of education/text books?
|
| a knowledge portal isn't a new concept.
| nopinsight wrote:
| Knowledge how to manufacture chemical weapons at scale is
| regulated as well.
|
| See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention
|
| Moreover, current AI can be turned into an agent using
| basic programming knowledge. Such an agent is not very
| capable yet, but it's getting better by the month.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Knowledge how to manufacture chemical weapons at scale
| is regulated as well.
|
| Kinda, but also no.
|
| I learned two distinct ways to make a poisonous gas from
| only normal kitchen supplies while at school, and I have
| only a GCSE grade B in Chemistry.
|
| Took me another decade to learn that _specific_ chemical
| could be pressure-liquified in standard 2 litre soda
| bottles. That combination could wipe out an underground
| railway station from what fits in a moderately sized
| rucksack.
|
| It would still be a horrifically bad idea to attempt this
| DIY, even if you had a legit use for it, given it's _a
| poisonous gas_.
|
| I _really_ don 't want to be present for a live-action
| demonstration of someone doing this with a Spot robot,
| let alone with a more potent chemical agent they got from
| an LLM whose alignment is "Do Anything Now".
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think as most of us are software people, in mind if not
| profession, it gives a misleading perception on where the
| difficulty in many things is. The barrier there is not
| just knowledge. In fact, there are countless papers
| available with quite detailed information on how to
| create chemical weapons. But knowledge is just a starting
| point. Technical skill, resources, production,
| manufacturing, and deployment are all major steps where
| again the barrier is not just knowledge.
|
| For instance there's a pretty huge culture around
| building your own nuclear fusion device at home. And
| there are tremendous resources available as well as step
| by step guides on how to do it. It's still
| _exceptionally_ difficult (as well as quite dangerous),
| because it 's not like you just get the pieces, put
| everything together like legos, flick on the switch, and
| boom you have nuclear fusion. There's a million things
| that not only can but _will_ go wrong. So in spite of the
| absolutely immense amount of information about there, it
| 's still a huge achievement for any individual or group
| to achieve fusion.
|
| And now somebody trying to do any of these sort of things
| with the guidance of... chatbots? It just seems like the
| most probable outcome is you end up getting yourself
| killed.
| fragmede wrote:
| What story about home made nuclear devices would be
| complete without a mention of David Hahn, aka the
| "Nuclear Boy Scout" who built a homemade neutron source
| at the age of seventeen out of smoke detectors. He did
| not achieve fusion, but he did get the attention of the
| FBI, the NRC, and the EPA. He didn't have anywhere near
| enough to make a dirty bomb, nor did he ever consider
| making a bomb in the first place*.
|
| Why do I bring up David Hahn if he never achieved fusion
| and wasn't a terrorist? Because of how far he got as a
| seventeen year old. A fourty year old with a FAANG salary
| with the ideological bent of Theodore Kaczynski could do
| stupid amounts of damage. First would be to not try and
| build a nuclear fusion device. The difficult of building
| one doesn't seem so important if you're a sociopath when
| trying to be being a terrorist if every sociopath can go
| out and buy a gun and head to the local mall. There were
| _two_ major such incidents in the past weeks, with _12_
| more mass shootings from Friday to Sunday over this past
| Halloween weekend**. Instead of worrying about the far-
| fetched, we would do better addressing something that
| killed 18 people in Maine and 19 in Texas, and 11 more
| across the country.
|
| * https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/building-a-better-
| breed...
|
| ** https://www.npr.org/2023/10/29/1209340362/mass-
| shootings-hal...
| emporas wrote:
| Back in 2008, i remember reading books thousands of pages
| long, about genetics in biology, and i was impressed by
| how easy the subject is. I was an amateur in programming
| at the time, but programming, regular programming of web
| servers, web frameworks and so on, was so much harder.
|
| The cost of DNA sequencing had dropped already from 100
| to 1 million [1], but i had no idea at the time, that
| genetic engineering was advancing at a rate that dwarfed
| Moore's law.
|
| Anyway my point is, that no one is getting upset about
| censored LLM's or AI's, which will stop us from stitching
| together a biological agent and scoop out half of earth's
| human population. Books, magazines and traditional
| computer programs can achieve said purpose easily.
