[HN Gopher] Cali's AG Tells AI Companies Almost Everything They'...
___________________________________________________________________
Cali's AG Tells AI Companies Almost Everything They're Doing Might
Be Illegal
Author : clumsysmurf
Score : 163 points
Date : 2025-01-29 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| sbszllr wrote:
| Might is irrelevant and doesn't prevent any abuse, nor does it
| foster innovative environment. Both the EU and the US, need to
| pick a side. Either they should make it illegal and establish
| precedent, or just let go.
| GaggiX wrote:
| >Either they should make it illegal and establish precedent
|
| At that point we just wait for the next Chinese open source
| model.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is also why we won't get a Big Tech crackdown any time
| soon of any significance; and would not have even under the
| previous administration.
|
| Big Tech is the US' golden goose in the race against China.
| Deepseek shows China is at the doorstep, much closer and more
| capable than previously assumed. Any thoughts politically
| about how we can simultaneously crack down on Big Tech, while
| keeping China in check with sanctions, just went out the
| window.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Expecting companies to actually license copyrighted material
| instead of mass infringement is fairly reasonable given
| they've demanded the same for decades from the populace.
|
| "China's not going to respect those laws" is kinda beside the
| point. If they suddenly decided to cut everyone in the
| nation's pay in half - or double it - that would have no
| bearing on what is right for you or I to do.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > If they suddenly decided to cut everyone in the nation's
| pay in half - or double it - that would have no bearing on
| what is right for you or I to do.
|
| They literally did exactly that relative to the salaries of
| the rest of the world, and everyone took them up on it.
|
| In retrospect, keeping China a weak communist nation was so
| easy. There was even internal dissent in the late 80s. It
| simply required refusing to make trade deals. US and
| worldwide wages would have been higher, discontent would
| have continued fermenting, the party would have remained
| relatively weak, human rights would not have been so easily
| sold out to the lowest bidder, the US would probably not
| have lost 6 million manufacturing jobs in a decade (3x the
| number of jobs in SV), and we blew it.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Capitalism doesn't care about rights or how much you get
| paid -- the only relevant metric is how much money you
| make so this was inevitable in capitalist America.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > In retrospect, keeping China a weak communist nation
| was so easy.
|
| This is extremely naive, and fallacious.
|
| As policymaker, you do not know beforehand how countries
| are going to develop over a 40 year period (not even your
| own country :P). Thus the only realistic option would've
| been a catch-all sanction regime against... possible
| future geopolitical rivals? Non-democratic nations?
| States with different cultural values? No matter which
| you pick, sacrificing trade like that would've been
| extremely expensive and limiting for US growth (might've
| included India, Africa, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Europe,
| Russia, depending on what criteria you pick).
|
| You might have seen other countries jumping at the
| opportunity, filling the gap and benefitting immensely in
| the process, like the EU, or India, Russia, Japan, some
| pan-African Union... The only certainty in the outcome is
| that the US in such a scenario would NOT be as wealthy as
| it is today.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| China isn't meaningfully communist. In general them
| stealing our jobs is probably a good thing on the whole.
| It's a complex issue, and I would be happy if we were
| pressuring China hard because of it's human rights abuses
| but global wealth inequality going down is something to
| be celebrated, protectionism sucks. I know it's
| complicated, but I can't be too mad about our wealth
| being "stolen" to lift people out of poverty, it's
| something I think we should be doing willingly.
| philipov wrote:
| Great sentiment, but let's start by doing it domestically
| first.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I think for my viewpoint to be internally consistent it
| needs to happen internationally as well as domestically.
| ofc this is all a pipedream anyway, there's barely an
| appetite for lifting the people in the tenderloin out of
| poverty and I'm trying to convince people that we'd all
| win by tending toward a "humanity vs the universe"
| viewpoint that's based on the idea that all the folks on
| the planet deserve to have it good.
|
| "when you're used to privilege, the loss of it feels like
| oppression"
|
| It will hurt to fix this, but I don't think it needs to
| hurt that much I think it would hurt a lot less if we
| were actually trying to make it happen rather than
| occasionally being dragged kicking and screaming in that
| direction.
|
| (i do _not_ have any meaningful ideas how to bring about
| this kind of change, (maybe a fake giant squid alien in
| manhattan? :P))
| nradov wrote:
| The thesis at the time was that through engagement and
| free trade we could gradually (over decades) transform
| China into something closer to a free-market multiparty
| liberal democracy. That policy obviously didn't work --
| in fact it has been a complete and utter failure -- but
| even in retrospect it wasn't completely crazy or stupid.
| It could have at least partially worked if someone other
| than Xi Jinping had replaced Hu Jintao. Unfortunately a
| lot of major geopolitical trends come down to random luck
| and unpredictable individual personalities.
|
| Now we have to pivot and focus on containment in Cold War
| II.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| The economic liberalization of China and its
| participation in global markets has led to the fastest
| and most widespread reduction in poverty in human
| history. Even if we could have kept China in the dirt,
| it's extremely questionable if that would be the right
| thing to do.
