[HN Gopher] Tech Titans Amass Multimillion-Dollar War Chests to ...
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Tech Titans Amass Multimillion-Dollar War Chests to Fight AI
Regulation
https://archive.is/j1XTl
Author : thm
Score : 182 points
Date : 2025-11-28 09:21 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| conartist6 wrote:
| God forbid we protect people from the theft machine
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| There's a lot of problems with AI that need some carefully
| thought out regulation, but infringing on rights granted by IP
| law still isn't theft.
| jasonsb wrote:
| Agreed. Regulate AI? Sure, though I have zero faith
| politicians will do it competently. But more IP protection?
| Hard pass. I'd rather abolish patents.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I think one of the key issues is that most of these
| discussions are happening at too high of an abstraction
| level. Could you give some specific examples of AI
| regulations that you think would be good? If we actually
| start elevating and refining key talking points that define
| the direction in which we want things to go, they will
| actually have a chance to spread.
|
| Speaking of IP, I'd like to see some major copyright
| reform. Maybe bring down the duration to the original 14
| years, and expand fair use. When copyright lasts so long,
| one of the key components for cultural evolution and
| iteration is severely hampered and slowed down. The rate at
| which culture evolves is going to continue accelerating,
| and we need our laws to catch up and adapt.
| jasonsb wrote:
| > Could you give some specific examples of AI regulations
| that you think would be good?
|
| Sure, I can give you some examples:
|
| - deceiving someone into thinking they're talking to a
| human should be a felony (prison time, no exceptions for
| corporations)
|
| - ban government/law-enforcement use of AI for
| surveillance, predictive policing or automated sentencing
|
| - no closed-source AI allowed in any public institution
| (schools, hospitals, courts...)
|
| - no selling or renting paid AI products to anyone under
| 16 (free tools only)
| j16sdiz wrote:
| > - deceiving someone into thinking they're talking to a
| human
|
| This is gonna be as enforceable as the CANSPAM act. (i.e.
| you will get a few big cases, but it's nothing compared
| to the overall situation)
|
| How do you proof it in court? Do we need to record all
| private conversations?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| If you think spam is bad now imagine if trillion dollar
| corporations could do it. Just because something isn't
| perfect doesn't mean it doesn't help.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I like where you're going. How about we just ban closed
| source software of any kind from public institutions?
| patrick451 wrote:
| > Could you give some specific examples of AI regulations
| that you think would be good?
|
| AI companies need to be held liable for the outputs of
| their models. Giving bad medical advice, buggy code etc
| should be something they can be sued for.
| faidit wrote:
| It's theft. But not all IP theft, or theft in general, is
| morally equivalent. A poor person stealing a loaf of bread or
| pirating a movie they couldn't afford is just. A corrupt
| elite stealing poor farmers' food or stealing content from
| small struggling creators is not.
| jasonsb wrote:
| Ask yourself: who owns the IP you're defending? It's not
| struggling artists, it's corporations and billionaires.
|
| Stricter IP laws won't slow down closed-source models with
| armies of lawyers. They'll just kill open-source
| alternatives.
| faidit wrote:
| I never advocated "stricter IP laws". I would however
| point out the contradiction between current IP laws being
| enforced against kids using BitTorrent while unenforced
| against billionaires and their AI ventures, despite them
| committing IP theft on a far grander scale.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Under copyright laws, if HN's T's & C's didn't override
| it, anything I write and have written on HN is _my_ IP.
| And the AI data hoarders used it to train their stuff.
| jasonsb wrote:
| Let's meet in the middle: only allow AI data hoarders to
| train their stuff on your content if the model is open
| source. I can stand behind that.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Uh no.
|
| a) The model and the data
|
| b) Why are we meeting in the middle?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Calling a HN comment "intellectual property" is like
| calling a table saw in your garage "capital". There are
| specific regulatory contexts where it might be somewhat
| accurate, but it's so different from the normal case that
| none of our normal intuitions about it apply.
|
| For example, copyright makes it illegal to take an entire
| book and republish it with minor tweaks. But for
| something short like an HN comment this doesn't apply;
| copyright always permits you to copy someone's _ideas_ ,
| even when that requires using many of the same words.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| People seem to either intentionally or unintentionally
| (large from being taught by the intentional ones), to not
| know what training an AI involves.
|
| I think most people think that AI training means copying
| vast troves of data onto ChatGPT hard drives for the
| model to actively reference.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| How do you expect open source alternatives to exist when
| they cannot enforce how you use their IP? Open source
| licenses exist and are enforced under IP law. This is
| part of the reason why AI companies have been pushing
| hard for IP reform because they to decimate IP laws for
| thee but not for me.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| When you steal a loaf of bread, somebody's loaf of bread is
| missing. That's worlds apart from making an unauthorized
| copy of something.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >pirating a movie they couldn't afford is just
|
| I wish this argument would die. It's so comically false,
| and is just used to allow people to pave over their
| cognitive dissonance with the real misfortunes of a small
| minority.
|
| I am a millennial and rode the wave of piracy as much as
| the next 2006 computer nerd. It was never, ever, about not
| being able to afford these things, and always about how
| much you could get for free. For every one person who
| genuinely couldn't afford a movie, there were at least 1000
| who just wanted it free.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Speak for yourself. For many more it's about being
| unwilling to support the development of tech that strips
| users of their ability to control the devices that they
| ostensibly own.
|
| I happily pay for my media when there's a way to do so,
| without simultaneously supporting the emplacement of
| telescreens everywhere you look.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > For every one person who genuinely couldn't afford a
| movie, there were at least 1000 who just wanted it free.
|
| You have this backwards. There are way more poor people
| who can't afford things than there are people who can
| afford whatever they want
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Genuinely cannot afford is different than can't afford.
|
| Genuinely cannot afford means you don't have the $15 to
| buy the movie after paying for necessities.
|
| Cannot afford tends to mean "I bought a 72" OLED last
| week so no way I'm spending another $1400 on a movie
| collection".