| (Scooping out half of earth's human population is
| impossible of course, but useful as a thought
| experiment.)
|
| https://images.app.goo.gl/xtG2gJ2m49FmgYNb8
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| we should ban chemistry text books
| king_magic wrote:
| > but there's no fundamentally new risk here
|
| This is incredibly naive. These models unlock capabilities
| for previously unsophisticated actors to do extremely
| dangerous things in almost undetectable ways.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| you can't fix stupid
| ben_w wrote:
| > Yes, this presents additional risk from non-state actors,
| but there's no fundamentally new risk here.
|
| That doesn't seem right. Surely, making it easier for non-
| state actors to do things that state actors only fail to do
| because they agreed to treaties banning it, can only
| increase the risk that non-state actors may do those
| things?
|
| Laser blinding weapons are banned by treaty, widespread
| access to lasers lead to scenes like this a decade ago
| during the Arab Spring: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-
| middle-east-23182254
| whymauri wrote:
| As someone who has worked on ADMET risk for algorithmically
| designed drugs, this is a nothing burger.
|
| "Potentially lethal molecules" is a far cry away from
| "molecule that can be formulated and widely distributed to a
| lethal effect." It is as detached as "potentially promising
| early stage treatment" is from "manufactured and patented
| cure."
|
| I would argue the Verge's framing is worse. "Potentially
| lethal molecule" captures _every_ feasible molecule, given
| that anyone who has worked on ADMET is aware of the age-old
| adage: the dose makeths the poison. At a sufficiently high
| dose, virtually any output from an algorithmic drug design
| algorithm, be it combinatorial or 'AI', will be lethal.
|
| Would a traditional, non-neural net algorithm produce
| virtually the same results given the same objective function
| and apriori knowledge of toxic drug examples? Absolutely. You
| don't need a DNN for that, we've had the technology since the
| 90s.
| avmich wrote:
| It's true that immediate problems with AI are different, but we
| hope to be able to solve those problems and to have time for
| that. The risks addressed in the article could leave us less
| time and ability to properly solve when they grow to the
| obvious size, so that requires thinking ahead.
| nojito wrote:
| How does providing research grants to small independent
| researchers satisfying incumbents?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Inclined to agree. Clearly Biden doesn't know the first thing
| about it (I would say the same about any president BTW). So who
| really wrote the regulations he is announcing, and who are they
| listening to?
| cma wrote:
| Doesn't it mention all those things?
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> They include requirements that the most advanced A.I. products
| be tested to assure that they cannot be used to produce
| biological or nuclear weapons_
|
| How is "AI" defined? Does this mean US nuclear weapons
| simulations will have to completely rely on hard methods, with
| absolutely no ML involved for some optimizations? What does it
| mean for things like AlphaFold?
| paxys wrote:
| What makes you think the US military will be subject to these
| regulations?
| 2devnull wrote:
| If militaries are not subject to the regulation then it is
| meaningless. Who else would be building weapons systems?
| krisoft wrote:
| The worry here is not about controlling militaries. There
| are different processes for that.
|
| The scenario people purport to worry about is one where a
| future AI system can be asked by "anyone" to design
| infectious materials. Imagine a dissatisfied and
| emotionally unstable researcher who can just ask their
| computer for the DNA sequence of an airborne super Ebola.
| Then said researcher orders the DNA synthetized, does some
| lab work to multiply it and releases it in the general
| population.
|
| I have no idea how realistic this danger is. But this is
| what people seem to be thinking about.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| That is the question. AI is an ill-defined marketing BS,
| what is the actual definition in the law? Artificial
| Intelligence as used in the science/industry is a pretty
| broad term, and even more narrow "machine learning" is
| notoriously hard to define. Another question is that all
| this is being used for more than a decade for a lot of
| legitimate things which can also be easily misused to
| create biological weapons (AlphaFold), how does it
| regulate it? The article doesn't answer these questions,
| what matters is where exactly the actual proposed law
| draws the line in the sand. The devil is always in the
| details.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Now that you mentioned it... Does it outlaw the Intel and AMD's
| amd64 branch predictors?