| rangestransform wrote:
| The US government shouldn't care about the right thing to
| do, only what's good for the US people. It's easy to say
| from a position of postwar supremacy that countries
| should be somewhat altruistic, but now the US pays the
| price, and will continue to do so.
| GaggiX wrote:
| You can't license 20T of tokens, I guess it's hard to grasp
| how big these datasets are.
| runako wrote:
| "Can't" or "don't want to"?
|
| OpenAI is talking about spending half a trillion US
| dollars, they have the money to license data.
|
| In music, there is compulsory licensing and companies
| that use recorded music are able to make the economics
| work.
|
| It needs to be repeated that these are not simply
| "tokens", they are the product of millions of individual
| people that are being appropriated for the financial gain
| of a very few other people.
| woah wrote:
| Imagine if the US (public and private sector),
| transferred 2% of GDP to Warner Bros
| GaggiX wrote:
| >"Can't" or "don't want to"?
|
| Can't. Even if someone has the money (I truly doubt), you
| can't contact millions of copyright owners (as you
| report).
| hereweareagain wrote:
| If it's impossible to do it legally, then they shouldn't
| be able to do it. Violating one person's rights is
| illegal, but violating a billion's rights for profit is
| fine?
|
| I'm in support of them being able to do it, but the right
| avenue is by working and lobbying hard to change
| antiquated copyright laws. Being able to disregard
| copyright only if you have enough billions of dollars on
| hand is the worst outcome. It's literally laws that only
| apply to the poor.
| ghaff wrote:
| Be careful where you're going here. If you
| maximally/strictly interpret copyright law, the Internet
| Archive (including Wayback Machine) is largely violating
| copyright all the time. (WAY beyond the ongoing dispute
| with the publishers over the lending library.) Most web
| content is non-permissively licensed.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I don't believe Internet Archive should be permitted to
| disregard copyright wholly either.
| GaggiX wrote:
| Or because the results of these models are so
| transformative that you could pass it off as fair use.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Going with the flow here, does that mean if I build a
| little script that downloads just enough movies, songs
| and books from the internet I don't have to obey the
| current law, because it is a) too expensive, and/or b)
| impractical?
|
| I'm sure you already see the folly of that argument.
|
| Anyhow, flowing on, the allegedly totally inefficient
| governments of this world routinely contact millions and
| millions of legal entities, and many of them are poorer
| than Microsoft, Google, or even OpenAI, yet they somehow
| manage. So it seems to be practical.
|
| Of course, that does not answer the cost thing, we all
| know governments just print more fiat money...
|
| So we have been told that IP is indeed property and the
| property owner has a right to compensation for use.
| Nobody ever told me that I just have to be blatant enough
| to be scot-free. And I guess Sony, Warner Bros., Atlantic
| et. al. didn't get the memo either, or why would they sue
| a single university student for 4.5 million dollars? [1]
| This seemed and was much too much for a single university
| student to pay. So "too expensive" is off the table, too.
| Weird world.
|
| [1] the Tenenbaum case. Tenenbaum was lucky but still
| broke afterwards.
| GaggiX wrote:
| >I don't have to obey the current law,
|
| There is currently no law that states it is illegal to
| train a model on copyrighted work.
| runako wrote:
| If that's the standard, then it is worth noting that we
| are talking about companies that are trying to do
| something that literally (as far as can be proven today)
| can't be done (build an AGI).
|
| Contacting millions of people is something many
| businesses on earth do.
|
| If these companies are already engaged in trying do do
| something that quite literally can't be done (again, as
| far as can be proven today), it's not out of line to ask
| them to at least try to do something that many other
| companies actually do in practice (pay lots of people).
|
| It's important to be very clear that this is something
| that could be done, but that the AI companies do not want
| to even try to do.
| freejazz wrote:
| It's not a problem for the music and video streamers. Get
| real. They could even have an AI do it for them!
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| There are other things about the AI industry that don't foster
| an "innovative environment":
|
| - companies being allowed to spin fairy tales about their
| products' capabilities
|
| - no real consequences to enabling scammers, copyright thieves,
| and misinformation factories
|
| That stuff might be good for securing short-term investment -
| and it befits a society obsessed with cryptocurrency and sports
| gambling. But it doesn't seem good for building meaningfully
| smarter computers, just dumber computer users.
| 42lux wrote:
| Force them to open source it.
| philipov wrote:
| Force them to open source it!
| lupusreal wrote:
| Creation of new laws, and enforcement of existing laws usually
| trails behind the bleeding edge of tech. It's part of the risk
| tech companies accept when they're doing something new which
| might possibly be a bit dodgy.
| confidantlake wrote:
| If they continue they might get a strongly worded letter.
| nostradumbasp wrote:
| Fine of five hundred dollars and a personal donation to a re-
| election campaign required.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I mean yeah, but perhaps going after the provable and wholesale
| abuse of copyright laws might be a more fruitful approach.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-used-copyrighted-boo...
|
| After all its actually documented. Its also not likely to be fair
| use.
|
| The proving now harm bit is going to be difficult, and bad on the
| old trumpian optics.