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| How many people can afford to pay cash for a 72" OLED?
|
| If you have to use credit to "afford" such things, then
| you can't actually afford them
| terminalshort wrote:
| And it doesn't even infringe on IP rights.
| dartharva wrote:
| How do you "protect" people from software?
| dist-epoch wrote:
| But are they really the ones in control?
|
| It's not the tech titans, it's Capitalism itself building the war
| chest to ensure it's embodiment and transfer into its next host -
| machines.
|
| We are just it's temporary vehicles.
|
| > "This is because what appears to humanity as the history of
| capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial
| intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its
| enemy's resources."
| faidit wrote:
| Yes, these decisions are being made by flesh-and-blood humans
| at the top of a social pyramid. Nick Land's deranged (and often
| racist) word-salad sci-fi fantasies tend to obfuscate that. If
| robots turn on their creators and wipe out humanity then
| whatever remains wouldn't be a class society or a market
| economy of humans any more, hence no longer the social system
| known as capitalism by any common definition.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| If there is more than one AI remaining, they will have some
| sort of an economy between them.
| faidit wrote:
| I mean, that could be drone swarms blasting each other to
| bits for control of what remains of the earth's charred
| surface though. That wouldn't be capitalism any more than
| dinosaurs eating each other. I don't see post-human AI
| selling goods to consumers and prices being set through
| competition.
| jrflowers wrote:
| >We are just it's temporary vehicles.
|
| > "This is because what appears to humanity as the history of
| capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial
| intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its
| enemy's resources."
|
| I see your "roko's basilisk is real" and counter with
| "slenderman locked it in the backrooms and it got sucked up by
| goatse" in this creepypasta-is-real conversation
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I for one welcome our new AI overlords.
|
| (disclaimer: I don't actually, I'm just memeing. I don't
| think we'll get AI overlords unless someone actively puts AI
| in charge and in control of both people (= people following
| directions from AI, which already happens, e.g. ChatGPT
| making suggestions), military hardware, and the entire chain
| of command in between.)
| jrflowers wrote:
| Literally no one on earth is trying to make an AI overlord
| that's an AI. There's like a handful of dudes that think
| that if they can shove their stupid AI into enough shit
| then they can call themselves AI overlords.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Archive: https://archive.is/j1XTl
|
| I cannot help but feel that discussing this topic under the
| blanket term "AI Regulation" is a bit deceptive. I've noticed
| that whenever this topic comes up, almost every major figure
| remains rather vague on the details. Who are some influential
| figures actually advancing clearly defined regulations or key
| ideas for approaching how we should think about AI regulation?
|
| What we should be doing is surfacing well defined points
| regarding AI regulation and discussing them, instead of fighting
| proxy wars for opaque groups with infinite money. It feels like
| we're at the point where nobody is even pretending like people's
| opinions on this topic are relevant, it's just a matter of
| pumping enough money and flooding the zone.
|
| Personally, I still remain very uncertain about the topic; I
| don't have well-defined or clearly actionable ideas. But I'd love
| to hear what regulations or mental models other HN readers are
| using to navigate and think about this topic. Sam Altman and Elon
| Musk have both mentioned vague ideas of how AI is somehow going
| to magically result in UBI and a magical communist utopia, but
| nobody has ever pressed them for details. If they really believe
| this then they could make some more significant legally binding
| commitments, right? Notice how nobody ever asks: who is going to
| own the models, robots, and data centers in this UBI paradise? It
| feels a lot like Underpants Gnomes: (1) Build AGI, (2) ???, (3)
| Communist Utopia and UBI.
| jasonsb wrote:
| > I cannot help but feel that discussing this topic under the
| blanket term "AI Regulation" is a bit deceptive. I've noticed
| that whenever this topic comes up, almost every major figure
| remains rather vague on the details. Who are some influential
| figures actually advancing clearly defined regulations or key
| ideas for approaching how we should think about AI regulation?
|
| There's a vocal minority calling for AI regulation, but what
| they actually want often strikes me as misguided:
|
| "Stop AI from taking our jobs" - This shouldn't be solved
| through regulation. It's on politicians to help people adapt to
| a new economic reality, not to artificially preserve bullshit
| jobs.
|
| "Stop the IP theft" - This feels like a cause pushed primarily
| by the 1%. Let's be realistic: 99% of people don't own patents
| and have little stake in strengthening IP protections.
| piva00 wrote:
| > "Stop the IP theft" - This feels like a cause pushed
| primarily by the 1%. Let's be realistic: 99% of people don't
| own patents and have little stake in strengthening IP
| protections.
|
| Artists are not primarily in the 1% though, it's not only
| patents that are IP theft.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Do the artists that are not in the 1% actually benefit from
| IP or does it hinder them from building new art based on
| other art? It seem to me that IP only benefits the top
| players.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Photographers massively benefit from IP protection.
| piva00 wrote:
| Can you give me an example of the situation you are
| picturing?
|
| Simply because I can't see what you mean by artists being
| hindered by IP, artists try to create original work, and
| derivative work from other IP is usually re-interpreted
| enough to fall under fair use. I can't picture a
| situation where artists could be hindered on their
| creations due to IP owned by others.
| justincormack wrote:
| Sampling in music is now paid for, it used to be free, as
| one example.
| piva00 wrote:
| Sampling is still done, I'm a hobbyist music producer,
| and friends with many professionals. They have to clear
| the samples and pay royalties, and they get royalties
| from sampled tracks.
|
| It's more cumbersome while being fairer, it hasn't
| stopped at all the practice. As a hobbyist I do it all
| the time while my professional friends clear their
| samples before earning money on their tracks.
| mh- wrote:
| Agreed. There are some pretty cool platforms in the last
| 5 years to streamline this process, too.