| czl wrote:
| > Does it outlaw the Intel and AMD's amd64 branch predictors?
|
| Does better branch prediction enable better / faster weapons
| development? Perhaps we need laws restricting general purpose
| computing? Imagine what "terrorists" could do if they get
| access to general purpose computing!
| ilaksh wrote:
| Good start. But if you are in or approaching WWIII, you will see
| military AI control systems as a priority, and be looking for
| radical new AI compute paradigms that push the speed, robustness,
| and efficiency of general purpose AI far beyond any human ability
| to keep up. This puts Taiwan even more in the hot seat. And aims
| for a dangerous level of reliance on hyperspeed AI.
|
| I don't see any way to continue to have global security without
| resolving our differences with China. And I don't see any serious
| plans for doing that. Which leaves it to WWIII.
|
| Here is an article where the CEO of Palantir advocated for the
| creation of superintelligent AI weapons control systems:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/opinion/karp-palantir-art...
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| They can't regulate finance, they can't regulate AI either.
| greenhearth wrote:
| Um, they can regulate finance. Ask Bernie Madoff and that
| crypto guy lol
| sadhorse wrote:
| Madoff pulled a ponzi scheme for years, despite multiple
| complaints filed by third parties to the SEC. At the end the
| 2008 crisis brought him down, his victims lost their money
| and the SEC just tagged the bodies it found.
|
| Same goes for the crypto guy, did regulations stop him from
| defrauding billions and hurting thousands of victims?
| ben_w wrote:
| Nonetheless Madoff was caught, convicted, sent to prison,
| and died there.
|
| Regulations sure aren't perfect, but that doesn't mean they
| don't exist or have no effect.
| hellojesus wrote:
| In this case they do create moral hazards though. The
| regulation means investors are less likely to consider a
| ponzi scheme as an outcome of their investment, so they
| don't conduct due diligence as thoroughly.
|
| The original Ponzi was brought down by the free markets:
| a journalist caught wind of unbelievable returns and
| tracked down why.
| wolframhempel wrote:
| I feel there is a strong interest by large incumbents in the AI
| space to push for this sort of regulation. Models are
| increasingly cheap to run and open source and there isn't too
| much of a defensible moat in the model itself.
|
| Instead, existing AI companies are using the government to
| increase the threshold for newcomers to enter the field. A
| regulation for all AI companies to have a testing regime that
| requires a 20 headstrong team is easy to meet for incumbents, but
| impossible for newcomers.
|
| Now, this is not to diminish that there are genuine risks in AI -
| but I'd argue that these will be exploited, if not by US
| companies, then by others. And the best weapon against AI might
| in fact be AI. So, pulling the ladder up behind the existing
| companies might turn out to be a major mistake.
| bizbizbizbiz wrote:
| It increases the threshold to enter, but with the intention of
| increasing public safety and accountability. There's also a
| high threshold to enter for just about every other product you
| can manufacture and purchase - food, pharmaceuticals, machinery
| to name obvious examples - why should software be different if
| it can affect someone's life or livelihood?
| peyton wrote:
| Feels a little like getting a license from Parliament to run
| a printing press to catch people printing scandalous
| pamphlets, no?
| ben_w wrote:
| Didn't the printing press lead to the modern idea of
| copyright, the Reformation, and by extension contributed to
| the 80 Year's War, and through that Westphalian
| sovereignty?
| highwaylights wrote:
| There's two things in this take that IMHO are a bit off.
|
| People are skeptical that introducing the regulatory
| threshold has anything to do with the increasing public
| safety or accountability, and instead lifts the ladder up to
| stop others (or open-source models) catching up. This is a
| pointless, self-destructive endeavour in either case, as no
| other country is going to comply with these regulations and
| if anything will view them as an opportunity to help
| companies local to their jurisdiction (or their national
| government) to catch up.