|
| copyright at least forces some of his billionaires to fight with
| other billionares to come to a conclusion as to "what is good for
| America"
| voxic11 wrote:
| Google making a database of all web content and serving up
| snippets of that content in search results was ruled to be fair
| use. So it seems plausible that doing essentially the same
| thing but with an AI rather than a traditional database could
| be ruled to be fair use.
|
| Its hardly a sure thing but their position does seem to be at
| least somewhat supported by precedent.
| jcranmer wrote:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
| is the most recent SCOTUS precedent covering the definition
| of "transformative" for the purposes of fair use.
|
| The tl;dr is that you have to look at the impact on the
| market for the use to figure out if it's transformative
| [1]... which means it's extremely unlikely that training for
| AI is going to be considered "transformative", and thus they
| lose the first factor. Given that AI is absolutely reamed on
| the fourth factor (especially now that they're paying people
| to use their content for training, that's basically a
| concession on the fourth factor), there isn't really any
| grounds for them to claim fair use.
|
| [1] Yes, it's pulling the fourth factor into the first
| factor, it is a rather garbage opinion, but it is precedent
| as of 3 years ago.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Unfortunately, nowadays what the laws say and what's legal
| are two different things
| jcranmer wrote:
| If you want to be pedantic, fair use isn't about what the
| law says, since it's entirely derived from judicial
| precedent rather than statutory text. It wasn't until the
| 1976 copyright reform that fair use was incorporated in
| statutory text, but as anyone who's followed any cases on
| fair use should know, there's never argument based on the
| statutory text itself.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Fair point, though it doesn't seem like the courts are
| putting much weight on precedent for their decisions
| either
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Now compare this to the legal atmosphere that DeepSeek was
| created in.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Oh, the "we'll give you money under the table so you can appear
| cheap as hell, but you'd better give us all your data on the
| imperialists, Comrade" regime?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Even though he's right, Rob Bonta is going to get himself fired,
| while Scott Wiener will write a bill legalizing training on non
| expressly licensed data.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Fun fact: Germany's IP law has a provision that allows AI
| training by default for everything that's reachable on the
| Internet, if the website operator hasn't published a "nope" in
| machine-readable form (i.e. robots.txt).
|
| [1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__44b.html
| NullPrefix wrote:
| So to legally copy a website, all you need is to just pass it
| through an AI filter and then you can legally publish the rip
| off?
| portaouflop wrote:
| No - data mining copyrighted material and republishing
| copyrighted material under your own name are two very
| different things
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Passing data through an AI filter for "training" is a
| different thing (legally and ethically) from publishing the
| output.
| portaouflop wrote:
| If you read the law it says it's only allowed if the rights
| holder doesn't disallow it (in machine readable form) - I
| would argue robots.txt falls under machine readable
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >will write a bill legalizing training on non expressly
| licensed data.
|
| Which should be assumed to be legal already, even without the
| expressly written bill. Copyright maximalism is anti-human.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| This is the way. We need to restrict IP protection,
| especially temporally.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Stealing is more anti human.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Surprisingly when it comes to software, music, and movie
| stealing we find that stealing requires one party to lose
| something but when it comes to OpenAI stealing is happily
| colloquially defined. What an interesting curiosity.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| When I steal a thing from you, you no longer have the
| thing.
|
| When I steal a dance you just invented, you're very
| butthurt about it and run crying to mommy "make him stop
| copying me!". Then you grow up and bribe Congress to make
| it illegal. Except for the "growing up" part, that never
| happened.
| account42 wrote:
| Expecting megacorporations to play by the same rules they
| want us to follow when in comes to their rights is pretty far
| from copyright maximalism. Anti-human is giving corporations
| more rights than humans.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > "The law, in its majestic equality, permits rich and poor
| _alike_ to massively-plagiarize anything they want after
| investing at least $100,000,000 on a computational pipeline
| to statistically launder its origins and details. "
|
| -- Cyberpunk Anatole France
|
| ____
|
| If I were to steel-man your comment, it would be something
| like: "Scraping and training must be fair-use because people
| can be building all sorts of systems with ethical and
| valuable purposes. What you _generate_ from a trained system
| can easily infringe, but that 's a separate thing."
|
| Also, where does the GNU Public License fall in terms of
| "anti-human copyright maximalization"? Is it bad because it
| uses fire, or is it good because it fights fire _with fire_?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >it would be something like: "Scraping and training must be
| fair-use because
|
| It wouldn't be "fair use". It makes no copies. "Fair use"
| is the horseshit the courts dreamt up so they could pretend
| copyright wasn't broken when a copy absolutely needed to be
| made.
|
| This makes no copies, so it doesn't even need "fair use".
| Instead, there are people who believe that because they
| made something long ago that they and their descendants
| into the far future are entitled to tax everyone who might
| ever come across that thing let alone actually want copies
| of the thing.
|
| Your argument must sound intelligent to you, but it starts
| from a premise of "of course copyright is the only non-
| lunatic policy people could ever imagine", and goes from
| there. You can't even think in any other terms.
|
| > Also, where does the GNU Public License fall in terms of
| "anti-human copyright maximalization"? Is it bad because it
| uses fire, or is it good because it fights fire with fire?