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| IP law gives young or up-and-coming artists leverage in
| negotiations.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's less about who is right and more about economic
| interests and lobbying power. There's a vocal minority that
| is just dead set against AI using all sorts of arguments
| related to religion, morality, fears about mass unemployment,
| all sorts of doom scenarios, etc. However, this is a minority
| with not a lot of lobbying power ultimately. And the louder
| they are and the less of this stuff actually materializes the
| easier it becomes to dismiss a lot of the arguments. Despite
| the loudness of the debate, the consensus is nowhere near as
| broad on this as it may seem to some.
|
| And the quality of the debate remains very low as well. Most
| people barely understand the issues. And that includes many
| journalists that are still getting hung up on the whole
| "hallucinations can be funny" thing mostly. There are a lot
| of confused people spouting nonsense on this topic.
|
| There are special interest groups with lobbying powers. Media
| companies with intellectual properties, actors worried about
| being impersonated, etc. Those have some ability to lobby for
| changes. And then you have the wider public that isn't that
| well informed and has sort of caught on to the notion that
| chat gpt is now definitely a thing that is sometimes mildly
| useful.
|
| And there are the AI companies that are definitely very well
| funded and have an enormous amount of lobbying power. They
| can move whole economies with their spending so they are
| getting relatively little push back from politicians.
| Political Washington and California run on obscene amounts of
| lobbying money. And the AI companies can provide a lot of
| that.
| glitchc wrote:
| A vocal minority led to the French Revolution, the
| Bolshevik Revolution, the Nazi party and the modern climate
| change movement. Vocal minorities can be powerful.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| > "Stop AI from taking our jobs" - This shouldn't be solved
| through regulation. It's on politicians to help people adapt
| to a new economic reality, not to artificially preserve
| bullshit jobs.
|
| This is a really good point. If a country tries to "protect"
| jobs by blocking AI, it only puts itself at a disadvantage.
| Other countries that don't pass those restrictions will
| produce goods and services more efficiently and at lower
| cost, and they'll outcompete you anyway. So even with
| regulations the jobs aren't actually saved.
|
| The real solution is for people to upskill and learn new
| abilities so they can thrive in the new economic reality. But
| it's hard to convince people that they need to change instead
| of expecting the world around them to stay the same.
| plastic-enjoyer wrote:
| > The real solution is for people to upskill and learn new
| abilities so they can thrive in the new economic reality.
| But it's hard to convince people that they need to change
| instead of expecting the world around them to stay the
| same.
|
| But why do I have to? Why should your life be dictated by
| the market and corporations that are pushing these changes?
| Why do I have to be afraid that my livelihood is at risk
| because I don't want to adapt to the ever faster changing
| market? The goal of automation and AI should be to reduce
| or even eliminate the need for us to work, and not the
| further reduction of people to their economic value.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Because the world, sadly, doesn't revolve around just 1
| individual. We are a society where other individuals have
| different goals and needs and when those are met by the
| development of a new product offering it shifts how
| people act and where they spend their money. If enough
| people shift then it affects jobs.
| plastic-enjoyer wrote:
| > If enough people shift then it affects jobs.
|
| Yes, but again, the goal of automatization should be to
| reduce the need for people having jobs to secure their
| livelihood and enable a dignified life. However, what we
| are seeing in the Western Hemisphere is that per capita
| productivity is rising while the middle class is eroding
| and capital is accumulated by a select few in obscene
| amounts. 'Upskilling' does not happen out of personal
| motivation, but rather to meet the demands of the market
| so that one does not live in poverty. The idea of
| 'upskilling' to serve the market is also absurd because,
| in times of ever-accelerating technological development,
| there is no guarantee that the skills you learn today
| will still be relevant tomorrow. Yesterday it was "learn
| to code" but now many people who followed this mantra
| find themselves in precarious situations because they
| cannot find a job or are forced into the gig economy. So
| what do you do with people who couldn't foresee the
| future, or who are simply too old for the market?
| bawolff wrote:
| > But why do I have to?
|
| Because you enjoy eating? Whatever you think society
| should be, the fact is we live in one where you have to
| exchange labour for money. What ought to be and what is,
| are unrelated to each other.
|
| Its interesting how we feel this way about white collar
| jobs, but when a coal mine closes nobody cares.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| This presupposes the existence of said jobs, which is a
| whopper of an assumption that conveniently shifts blame
| onto the most vulnerable. Of course, that's probably the
| point.
|
| This will work even worse than "if everyone goes to
| college, good jobs will appear for everyone."