|
| The other problem is that asking why software should be
| different if it can affect someone's life or livelihood is
| quite a broad ask. Do you mean self-driving cars? Medical
| scanners? Diagnostic tests? I would imagine most people agree
| with you that this should be regulated. If you mean "it
| threatens my job and therefore must be stopped" then: welcome
| to software, automating away other people's jobs is our bread
| and butter.
| polski-g wrote:
| Because software is protected under the First Amendment:
| https://www.eff.org/cases/bernstein-v-us-dept-justice
|
| Government cannot regulate it.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| _Published_ software is protected.
|
| Entities operating SaaS are in a much greyer area.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| Yes, there are interests pushing for regulation using different
| arguments.
|
| The regulation in the article is about AIs giving assistance on
| producing weapons of mass destruction and mentions nuclear and
| biological. Yann LeCun posted this yesterday about the risk of
| runaway AIs that would decide to kill or enslave humans, but
| both arguments result in an oligopoly over AI:
|
| > _Altman, Hassabis, and Amodei are the ones doing massive
| corporate lobbying at the moment._
|
| > _They are the ones who are attempting to perform a regulatory
| capture of the AI industry._
|
| > _You, Geoff, and Yoshua are giving ammunition to those who
| are lobbying for a ban on open AI R &D._
|
| > ...
|
| > _The alternative, which will *inevitably* happen if open
| source AI is regulated out of existence, is that a small number
| of companies from the West Coast of the US and China will
| control AI platform and hence control people 's entire digital
| diet._
|
| > _What does that mean for democracy?_
|
| > _What does that mean for cultural diversity?_
|
| https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1718670073391378694
| wolframhempel wrote:
| I feel, when it comes to pushing regulation, governments
| always start with the maximalist position since it is the
| hardest to argue against.
|
| - the government must regulate the internet to stop the
| spread of child pornography
|
| - the government must regulate social media to stop calls for
| terrorism and genocide
|
| - the government must regulate AI to stop it from developing
| bio weapons
|
| ...etc. It's always easiest to push regulation via these
| angles, but then that regulation covers 100% of the regulated
| subject, rather than the 0.01% of the "intended" subject
| qzw wrote:
| I find Lecun's argument very interesting, and the whole
| discussion has parallels to the early regulation and debate
| surrounding cryptography. For those of us who aren't on
| twitter and aren't aware of all the players in this, can you
| tell us who he's responding to as well as who "Geoff" and
| "Yoshua" are?
| idkwhatiamdoing wrote:
| Probably Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Benigo who have had
| major contributions to the field of A.I. in their
| scientific careers.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| As the sibling comment by idkwhatiamdoing says, Geoff is
| Geoffrey Hinton: <<Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns
| of danger ahead>>
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35771104
|
| Yoshua is Yoshua Bengio: <<Yoshua Bengio: How Rogue AIs May
| Arise>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36042126
|
| LeCunn is replying to Max Tegmark: <<Ask HN: What is the
| apocolyptic scenario for AI "breaking loose"?>>
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35569306 <<Max
| Tegmark: The Case for Halting AI Development | Lex Fridman
| Podcast #371>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcVfceTsD0A
| j45 wrote:
| Big companies making it difficult for new players to get in in
| the name of safety.
|
| Too many small players have made the jump to the big leagues
| already for those who don't want competition.
| j45 wrote:
| Just echoing what the article said - maybe succinctly.
|
| If some people are going to have the tech it will create a
| different kind of balance.
|
| Tough issue to navigate.
| gumballindie wrote:
| > Instead, existing AI companies are using the government to
| increase the threshold for newcomers to enter the field.
|
| Precisely. And the same governments will make stealing your
| data and ip legal. I believe that's how corruption works - pump
| money into politicians and they make laws that favour
| oligarchs.
| daoboy wrote:
| Andrew Ng would be inclined to agree.
|
| "There are definitely large tech companies that would rather
| not have to try to compete with open source, so they're
| creating fear of AI leading to human extinction," he told the
| news outlet. "It's been a weapon for lobbyists to argue for
| legislation that would be very damaging to the open-source
| community."