|
| Stallman is clever to twist the rules a little to get a
| comparatively sane result from them, but there are others
| who aren't clever enough to even recognize that that's what
| he's doing. So, in their minds "what about the gnu license"
| seems like a gotcha. I won't name those people, but their
| username starts with _Terr_ and ends with an underscore.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Your argument must sound intelligent to you, but [...]
| You can't even think in any other terms.
|
| > others who aren't clever enough [...] I won't name
| those people, but their username starts with Terr and
| ends with an underscore.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| ____________
|
| > It wouldn't be "fair use". It makes no copies.
|
| Incorrect, the real-world behavior we're discussing
| involves unambiguous copies, where LLM companies scrape
| and retain the data in a huge training corpus, since they
| want to train a new iteration of the model when they
| adjust the algorithms.
|
| That accumulation is analogous to photocopying books and
| magazines that you borrow/buy before returning/selling
| them again, and arranging your new copies into a
| clubhouse or company break-room. Such a thing is not
| usually considered "fair use."
|
| In a hypothetical world where all content is merely
| streamed into a model, then the question of whether
| model-weights can be considered a copy with a special
| form of lossy compression is... separate, and much
| trickier.
|
| > Your argument [...] starts from a premise of "of course
| copyright is the only non-lunatic policy people could
| ever imagine"
|
| Nope, it's just the context of the discussion because
| it's status-quo we're living with and the one we're faced
| with incrementally changing. If you're going to rage-post
| about it, at least stop and direct that rage
| appropriately.
|
| > Stallman is clever to twist the rules a little to get a
| comparatively sane result from them, but [you don't]
| recognize that that's what he's doing.
|
| I already described the GPL as "fighting fire with fire",
| I don't understand how the idiom didn't make sense to
| you.
| jprete wrote:
| I don't think the memo mentions training data sources; it's
| about usage and impact.
| bragr wrote:
| >Rob Bonta is going to get himself fired
|
| The Attorney General of California is an elected position. He
| could be recalled but not fired by the Governor.
| rpmisms wrote:
| A recall is firing.
| bragr wrote:
| Sort of? But it is very different to the federal cabinet
| where they serve at the pleasure of the president. The
| recall process is slow, expensive, and rarely successful.
|
| >Since 1913, there have been 181 recall attempts of state
| elected officials in California. Eleven recall efforts
| collected enough signatures to qualify for the ballot and
| of those, the elected official was recalled in six
| instances.
|
| https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/recalls/recall-history-
| cali...
| mikestew wrote:
| But a firing by the electorate, not a firing by the
| governor of CA.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Sure, but it's still getting fired. Also, the governor
| can support the recall (And Gavin should).
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _He co-authored Senate Bill 239, which lowered the penalty of
| exposing someone to HIV without their knowledge and consent
| from a felony to a misdemeanor_
|
| That Scott Wiener? How does he still have a job?
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Everyone qualified to speak on such things was pretty
| universally in agreement that the previous law was
| _increasing_ the spread of HIV rather than decreasing it, as
| the primary effect it had was that sex workers would refuse
| to get tested.
| prpl wrote:
| He's more likely to get rounded up with Sheng Thao, Andre
| Jones, Bryan Azevedo, and his wife, Mia Bonta.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| This article seems like a pretty dishonest summary of a legal
| advisory that begins by saying:
|
| > AI systems are at the forefront of the technology industry, and
| hold great potential to achieve scientific breakthroughs, boost
| economic growth, and benefit consumers. As home to the world's
| leading technology companies and many of the most compelling
| recent developments in AI, California has a vested interest in
| the development and growth of AI tools. The AGO encourages the
| responsible use of AI in ways that are safe, ethical, and
| consistent with human dignity to help solve urgent challenges,
| increase efficiencies, and unlock access to information--
| consistent with state and federal law.
|
| It's impossible to understand this as a statement that AI
| companies are a "legal clusterfuck" or "may be entirely based
| around criminal activity".
| tssva wrote:
| The actual warning seems to be not to do things with AI that
| are also illegal without AI. Don't create illegal fake content,
| don't make false claims regarding the accuracy of your AI and
| don't produce AI systems which are discriminatory against a
| protected class.
| kalkin wrote:
| Seriously. I did not realize Gizmodo was at that point with
| opportunistic clickbait, but apparently it is.
|
| edit to expand: from the headline I thought this was going to
| be Bonta coming out against the argument that AI training is
| fair use, which really would at least arguably apply to "almost
| everything" the companies make. But no, he's just saying not to
| do things that AFAICT they already all ban in TOS.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| "Cali"? No.
| recursive wrote:
| What? It is.
| quesera wrote:
| Cali is a big city in Colombia.
|
| Only LL Cool J can call California "Cali" without derision.
| recursive wrote:
| Ok, deride away. You may find it useful to know that "Cali"
| is a frequently used shortening of "California". Good luck
| with the crusade.
| quesera wrote:
| Oh I'm very familiar. It's still ambiguous and
| unnecessary in this context.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| High level CA politicians larp as national politicians way too
| much
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Given the economic contribution and population of California it
| seems appropriate. See "map of states with a population less
| than LA county"
| richwater wrote:
| That people want to pack in populated, dense urban counties
| in tiny apartments doesn't mean anything.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Except people and companies can change their resident state
| much easier than they can change their nationality. Nation-
| level policies do not necessarily work at state levels.