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| The good (or bad) thing about humans is they always want
| more than what they have. AI seems like a nice tool that
| may solve some problems for people but, in the very near
| future, customers will demand more than what AI can do
| and companies will need to hire people who can deliver
| more until those jobs, eventually like all jobs, are
| automated away. We see this happen every 50 years or so
| in society. Just have a conversation with people your
| grandparent's age and you'll see they've gone through the
| same thing several times.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| The last 50 years in the USA (and elsewhere) have been an
| absolute disaster for labor: the economy as a whole grew,
| the capital share grew even more, and the labor share
| shrank (unless you use a deflator rigged to show the
| opposite, but a rigged deflator can't hide the ratios).
| This contrasts to the 50 years prior, where we largely
| grew and fell together, proving that K shaped economies
| are a policy choice, not an inevitability.
|
| A Roosevelt economy can still work for most people when
| the "job creators" stop creating jobs. A Reagan economy
| cannot.
| sofixa wrote:
| > If a country tries to "protect" jobs by blocking AI, it
| only puts itself at a disadvantage
|
| Regulating AI doesn't mean blocking it. The EU AI Act
| regulates AI without blocking it, just imposing
| restrictions on data usage and decision making (if it's
| making life or death decisions, you have to be able to
| reliably explain how and why it makes those decisions, and
| it needs to be deterministic - no UnitedHealthcare bullshit
| hiding behind an "algorithm" refusing healthcare)
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > The real solution is for people to upskill and learn new
| abilities
|
| AI is being touted as extremely intelligent and, thus,
| capable of taking over almost any white collar job. What
| would I upskill to?
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| The jobs that would exist if only we gave the "job
| creators" just one more tax cut, I'm sure.
| flag_fagger wrote:
| Upskill? No, that's not the point. You'll be down leveled
| (potentially several levels) economically and held there.
|
| Consider some poorly paid servant work. It will be sold
| to you as "noble work" or something along the lines to
| entice/slander you.
| bawolff wrote:
| > AI is being touted as extremely intelligent and, thus,
| capable of taking over almost any white collar job.
|
| The marketing buzz is not the same thing as reality.
| Upskill to something AI is bad at. There is plenty to
| chose from in the present.
| ulfw wrote:
| "Stop AI from taking our jobs" - This shouldn't be solved
| through regulation. It's on politicians to help people adapt
| to a new economic reality, not to artificially preserve
| bullshit jobs.
|
| So politicians are supposed to create "non bullshit" jobs out
| of thin air?
|
| The job you've done for decades is suddenly bullshit because
| some shit LLM is hallucinating nice sounding words?
| piva00 wrote:
| They do create bullshit jobs in finance by propping up the
| system when it's about to collapse from the consequences of
| their own actions though.
|
| Not that I believe they should allow the financial system
| to collapse without intervention but the interventions
| during recent crises have been done to save corporations
| that should have been extinguished instead of the common
| people who were affected by their consequences.
|
| Which I believe is what's lacking in the whole discussion,
| politicians shouldn't be trying to maintain the labour
| status quo if/when AI change the landscape because that
| would be a distortion of reality but there needs to be some
| off-ramp, and direct help for people who will suffer from
| the change in landscape without going through the bullshit
| of helping companies in the hopes they eventually help
| people. As many in HN say, companies are not charities, if
| they can make an extra buck by fucking someone they will do
| it, the government is supposed to be helping people as a
| collective.
| terminalshort wrote:
| At this point if an LLM can do your job, it was already
| bullshit. But in the future when they can do non bullshit
| jobs, then you can go get another one just like every other
| person out of the billions who has had their job made
| obsolete by technology. It's not that hard.
| agentultra wrote:
| > But in the future when they can do non bullshit jobs,
| then you can go get another one just like every other
| person out of the billions who has had their job made
| obsolete by technology. It's not that hard.
|
| This was the argument made by the capitalists after they
| had jailed and murdered most of the people in the Luddite
| movement before there was employment regulation.
|
| They ignored what the Luddites were protesting for and
| suggested it was about people who just didn't understand
| how the new industrial economy worked. Don't they know
| that they can get jobs elsewhere and we, as a society,
| can be more productive for it?
|
| The problem is that this was tone deaf. There were no
| labor regulations yet and the Luddites were smashing
| looms as that form of violence was the only leverage they
| had to ask for: elimination of child labor, social
| support that wasn't just government workhouses (ie:
| indentured servitude), and labor laws that protected
| workers. These people weren't asking everyone to make
| cloth by hand forever because they liked making cloth by
| hand and thought it should stay that way.
|
| In modern times I think what many people are concerned
| about with companies getting hot for throwing labor out
| into the streets when it's not profitable for them
| anymore is that there are once more a lack of social
| supports in place to make sure those people's basic needs
| are met.
|
| ... and that's just one of the economic and social
| impacts of this technology.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's even simple than that, IMHO. Yes, there are always
| new jobs to replace one you've lost to automation. But
| no, those new jobs _are not for you, and not for your
| children_. Someone else will be doing them - you will be
| dealing with the fallout of having your life upended,
| suddenly facing deep poverty.
|
| You can re-skill - but you'll be competing for starter
| positions _and starter salary_ with people who 're just
| entering the workforce, much younger than you, with no
| dependents or health issues.
|
| The technology may have benefited everyone in the long
| run, but in immediate terms, sudden shifts like these
| ruin lives of people, and destroy futures of their
| descendants.
| LexiMax wrote:
| If large swaths of people lose their jobs to AI, have no
| job prospects due to the presence of AI, and can't afford
| their next meal in the here and now, that is a recipe for
| civil unrest.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| You give way too much credit to the US electorate. Right
| now vast swaths of the country are worshipping a
| billionaire and support policies that are actively
| harming them because the politicians claim to hate the
| same people they hate and/or quote scripture.
| LexiMax wrote:
| Hunger knows no political party.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Seeing the life if people in red states that continue to
| struggle and still vote for politicians that pass
| policies that hurt them, I disagree.
|
| How many farmers right now are suffering between the
| current tariff policies and immigration policies are
| still professing support for Trump? The very people that
| unions and higher minimum wages would help the most are
| opposed to because they support the very people who
| favoring their employers getting rich over them.
|
| If you take solace in "god will provide" as long as you
| give the church 10% of your income, you aren't looking at
| things logically as long as the politicians can quote
| scripture.