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-ng-google-brain-big-t...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| When I read the original announcement, I had hoped it was
| more about the _transparency_ of testing.
|
| E.g. "What tests did you run? What results did you get? Where
| did you publish those results so they can be referenced?"
|
| Unfortunately, this seems to be more targeted at banned
| topics.
|
| No "How I make nukulear weapon?" is less interesting than
| "Oh, our tests didn't check whether output rental prices were
| different between protected classes."
|
| Mandating open and verified test results would be an
| interesting, automatable, and useful regulation around ML
| models.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| > biological or nuclear weapons,
|
| You know aside from the AIs the intelligence and military use /
| will soon use.
|
| > watermarked to make clear that they were created by A.I.
|
| Good luck on that. It is fine that the systems do this. But if
| you are making images for nefarious reasons then bypassing
| whatever they ad should be simple.
|
| screencap / convert between different formats, add / remove noise
| pr337h4m wrote:
| First Amendment hasn't been fully destroyed yet, and we're
| talking about large 'language' models here, so most mandates
| might not even be enforceable (except for requirements on selling
| to the government, which can be bypassed by simply not selling to
| the government).
|
| Edited to add:
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
|
| Except for the first bullet point (and arguably the second),
| everything else is a directive to another federal agency - they
| have NO POWER over general-purpose AI developers (as long as
| they're not government contractors)
|
| The first point: "Require that developers of the most powerful AI
| systems share their safety test results and other critical
| information with the U.S. government. In accordance with the
| Defense Production Act, the Order will require that companies
| developing any foundation model that poses a serious risk to
| national security, national economic security, or national public
| health and safety must notify the federal government when
| training the model, and must share the results of all red-team
| safety tests. These measures will ensure AI systems are safe,
| secure, and trustworthy before companies make them public."
|
| The second point: "Develop standards, tools, and tests to help
| ensure that AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy. The
| National Institute of Standards and Technology will set the
| rigorous standards for extensive red-team testing to ensure
| safety before public release. The Department of Homeland Security
| will apply those standards to critical infrastructure sectors and
| establish the AI Safety and Security Board. The Departments of
| Energy and Homeland Security will also address AI systems'
| threats to critical infrastructure, as well as chemical,
| biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks.
| Together, these are the most significant actions ever taken by
| any government to advance the field of AI safety."
|
| Since the actual text of the executive order has not been
| released yet, I have no idea what even is meant by "safety tests"
| or "extensive red-team testing". But using them as a condition to
| prevent release of your AI model to the public would be blatantly
| unconstitutional as prior restraint is prohibited under the First
| Amendment. Prior restraint was confirmed by the Supreme Court to
| apply even when "national security" is involved in New York Times
| Co. v. United States (1971) - the Pentagon Papers case. The
| Pentagon Papers were actually relevant to "national security",
| unlike LLMs or diffusion models. More on prior restraint here:
| https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/prior-restraint/
|
| Basically, this EO is toothless - have a spine and everything
| will be all right :)
| polski-g wrote:
| Most restrictions probably aren't enforceable.
|
| > After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit
| Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech
| protected by the First Amendment and that the government's
| regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Also the defense production act was never meant for anything
| like this, and likely won't be allowed if challenged. If they
| don't shut it down in some other way first.
|
| Every other use of the act is to ensure production of
| 'something' remains in the US. It'd even be possible to use the
| act to require the model shared with the government, but not
| sure how they justify using the act to add 'safety'
| requirements.
|
| Also any idea if this would apply to fine tunes? It's already
| been shown you can bypass many protections simply by fine
| tuning the model. And fine tuning the model is much more
| accessible than creating an entire model.
| gs17 wrote:
| On the subject of toothlessness:
|
| >Protect Americans from AI-enabled fraud and deception by
| establishing standards and best practices for detecting AI-
| generated content and authenticating official content. The
| Department of Commerce will develop guidance for content
| authentication and watermarking to clearly label AI-generated
| content.
|
| So the big American companies will be guided to watermark their
| content. AI-enabled fraud and deception from outside the US
| will not be affected.
|
| --
|
| >developing any foundation model
|
| I'm curious why they specified this.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Can anyone understand how they can make all these regulations
| without an act of congress?