| ang_cire wrote:
| They are national politicians (as is every politician in the
| nation). I think you mean "Federal".
|
| That aside, state governments are supposed to heavily augment
| federal laws with their own state laws and regulations.
|
| California doesn't need or want input from a bunch of states
| with little to no AI (or even IT in general) industry footprint
| about how those companies should operate.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| If the government cannot give you a definitive opinion whether
| you are breaking the law, the government has no mandate to rule.
|
| Rule of law means having clear guidance on what is or isn't
| illegal. Vague guidance that everyone in the industry "might" be
| breaking the law isn't responsible, it's setting up a mechanism
| to trade favors and selectively prosecute enemies to reward
| friends.
|
| Be better, guys. This isn't the right take.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Rule of law means that an unbiased judge with an understanding
| of the relevant precedents allows two litigants to argue their
| cases on the merits of the case and of the evidence, and then
| when the judge or jury renders a judgement, the society accepts
| the judgement and allows any consequences to be carried out
| without regard for who the judgement is for or against. It has
| nothing to do with "clear guidance" because what is clear as
| day to one person may be totally unfathomable to another. I
| guarantee that you or I could find two statutes together that
| make perfect sense to me but which you do not understand, and
| vice-versa. That's why we have attorneys and judges.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| People have a right to know, in advance of an action, whether
| the AG or DOJ will wish to prosecute it. If the AG or DOJ
| haven't made their position clear, you should be able to ask,
| and they will give a clear answer.
|
| That is an extremely basic rule of civilized governance. You
| can't wordplay around it.
|
| This is not the entire legal system, but it is a critical
| part of it.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| This is pretty inaccurate. Absent actual laws that people are
| aware of, you described rule of man, the opposing governance
| form.
|
| Rule of laws means there are known laws everyone has to
| follow no matter who they are.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
| nradov wrote:
| No, that's not how it's supposed to work. Laws are supposed
| to comply with the vagueness doctrine.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vagueness_doctrine
| hereweareagain wrote:
| That's not at all how the judicial system works. Do you know
| what legal precedent means? Many things are uncertain legality
| until tested in a court of law.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| No, whether the AG is has the _correct_ interpretation of the
| law is tested in court.
|
| The AG's _stance_ on whether an action is a crime, and their
| policy towards prosecution, does not need to be tested in
| court. That is something they can communicate without
| litigation.
| monocasa wrote:
| That sounds like what they're doing. This whole thing is
| about the AG writing two legal advisories, not explicitly
| beginning the litigation process.
| htk wrote:
| What is being argued in the article that AI Companies could be
| doing illegally:
|
| -Using AI to "foster or advance deception."
|
| -Falsely advertising "the accuracy, quality, or utility of AI
| systems."
|
| -Create or sell an AI system or product that has "an adverse or
| disproportionate impact on members of a protected class, or
| create, reinforce, or perpetuate discrimination or segregation of
| members of a protected class."
| hermannj314 wrote:
| What kind of standard is disproportionate impact?
|
| Do not build an AI system that discovers the best way to target
| men to get a prostate exam, or the elderly to enroll in a
| program that may benefit them?
|
| I understand "adverse", but disproportionate implies don't even
| try to help classes of people. AT ALL!
| foxyv wrote:
| What they are talking about is using AI as a proxy for
| racial, gender, and age discrimination. For instance, if you
| use AI for an adverse decision regarding employment, housing,
| education, or financial decisions you need to justify those
| decisions against persons from a protected class.
|
| If you cannot explain why you have made such decisions, then
| the state will look at disproportionate impact. EG: You
| hired/lent to/rented to black people 25% less often than you
| did to white people. "Because the AI said so." doesn't cut
| it.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Your argument makes it sound like the statement says
| "adverse and disproportionate". I'm seeing that it says OR,
| meaning you don't have to do anything adverse.
|
| I don't like when laws are worded such that we told we
| shouldn't care what the words say, we all know what we
| meant, this is a law for getting the bad guys, so don't
| worry about the actual words we use. You shouldn't need a
| law degree to know what OR means.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Don't make the mistake of confusing colloquial language
| with legal text. They _do_ need a law degree, or at least
| knowledge of the precedent that precisely defined the
| term. Precisely defining them is half the battle.
|
| "Adverse or disproportionate impact" is a well litigated
| phrase. It has a specific meaning in law, which is not
| immediately obvious from a layman's definition.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Legal writing brings in a lot of context. In this case
| the disproportionate is meant to denote situations where
| the action itself isn't adverse, e.g., giving someone
| money, but that its not applied evenly. Whereas adverse
| is an intended negative consequence. Its trying to say
| both are problematic. Although, I understand your
| interpretation -- its just not what's meant in this case.
| Unfortunately even arguably our most important legal
| document, the Constitution, isn't nearly as clear as it
| could be.
| foxyv wrote:
| Typically wording will either be defined in the law, or
| decided by case law. Legislatures will usually include
| very long sections on definitions to try and reduce the
| amount of judicial leeway.