| terminalshort wrote:
| If... But most likely it will be like technology
| replacing all the many jobs it has replaced over the last
| 100 years and those people will move into other jobs. If
| it is different this time then it requires a different
| response, but that isn't needed until we know it actually
| is different.
| LexiMax wrote:
| In those past times of technological change, it was
| reasonably obvious where the puck was headed.
|
| However, I feel like that has been changing over the past
| decade or two. I have met countless young people who have
| been willing and able to pick up a new skill to make a
| living. By and large, that has either turned out to be
| going into tech or going into gig work
|
| AI is threatening both of those. It is not obvious to me
| what comes after. Frankly, these days if someone younger
| comes to me asking for career advice, I honestly wouldn't
| know what to tell them.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > This shouldn't be solved through regulation. It's on
| politicians to help people adapt to a new economic reality,
| not to artificially preserve bullshit jobs.
|
| They already do this[1]. Why should there be an exception
| carved out for AI type jobs?
|
| ------------------------------
|
| [1] What do you think tariffs are? Show me a country without
| tariffs and I'll show you a broken economy with widespread
| starvation and misery.
| graemep wrote:
| > Show me a country without tariffs and I'll show you a
| broken economy with widespread starvation and misery.
|
| I think that would be Singapore, as far as import tarrifs
| go? Not much starvation there!
|
| Do you mean taxes? Or excise duties or...?
| flag_fagger wrote:
| How are tariffs supposed to stop domestically produced AI
| from replacing workers?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > How are tariffs supposed to stop domestically produced
| AI from replacing workers?
|
| I didn't say it would.
|
| I said that politicians _already_ artificially preserve
| jobs, and asked, quite legitimately I feel, why should
| they make an exception for AI?
| kace91 wrote:
| >There's a vocal minority calling for AI regulation, but what
| they actually want often strikes me as misguided:
|
| There's a ton other points intersecting with regulation.
| Either directly related by AI, or made significantly more
| relevant by it.
|
| Just from the top of my head:
|
| - information processing: Is there private data AI should
| never be able to learn from? We restrict collection but it
| might be unclear whether model training counts as storage.
|
| - related to the former, what kind of dystopian practices
| should we ban? AI can probably create much deeper profiles
| inferring information from users than our already worrrying
| tech, even without storing sensitive data. If it can use
| conversations to deduce I'm in risk of a shorter lifespan,
| can the owners communicate that data to insurance companies?
|
| - healthcare/social damage: what is the long term effects of
| people having an always available yes men, a substitution for
| social interaction, a cheating tool, etc? should some people
| be kept from access? (minors, mentally ill, whatever). Should
| access, on the other hand, become a basic right if it
| realistically makes a lef-behind person unable to compete
| with others who have it?
|
| - National security. Is a country's economy being reliant in
| a service offered somewhere else? Worse even, is this fact
| draining skills from the population that might not able to be
| easily recovered when needed?
|
| - energy/resources impact: Are we ready to have an enormous
| increase in usage of energy and/or certain goods? should we
| limit usage until we can meet the demand without struggle?
|
| - consumer protections: Many companies just offer 'flat'
| usage, freely being able to change the model behind the
| scenes for a worse one when needed or even adapt user limits
| on their server load. Which of these are fair business
| practices?
|
| - economy risks: What is the maximum risk we can take of the
| economy being made dependent to services that aren't yet
| profitable? Is there any steps that need to be taken to keep
| us from the potential bust if costs can't be kept up with?
|
| - monopoly risks: we could end up with a single company being
| able to offer literally any intellectual work as a service.
| Whoever gets this tech might become the most powerful entity
| in the world. Should we address this impact through
| regulation before such an entity rises and becomes impossible
| to tame?
|
| - enabling crime: can an army of AI hackers disrupt entire
| countries? how is this handled?
|
| - impact on job creation: If AIs can practically DDOS job
| offer forms, how is this handled to keep access fair? Same
| for a million other places that are subjected to AI spam.
|
| your point "It's on politicians to help people adapt to a new
| economic reality" brings a few:
|
| - Should we tax AI using companies? if they produce the same
| employing fewer people, tax extraction suffers and the non-
| taxed money does not make it back to the people. How do we
| compensate? And how do we remake - How should we handle
| entire professions being put to pasture at once? Lost
| employment is a general problem if it's a large enough amount
| of people. - how should the push of intellectual work be
| rethought if it becomes extremely cheap relative to manual
| work? is the way we train our population in need of change?
|
| You might have strong opinions on most of these issues, but
| there is clearly A LOT of important debates that aren't being
| addressed.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Your list of evidence-free vibe complaints perfectly
| exemplifies the reasons why regulations should be
| approached carefully with the advice of experts, or not at
| all.
| sofixa wrote:
| Evidence-free? Did you even skim OP's list?
|
| Healthcare/Social damage: we already have peer reviewed
| studies on the potentially negative impacts of LLMs on
| mental health:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10867692/ . We
| also have numerous stories of people committing suicides
| after "falling in love" or being nudged to do so by an
| LLM.
|
| Energy/Resources: do I even have to provide evidence that
| LLMs waste enormous amounts of electricity, even leading
| to scarcity in some local markets, and even coal power
| plants being turned back on?
|
| Those are just the ironclad ones, you can make very good
| data privacy and national security arguments quite easily
| as well.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > Energy/Resources: do I even have to provide evidence
| that LLMs waste enormous amounts of electricity, even
| leading to scarcity in some local markets, and even coal
| power plants being turned back on?
|
| Yes, if you want to be taken seriously, then your claims
| about this should be based in evidence and contextualized
| amid the overall energy market.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Exactly. Energy/resources line is by far the most silly
| out of anti-AI arguments being regurgitated by people.