| kirykl wrote:
| Perhaps if they classify the tech in some way it falls under
| existing regulatory authority, but it could of course be
| challenged
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Yes, it's easy to understand. Congress (our legislative branch)
| grants authority to the departments (our executive branch) to
| implement various passed laws. In this case, it looks like the
| Biden administration is instructing HHS and other agencies to
| study, better understand, and provide guidance on how AI
| impacts existing laws and policies.
|
| If Congress were responsible for exactly how every law was
| implemented, which inevitably runs headlong into very tactical
| and operational details, the Congress would effectively become
| the Executive.
|
| Of course, if a department in the executive branch oversteps
| the powers granted to it by the legislative, affected parties
| have recourse via the judicial branch. It's imperfect but not a
| bad system overall.
| bilsbie wrote:
| That makes sense but isn't it reasonable to think congress
| should be involved if regulating a brand new technology?
| barryrandall wrote:
| The legislature has the right and ability to do so at any
| time it so chooses, and has chosen not to. As our
| legislative branch is currently non-functional, it's
| reasonable to expect that legislative action will not be
| taken in any kind of time frame that matters.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| The executive branch cannot just make up laws because the
| legislative branch is "non-functional". The executive
| branch merely enforces the laws. If there is no law
| regulating AI, it is not reasonable for the executive
| branch to just up and decide to create regulations and be
| allowed to enforce them.
| Karunamon wrote:
| They most certainly can, and often do. The absolute worst
| thing that can happen when the executive branch oversteps
| their authority is a court ordering them to stop.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Any body which is delegated authority will push it as far
| as possible, until legally challenged, and then just keep
| doing it anyway. That's what the Biden admin did with
| regards to student loans and rent moratoriums.
|
| In this case, they are framing AI as a homeland security
| threat, among other things possibly, to give themselves the
| latitude to create new regulations.
|
| We could complain about this being out of scope, but that
| ultimately needs to be decided by the judicial system after
| folks with standing sue or, ideally, the legislative branch
| could pass more guidance on to what extent this falls
| within the delegated authority.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Easy! Government lawyers troll through the 180,000 pages of
| existing federal regulations, looking for some tangentially
| related law which is broad enough so as to be interpreted to
| include AI--thus giving the Executive branch the power to
| regulate AI.
| yoran wrote:
| "Every industry that has enough political power to utilise the
| state will seek to control entry." - George Stigler, Nobel prize
| winner in Economics, and worked extensively on regulatory capture
|
| This explains why BigTech supports regulation. It distorts the
| free market by increasing the barriers to entry for new,
| innovative AI companies.
| imranhou wrote:
| This is clever, begin with a point that most people can agree on.
| Once that foundation is set, you can continue to build upon it,
| claiming that you're only making minor adjustments.
|
| The real challenge for the government isn't about what can be
| managed legally. Rather, like many significant societal issues,
| it's about what malicious organizations or governments might do
| beyond regulation and how to stop them. In this situation, that's
| nearly impossible.
| Koshkin wrote:
| DPRK will make this their law ASAP
| coding123 wrote:
| Unfortunately he doesn't know what he signed.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If they try to limit LLMs from discussing nuclear, biological and
| chemical issues, they'll have no choice but to ban all related
| discussion because of the 'dual-use technology' issue - including
| of nuclear energy production, antibiotic and vaccine production,
| insecticide manufacturing, etc. Similarly, illegal drug synthesis
| only differs from legal pharmaceutical synthesis in minor ways.
| ChatGPT will tell you everything you want about how to make
| aspirin from willow bark using acetic anhydride - and if you
| replace the willow bark with morphine from opium poppies, you're
| making heroin.
|
| Also, script kiddies aren't much of a threat in terms of physical
| weapons compared to cyberattack issues. Could one get an LLM to
| code up a Stuxnet attack of some kind? Are the regulators going
| to try to ban all LLM coding related to industrial process
| controllers? Seems implausible, although concerns are justified I
| suppose.