|
| For instance, in Texas motor vehicle code regarding
| driving under the influence, there is a definition for
| "Motor Vehicle." While colloquially a person would assume
| that such a vehicle should have a motor, the definition
| actually states:
|
| > "Motor vehicle" means a device in, on, or by which a
| person or property is or may be transported or drawn on a
| highway, except a device used exclusively on stationary
| rails or tracks.
|
| When it comes to laws, you have to read the entire law
| (including definitions) and not just rely on your own
| understanding of the terms within. Then it gets even more
| complicated when it comes to so called "Case Law." This
| is why companies have entire sections of lawyers to
| inform their managers on compliance.
| hellojesus wrote:
| I interviewed for a consulting role circa 2019 where the
| company audited models of finanical companies that used
| their models to make lending decisions.
|
| A large portion of the interview touched statistical
| inference as it related to ML, specifically how it related
| to simple neural nets up to deep learning vs classical
| modeling. The answer I gave aligned with their
| expectations, which was that models used in lending should
| not be black box and should be able to quantify which
| features led to the prediction/output and how much weight
| they contributed. This was specifically done to address
| potential discrimination lawsuits.
|
| I have a hard time believing any company that rents, lends,
| etc. would employ a black box for decisioning. Both private
| and public lawyers would sue them into oblivion
| immediately.
| slt2021 wrote:
| there is an entire specialty of Model Risk Management,
| banks have entire departments that oversee models used
| for decision making and ensure compliance with fair
| lending laws and other laws
|
| https://www.occ.treas.gov/publications-and-
| resources/publica...
| uoaei wrote:
| One prominent counterexample is that made famous after
| the UnitedHealthcare CEO was shot and killed, that they
| employed a decision-making algorithm that apparently
| rejected 90% of claims with no audit trail or real
| justification besides cost estimates.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is an unsubstantiated (so far) claim by plaintiffs
| in an active lawsuit. I would not consider it data for
| any example yet.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/25/health-
| insur...
| Terr_ wrote:
| > What they are talking about is using AI as a proxy for
| racial, gender, and age discrimination.
|
| See also: "It's not a crime if you do it with an app" [/s]
| - https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I do work in recruiting. If you let AI making hiring
| decisions for you, you are an idiot. All it takes is one
| disgruntled applicant to complain about discrimination in
| your hiring process to cause you a world of pain. You need
| to be capable of owning your hiring decisions, meaning you
| can't just point to the AI and say "it told me not to hire
| this person". You won't be able to avoid liability when it
| turns out your AI is biased against some protected class.
| foxyv wrote:
| I think the place people get into the most trouble with
| hiring is when they use AI to filter applications. It's
| one thing to filter based on a specific criteria like
| education or experience, but to go by "AI didn't like the
| look of this resume" is something else.
| balls187 wrote:
| What AI systems are currently targeting my prostate?
|
| This space is primarily dominated by AI that replaces mundane
| work done by humans.
| nrfulton wrote:
| The AG's advisory is essentially a memo from the AG
| explaining how the AG thinks existing statute applies to a
| new technology. It's not new legislation or new case law, but
| it is worth paying attention to for various reasons.
|
| The section of the advisory referencing disproportionate
| impact is quoting, nearly word for word, a portion of Cal.
| Code Regs. Tit. 2, SS 14027.
|
| So, this section of the advisory essentially amounts to the
| AG saying "using AI to do something illegal is still
| illegal".
|
| That does not really answer your question, though.
|
| _> What kind of standard is disproportionate impact?..._
|
| The kind that does has been codified in CA and other
| jurisdictions' statutes for a long while now. This means that
| the standard is extremely well-litigated in the state's
| courts, and so the answer to "what is disproportionate
| impact?" is, I think, something like:
|
| "That seems complicated; there's probably a rich case law
| that provides clarity in some situations but also highlights
| areas of ambiguity in other situations. If you're in it for
| profit, and have any questions, get a lawyer who specializes
| in that area of the law to review your specific circumstance;
| if you're in it for civics/curiosity, start with the statute
| then start reading significant case law or law reviews
| regarding that statute."
|
| It's also the kind of standard that can attract flame wars...
| hopefully not here, though ;-)
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| For the last point this made me think squarely at chatbots. I
| had a chatbox experience recently that could have been handled
| with a cancel order button on a website. I had to go through a
| phone tree with the chatbot, say "no" 3 times until it let me
| type a free response. Said I wanted to cancel an order. "Did
| you mean cancel order?" Yes. Yes I did. What should have been a
| 2 second interaction with a ui element became a 5 minute song
| and dance. And I am a reasonably competent person on a
| computer. For someone who isn't maybe this is enough to make
| them turn away from whatever action they were attempting to do
| in frustration. That is a big impact. And depending on where
| these chatbots have been shoehorned in, that impact could
| easily be disproportionately burdened on a protected class.
| csa wrote:
| > I had to go through a phone tree with the chatbot, say "no"
| 3 times until it let me type a free response.
|
| I'm not excusing this design (it could probably be improved),
| but it may have been intentional.