|
| Electricity is fungible. Before decrying that LLMs are
| using it to provide the world (probably) more utility on
| the net per watt than your own work output (which segues
| into an actual problem of labor as source of personal and
| social worth), contrast it with what we'd otherwise be
| doing with that same electricity - e.g. more sportsball
| streams in higher definitions, more cryptocurrency shams,
| more Juiceros and other borderline-fraudlent startups in
| physical space (cheap energy means cheaper manufacturing,
| which means materials become more like bits, and it's
| easier to pull the same crap in the real world, as
| companies now pull in virtual).
|
| Point being, if you want to judge use of electricity on
| AI, judge it in context of the whole human condition - of
| everything else we'd otherwise be using it on.
| kace91 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean as evidence-free here.
|
| Debates for public regulation should not be _started_ by
| evidence-backed conclusions, but rather they are what
| pushes research and discussion in the first place.
|
| Perhaps the conclussion to AI's impact on mental health
| is "hey, multiple high quality studies show that the
| impact is actually positive, let's allow it and in fact
| consider it as a potential treatment path". That's
| perfectly fine.
|
| What is not fine is not considering the topic at all
| until it's too late for preventive action. We don't need
| to wait for a building burning before we consider whether
| we need fire extinguishers there.
|
| My list is not made of complains at all, it's just a few
| of the ways in which we suspect AI can be disruptive,
| which are then probably worth examining.
| LexiMax wrote:
| > "Stop the IP theft" - This feels like a cause pushed
| primarily by the 1%. Let's be realistic: 99% of people don't
| own patents and have little stake in strengthening IP
| protections.
|
| This is being screamed from the rooftops by nearly the entire
| creative community of artists, photographers, writers, and
| other people who do creative work as a job, or even for fun.
|
| The difference between the 99% of individual creatives and
| the 1% is that the 1% has entire portfolios of IP - IP that
| they might not have even created themselves - as well as an
| army of lawyers to protect that IP.
| gosub100 wrote:
| "Stop the laundering of responsibility/liability" - the risk
| that you can run someone over with a software controlled car
| and it's not a crime "because AI" whereas a human doing the
| same thing would be in jail. Image detection leading to false
| arrests, etc. It's harder to sue because the immediate party
| can say "it wasn't us, we bought this software product and it
| did the bad thing!"
|
| I strongly feel that regulation needs to curb this, even if
| it leads to product managers going to jail for what their
| black box did.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Elon Musk explicitly said in his latest Joe Rogan appearance
| that he advocates for the smallest government possible - just
| army, police, legal. He did NOT mention social care, health
| care.
|
| Doesn't quite align with UBI, unless he envisions the AI
| companies directly giving the UBI to people (when did that ever
| happen?)
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > Elon Musk explicitly said in his latest Joe Rogan
| appearance that he advocates for the smallest government
| possible - just army, police, legal. He did NOT mention
| social care, health care.
|
| This would be a 19th century government, just the "regalian"
| functions. It's not really plausible in a world where most of
| the population who benefit from the health/social
| care/education functions can vote.
| ishouldbework wrote:
| > most of the population [..] can vote.
|
| I mean, this is a solvable problem...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Like every other self-serving rich "Libertarian," they want a
| small government when it stands to get in their way, and a
| large one when they want their lifestyle subsidized by
| government contracts.
| billy99k wrote:
| "subsidized by government contracts"
|
| Subsidized implies they are getting free money for doing
| nothing. It's a business transaction. I wouldn't call being
| a federal worker being subsidized by the government either.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I mean it depends what kind of subsidy we're talking.
|
| On contracts: Space X builds rockets for the government,
| fair enough, in a vacuum. Though I would ask why we're
| paying a private corporation to recycle NASA designs we
| wouldn't fund via NASA, rather than just having NASA or
| the Air Force do it.
|
| On welfare: Corporations like Walmart benefit incredibly
| from the tattered remnants of America's social safety
| net, because if it didn't both exist and demand that
| people work to earn the benefits, nobody in their right
| mind would work for places like Walmart, because they
| wouldn't get paid enough to live. If nothing else, they
| would all die of starvation, which of course I don't
| want, but Walmart is also benefiting from that, albeit
| indirectly.
|
| Misc: artificially low taxes, the ability for
| corporations to shelter revenue overseas to avoid taxes,
| temporary stays on property taxes to attract businesses
| to a given area, lax environmental regulations in some
| areas, and lots of other examples of all the little ways
| private industry gets money from the government they
| shouldn't have. Most of these not only don't "give
| something back" but detract from the society or the
| larger world.
|
| And to emphasize, I'm not even arguing for or against
| here. I'm just saying Elon Musk doesn't want a small
| government, nor a large one. He wants a government he can
| puppet. As long as it benefits him and does not constrain
| him, he doesn't give a shit what else it does.
|
| A short list of libertarian principles I'd bet a LOT of
| money Elon does not endorse:
|
| - Abolition of Intellectual Property: Hardcore
| libertarians argue patents and copyrights are government-
| enforced monopolies that stifle innovation. Musk's
| companies rely heavily on IP protections--Tesla's battery
| tech, SpaceX's designs, Neuralink's research. Without IP
| law, his competitive moat collapses.
|
| - No Government Subsidies: Libertarian principle: the
| market should stand on its own, no handouts. Musk's
| empire thrives on subsidies: Tesla leaned on EV tax
| credits, SpaceX lives off NASA and DoD contracts,
| SolarCity was propped up by state incentives.