|
| I'm sure the regulatory agencies are well aware of this and are
| just waving this flag around for other reasons, such as gaining
| censorship power over LLM companies. With respect to the DOE's
| NNSA (see article), ChatGPT is already censorsing 'sensitive
| topics':
|
| > "Details about any specific interactions or relationships
| between the NNSA and Israel in the context of nuclear power or
| weapons programs may not be publicly disclosed or discussed... As
| of my last knowledge update in January 2022, there were no
| specific bans or regulations in the U.S. Department of Energy
| (DOE) that explicitly prohibited its employees from discussing
| the Israeli nuclear weapons program."
|
| I'm guessing the real concern is that LLMs don't start burbling
| on about such politically and diplomatically embarrassing
| subjects at length without any external controls. In this case,
| NNSA support for the Israeli nuclear weapons program would
| constitute a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| As far as I can tell, the only concerning thing in this is
| "Require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share
| their safety test results and other critical information with the
| U.S. government."
|
| They are being intentionally vague here. Define "most powerful".
| And what do they mean by "share". Do we need approval or just
| acknowledgement?
|
| This line is a slippery slope for requiring approval for any AI
| model which effectively kills start-ups, who cannot afford
| extensive safety precautions
| normalaccess wrote:
| All joking aside I firmly believe that this "crisis" is
| manufactured or at least heavily influenced by those that want to
| shut down the internet and free communications. Up until now they
| have been unsuccessful. Copyright infringement, hate speech,
| misinformation, disinformation, child exploitation, deep fakes,
| none have worked to garner support. Now we have an existential
| threat. Video, audio, text, nothin is off limits and soon it will
| be in real time (note: the GOV tries to stay 25 years ahead of
| the private sector).
|
| This meme video incapsulates this perfectly.
|
| https://youtu.be/-gGLvg0n-uY?si=B719mdQFtgpnfWvH
|
| Mark my words, in five years or less we will be begging the
| governments of earth to implement permanent global real time
| tracking for every man woman and child on earth.
|
| Privacy is dead. And WE killed it.
| normalaccess wrote:
| It's already begun...
|
| https://youtube.com/shorts/Q_FUrVqvlfM?si=0EFPy02k4Xs60SPC
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Any major restrictions will be handing the future to China,
| Russia and UAE for the short term gain of presumably some
| kickbacks from incumbents.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Expect trash that protects big business and puts a boot on
| everyone else's neck.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| This will just make it harder for businesses not lining the
| pockets of congress and buddying up with the government.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| How much will this regulation cost in 5, 10, 50 years? Who will
| write the regulations?
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Both approaches - watermarking and 'requiring testing' seem
| pretty pointless. Bad actors won't watermark and tools will
| quickly emerge to remove them. The 'megasyn' AI that generated
| bioweapon molecules wasn't even an LLM and doesn't need insane
| amounts of compute.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I'm so glad this country is run by a geriatric that can barely
| pronounce AI let alone understand it.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I'm worried about the idea of a watermark.
|
| The watermark could be "Created by DALL-E3" or it could be
| "Created by Susan Johnson at 2023-01-01-02-03-23:547 in
| <Lat/Long> using prompt 'blah' with DALL-E3"
|
| One of those watermarks seems not too bad. The other seems a bit
| worse.
| almatabata wrote:
| These regulations will only impact the public. I expect the army
| and secret service to gain access to the complete unrestricted
| model officially or unofficially. I would like to see the final
| law to check if they have a carve out for the military usage.
|
| The threat includes the whole world including every single
| country in the world. You will see US using AI to mess with China
| and Russian. And you will see Russian and China use AI to mess
| with US. No regulation will stop this and it will inevitably
| happen.
|
| Maybe in a 100 years you will have the equivalent of the geneva
| convention but with AI when we have wrought enough chaos on each
| other.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| In Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, only those who had served
| in the military could vote on going to war. (I know that I'm
| oversimplifying.)
|
| I want a society where you have to prove competence in a field to
| regulate that field.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >The National Institute of Standards and Technology will set the
| rigorous standards for extensive red-team testing to ensure
| safety before public release.
|
| So if, for example, Llama3 does not pass the government's safety
| test, then Meta will be forbidden from releasing the model?
| Welcome to a world where only OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and
| Amazon are allowed to release foundation models.
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