|
| See below.
|
| > And I am a reasonably competent person on a computer.
|
| Most people are not. It's generally unwise to design an
| automated system that assumes computer/tech competence.
|
| > For someone who isn't maybe this is enough to make them
| turn away from whatever action they were attempting to do in
| frustration.
|
| I imagine it's the other way around. This type of system
| saves folks with less tech savvy from themselves.
|
| I'm not sure if you've designed systems like this before. I
| have, and I was very surprised at what people thought was
| reasonable interaction and/or reasonable input.
|
| Confirming choices, perhaps multiple times, before moving
| forward can save a lot of headache later for everyone
| involved. The collateral damage is guaranteed "wasted" time
| for everyone using the chatbot, but the company largely
| doesn't care about that -- that is, they are more than
| willing to pass on the cost of their money (e.g., if they
| hired a human agent) for your time.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| So, once again, everything is securities fraud?
| Animats wrote:
| - "Foster or advance deception" - definitely happening. Many
| (maybe most on some platforms) posts on social media are being
| generated by LLM-type AI systems. The question of whether a
| power tool for crime is aiding and abetting a crime is a tough
| one. The gun industry beat that. It has a lot to do with how
| the product is promoted.
|
| - "Falsely advertising the accuracy, quality, or utility of AI
| systems" - worst case is probably Tesla's Fake Self Driving.
| Most other LLM systems aren't allowed to make decisions, just
| blither.
|
| - "Create or sell an AI system or product that has an adverse
| or disproportionate impact on members of a protected class, or
| create, reinforce, or perpetuate discrimination or segregation
| of members of a protected class." - hm. Need more instances.
| Now, using computer systems to create a cartel to violate
| antitrust laws and push prices up is a thing. There's
| litigation against landlords for that. But that's not a
| "protected class" thing, it's an antitrust thing.
| lawlessone wrote:
| not to seem pedantic but the self driving system isn't an
| LLM, it's probably using an artificial neural network for
| some aspects like object recognition (and would have similar
| issues like need large amounts of data) , but the similarity
| ends there.
| lerp-io wrote:
| the cat is of the bag, there is no point in trying to fight it at
| this point if data is accessible. models will be built on top of
| models and will become cheaper to train. in fact, u can fight
| these battles now only bc they are big companies and training is
| expensive. if training/inference improves and becomes more at the
| edge in the hands of users, nobody will stop anyone else from
| consuming whatever data they want (raw data, other models,
| whatever) into their own models just like we consume whatever
| data we hav access to and build our own mental models. all you
| can do is simply not share your data.
| nohat00 wrote:
| there seems to be an error in the headline - Cali is a city in
| Colombia, but the article is about California?
| teqsun wrote:
| HN's title character limit is 80 (and the title is exactly 80
| characters), so it was abbreviated to fit.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| CA would have made more sense as its an actual acronym.
| lysace wrote:
| That's a bit US-centric.
| quesera wrote:
| CA isn't an acronym, it's a postal abbreviation.
|
| Internationally, it conflicts with Canada.
| riffic wrote:
| It was abbreviated incorrectly and it is ambiguous or even
| misleading in its current form.
|
| > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is
| _misleading_..
| quesera wrote:
| I would vote for:
|
| "California AG to AI Corps: Practically Everything You're
| Doing Might Be Illegal"
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The last thing we need is for California to keep adding more
| regulations, as CA's incredibly bloated government has for a
| couple decades, and irresponsibly killing American prospects in
| the race for technology superiority. Rob Bonta is already a bad
| AG for his repeated blatant violation of constitutional rights.
| If this headline is truly his stance, he needs to go, and
| immediately. We have no time as a nation to tolerate people like
| him at this critical time.
| myheartisinohio wrote:
| Wow, now that's what I call lawfare! Vol. 23
| ecshafer wrote:
| > Use AI to foster or advance deception. For example, the
| creation of deepfakes, chatbots, and voice clones that appear to
| represent people, events, and utterances that never existed or
| occurred would likely be deceptive.4
|
| > Likewise, in many contexts it would likely be deceptive to fail
| to disclose that AI has been used to create a piece of media.
|
| Under this logic a company making pencils is illegal.
| Rygian wrote:
| Could you please develop your idea? I don't see the link
| between pencils and deepfakes.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I can write a letter for propaganda purposes already. I can
| draw a picture of someone and say "This is the president
| doing a nefarious act!". They are confusing a tool possibly
| being used for a purpose as making the tool illegal and not
| the purpose. If writing propaganda via AI makes AI illegal,
| then we should ban pencils since they can be used for write
| propaganda. Pencils can be used to forge documents, but again
| they are legal.
| ADeerAppeared wrote:
| Firstly, do note that the original text is talking about
| _use_ of AI, this one line doesn 't seem to be about
| _banning AI_ so much as _banning a use_.
|
| Secondly:
|
| The implied basis here is that AI isn't just a product,
| it's also a service. This isn't you buying a pencil, it's
| you commissioning the drawing. Most of these products are
| cloud based SaaS.