|
| - Minimal Regulation: Libertarians want deregulation
| across the board. Musk benefits from regulation:
| environmental rules push consumers toward EVs, carbon
| credits generate revenue, and zoning laws often bend to
| his lobbying.
|
| - Free Markets Without Favoritism is a Libertarian ideal:
| no special treatment, no cronyism. Musk actively lobbies
| for policies that tilt markets in his favor, from energy
| credits to space launch contracts. That is not free
| competition, it is government-backed advantage.
|
| - Flat, Transparent Taxation: Libertarians often push for
| simple, low, flat taxes with no loopholes. Musk's
| companies exploit tax shelters, property tax abatements,
| and complex accounting maneuvers to minimize liability.
| That is the opposite of transparent.
| titanomachy wrote:
| It's possible that the interests of the richest man in the
| world don't align with the interests of the majority, or
| society as a whole.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Of course he only wants the government to do only what
| benefits him.
| billy99k wrote:
| So army, police, legal don't benefit you?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I think you misunderstood.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Oh he's that ready to give up the billions the government
| funnels to SpaceX? Alright lets do it.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| I'm sure that "smallest government possible" involves
| cancelling all subsidies to EV car companies and tax credits
| to EV customers. What a wanker.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Algorithmic Accountability. Not just for AI, but also social
| media, advertising, voting systems, etc. Algorithm Impact
| Assessments need to become mandatory.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to make jobs for a bunch of talkers
| and parasites.
| hobom wrote:
| There are several concrete proposals to regulate AI either
| proposed or passed. The most recent prominent example of a
| passed law is California SB53, whose summary you can read here:
| https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/10/california-sb...
| solumunus wrote:
| You should ignore literally everything Musk says. He is
| incredibly unintelligent relative to his status.
| bgwalter wrote:
| Musk wants extreme law and order and will beat down any
| protests. His X account is full of posts that want to fill up
| prisons. This is the highlight so far:
|
| https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1992599328897294496#m
|
| Notice that the retweeted Will Tanner post also denigrates EBT.
| Musk does not give a damn about UBI. The unemployed will do
| slave labor, go to prison, or, if they revolt, they will be
| hanged. It is literally all out there by now.
| nis0s wrote:
| We don't know what kind of insecure systems we're dealing with
| here, and there's a pervasive problem of incestuous dependencies
| in a lot of AI tech stacks, which might lead to some instability
| or security risks. Adversarial attacks against LLMs are just too
| easy. It makes sense to let states experiment and find out what
| works and doesn't, both as a social experiment and technological
| one.
| cmiles8 wrote:
| They need to be more worried about creating a viable economic
| model for the present AI craze. Right now there's no clear path
| to making any of the present insanity a profitable endeavor. Yes
| NVIDIA is killing it, but with money pumped in from highly upside
| down sources.
|
| Things will regulate themselves pretty quickly when the financial
| music stops.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Nvidia's biggest mistake is investing money selling shovels
| into prospecting firms. If not for that they'd be fine.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| That's the only way the bubble hasn't popped yet.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Maybe there's enough of a "money multiplier" to make it worth
| their while. Then again, possibly more likely, their entry
| could spook other investors.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Do you mean that they need to find better ways to create value
| by _using_ AI, or that they need better ways to _extract_ value
| from end-users of AI?
|
| I'd argue that "value creation" is already at a decent position
| considering generative AI and the usecase as "interactive
| search engine" alone.
|
| Regarding "value extraction": Advertising should always be an
| option here, just like it was for radio, television and online
| content in general in the past.
|
| Preventing smaller entities (or private persons even) from just
| doing their own thing and making their own models seems like
| the biggest difficulty long term to me (from the perspective of
| the "rent seeking" tech giant).
| sofixa wrote:
| > I'd argue that "value creation" is already at a decent
| position considering generative AI and the usecase as
| "interactive search engine" alone.
|
| > Regarding "value extraction": Advertising should always be
| an option here, just like it was for radio, television and
| online content in general in the past.
|
| Not at the actual price it's going to cost though. The cost
| of an "interactive search" (LLM) vs a "traditional search"
| (Google) is exponentially higher. People tolerate ads to pay
| Google for the service, but imagine how many ads would
| ChatGPT need, or how much it will have to cost, to compensate
| an e.g. 10x difference. Last time I read about this a few
| months ago, ChatGPT were losing money on their paid tier
| because the people paying for it were using it _a lot_.
|
| It's more likely that ChatGPT will just be spamming ads
| sprinkled in the responses (like you ask for a headphone
| comparison, and it gives you the sponsored brand one, from a
| sponsored vendor, with an affiliate link), and hope it's
| enough.
| VectorLock wrote:
| You might be thinking of old models like banner ads or
| keyword results at the top of search and not when you ask
| ChatGPT the best way to clean up something and it suggests
| Dawn(tm) Dish Soap!
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Not at the actual price it's going to cost though.
|
| But we don't know that pricepoint yet; current prices for
| all this are inflated because of the gold-rush situation,
| and there are lots of ways to trim marginal costs. At
| worst, high longterm un-optimizable costs are going to
| decrease use/adoption a bit, but I don't even think that is
| going to happen.
|
| Just compare the situation with video hosting: That was
| _not_ profitable at first, but hardware (and bandwidth) got
| predictably cheaper, technology more optimized and
| monetization more effective and now its a good chunk of
| googles total revenue.
|
| You could have made the same arguments about video hosting
| in 2005 (too expensive, nobody pays for this, where's the
| revenue) but this would have led to extremely bad business
| decisions in hindsight.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Not to mention, most arguments about costs of AI
| inference are plain inane.
|
| AI search being 10x more expensive than Google query?