|
| And there's also the matter that "it's just a tool" doesn't
| really apply to foreseeable problems. If a suspicious
| person shows up out of nowhere buying large quantities of
| fertilizer, you don't get to go "Well he could be using
| that fertilizer for anything, not my problem". (This is
| relevant to AI as pretty much all AI services already have
| heavy restrictions on their output, this isn't a bunch of
| researchers publishing a paper and having bad actors
| implement their own AI based on that. We have companies
| openly advertising deepfake services.)
| pj_mukh wrote:
| You can create all kinds of nefarious artworks that are
| hurtful to protected classes using a pencil, or adobe
| creative suite or what have you. Doesn't mean those things
| are illegal.
|
| Charge the creator not the tool. This seemed immediately
| obvious to me, but apparently not to most layman (including
| the California AG, apparently).
| paxys wrote:
| Do you have a magic pencil that can do all this without
| human involvement?
| pj_mukh wrote:
| We're splitting hairs here. Open up the ChatGPT window
| and have it do something nefarious without you touching
| the keyboard. Then these AG actions would make sense.
| paxys wrote:
| It's not splitting hairs at all. If I ask you to do
| something illegal and you do it, who do you think is
| liable?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Does it matter? A few years ago I had the same concern,
| but it's been easy for a while now to create
| photorealistic fakes of anything you'd like, and in
| practice it doesn't seem to have been more convincing
| than any other form of lying. There are of course a
| couple specific areas where the mere existence of a
| picture matters even if people know it's fake (see e.g.
| https://www.edweek.org/leadership/students-are-sharing-
| sexua...).
| II2II wrote:
| I am guessing their point is that pencils can be used to
| create deceptive content.
|
| Beyond that, I don't see any similarity. In a pencil, all of
| the "intelligence" is offloaded onto the user. With AI, the
| company providing the service is playing a more substantial
| role.
| beefnugs wrote:
| All governments now think that if data is streaming through
| you as a company (anything cloud) then you have the LEGAL
| REQUIREMENT to execute all their arbitrary censorship for
| them.
|
| AI is a brand new frontier where they can even pre-program
| their arbitrary censorship into things you download too! For
| as much offline censorship as possible too. Wow innovation
|
| We have to do peer to peer, and avoid cloud anywhere and
| everything like we were asleep for 10 years
| henryfjordan wrote:
| If these companies were just putting their models up as Open
| Source, then your "pencil manufacturer" argument might make
| sense.
|
| But in reality where AI operates the models as well, the
| analogy is more like "Give me a rough idea and we'll use our
| pencils to write your letters for you!".
| anigbrowl wrote:
| What a bullshit argument. Please don't post bait on HN.
|
| Why it's bullshit: the pencil will not help you create an
| image. It's literally just a carrier for a medium, graphite. AI
| will create a high quality image in response to a textual
| prompt, even if the operator has trouble drawing a triangle.
| It's good enough to fool some people into thinking that images
| could be real photographs.
|
| I'm sure you understand this just fine. It's very disrespectful
| to come in here wasting people's times with such specious
| arguments.
| riffic wrote:
| the original title uses "California", not "Cali".
| kachapopopow wrote:
| If the US doesn't do it, China will and this argument has nothing
| to do with deepseek although it does prove the point.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| "China does it" is not an argument for allowing things which
| are unethical.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| There's levels to that, it's not an argument that can be
| dismissed that easily.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Can Cali's AG copy this letter to DeepSeek, lol?
| tolerance wrote:
| This smells like a proxy maneuver against Big Tech for their
| posturing toward the Trump Administration.
| intalentive wrote:
| Thomas Sowell definitively disproved the idea that disparate
| outcomes are _ipso facto_ proof of discrimination. It 's past
| time this line of jurisprudence was put to bed.
| advisedwang wrote:
| I assume you are referring to this section:
|
| > Create or sell an AI system or product that has "an adverse
| or disproportionate impact on members of a protected class, or
| create, reinforce, or perpetuate discrimination or segregation
| of members of a protected class."
|
| It's a straw man to characterize that as saying disparate
| outcomes ALONE are why AI systems might be discriminatory. They
| may well can be, and likely are, actually embedding biases in
| the models.
|
| The simple examples of how many systems often prefer "he" for
| doctors and "her" for nurses shows that bias in datasets
| results in bias in the models. Yes, that is a result of the
| dataset and reflects the dataset (and maybe even real world
| statistics on doctors and nurses!) but it does mean the system
| may treat women and men differently when there is no legal
| justification to do so.
| intalentive wrote:
| I reject the notion that legal justification is necessary.
| Your LLM prefers "he" for doctors and "her" for nurses, and
| therefore you can be prosecuted by the state? That's
| ridiculous.
|
| All such Harrison Bergeron-style speech-policing is
| antithetical to a free society.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| People fundamentally misunderstand how "AI's" work. They merely
| regurgitate statistically what is fed to them, and that includes
| vast corpus of data, and they are a black box. Hence of course
| they will disseminate false and misleading information.
|
| They don't actually have "intelligence" or agency. There's also
| not much we can do about the hallucination problem.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| So much like people then.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| > here's also not much we can do about the hallucination
| problem.
|
| Call them what they are: errors.
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