| That's just a silly, meaningless number - especially
| considering that a good AI response easily stops the user
| from making 5+ search queries to get the same results,
| and AI query itself can easily issue the equivalent of
| 10-20 search queries + spends compute analyzing their
| results.
| vachina wrote:
| The music is just getting started. The way it is going, AI will
| be inevitable. Companies are CONVINCED it's adopt AI or die,
| whether it is effective or not.
| billy99k wrote:
| It's already starting to replace Google searching for many
| people. This is why Google (and other big tech firms) started
| investing in it immediately.
|
| All they need to do is start adding in sponsored results (and
| the ability to purchase keywords), and AI becomes insanely
| profitable.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Not according to both Google' latest revenue and profit
| numbers and even Apple hinted they aren't seeing less revenue
| from Google searches.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| This is crazy for me with how inaccurate Google's AI
| summaries are. They've basically just added a chunk of lies
| to the top of every search page that I have to scroll past.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The race is to be the first to make a self-improving model (and
| have the infrastructure it will demand).
|
| This is a winner-takes-all game, that stands a real chance of
| being the last winner-takes-all game humans will ever play.
| Given that, the only two choices are either throw everything
| you can at becoming the winner, or to sit out and hope no one
| wins.
|
| The labs know that substantial losses will be had, they aren't
| investing in this to get a return, they are investing in it to
| be the winner. The losers will all be financially obliterated
| (and whoever sat out will be irrelevant).
|
| I doubt they are sweating to hard though, because it seems
| overwhelmingly likely that most people would pay >$75/mo for
| LLM inference monthly (similar to cell phone costs), and at
| that rate without going hard on training, the models are
| absolute money printers.
| nradov wrote:
| There is zero evidence that the current approach will ever
| lead to a self-improving model, or that current GPU/TPU
| infrastructure is even capable of running self-improving
| models.
| twodave wrote:
| What is so novel about LLMs (I assume this is the form of AI
| being discussed) that they require regulation? It's a dataset, an
| algorithm and some UI. Almost all the problems brought on by the
| scale-up are just supply/demand type things. Every problem people
| point at AI are also problems on some scale with computer
| software in general, so I'm wary of any regulation (and don't kid
| yourself thinking it would be for the people) bleeding over.
| zwnow wrote:
| We solved regulations everyone, a gun is just some metal, bombs
| are just some chemicals mixed together, we dont need
| regulations for this stuff!
| twodave wrote:
| It was a genuine question. Do you have anything besides
| ridicule to offer the discussion?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Some proposed regs would cover uses of AI outside LLMs, some of
| which tech folks might call "machine learning" these days to
| distinguish them from LLMs.
|
| Using algorithms to provide personalized pricing would be an
| example, where like a landlord, retailer, or airline would use
| an ML service trained on your personal data and aggregated
| purchase history to decide how much to charge you for a short-
| term rental, Nintendo Switch, or a plane ticket. Basically,
| instant underwriting at scale for every single purchase. Just
| got a new job with a raise? Your next vacation will cost you
| 26% more for the same experience.
| twodave wrote:
| This fundamentally doesn't work unless there is collusion
| involved, which we already have laws against.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Why doesn't it work? It's not obvious to me that a company
| with straightforward pricing would necessarily outcompete
| the algorithmic price discrimination one. They'd get
| somewhat more business from comparison shoppers who the
| algorithm feels can pay a lot, but lose business from
| people who the algorithm feels can pay less, and make less
| profit on everyone else.
| twodave wrote:
| Because then it's not distinguishable from price
| differences that already exist. Where are the damages?
| Who is being harmed? As a consumer you can always overpay
| for stuff. Amazon could start using its knowledge of
| spending habits TODAY to do this, without AI.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't really understand the question. The harm is that
| many of us would prefer not to face algorithmic price
| discrimination.
|
| I agree that many kinds of abusive price discrimination
| are possible without AI, and that it's hard to
| distinguish them from noncontroversial practices like
| coupons. But why does that mean we can't or shouldn't
| regulate the AI-enabled version?
| twodave wrote:
| I guess my point is regulating "algorithmic price
| discrimination" is orthogonal to "regulating AI". Why do
| something indirectly that could more easily be done
| directly?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Let's say you're shopping for something that is about $80.
| You have Prime so you pull it up in Amazon and see you can
| get it for $78.74. You throw it into Google and see Target
| lists it for $76.18. You usually order from Amazon; are you
| going to order from Target this one time to save $2.56?
| What if it was $3.56? What if it was $5.00? What if it was
| $7.86? What if it was $20.14?
|
| Or let's say you need a flight. You usually fly American so
| you check there first. You've had Gold there for the last
| few years, and you're close now. You could go look up other
| airline prices and maybe you do as a quick gut check.
| American costs more, but not a lot more. Exactly how much
| more is it worth to you to fly American and hit your
| status? What if you just got a raise? What if you just
| moved? Or what if you just got laid off?
|
| What is the exact price delta that would get you to change
| a purchase habit? How does that change from purchase to
| purchase? How does it change depending on the other
| circumstances in your life?
|
| As a concept: there are price differences that don't matter
| to people, and those vary, sometimes wildly. Meanwhile, to
| a large company, adding even 1 percentage point to their
| margin, on average, could mean tens to hundreds of millions
| of dollars of additional profit that year. It could mean
| managers hitting targets and getting bonuses paid out.
| twodave wrote:
| None of this is inherent to the functions of AI, though.
| Trying to regulate it from that angle will just cause
| battle lines to form in weird places for the sake of not
| being considered AI. Or else extension of regulation
| beyond AI, which sounds pretty dystopian to me but is
| sort of my overall point.
| AmbroseBierce wrote:
| Oh they aren't conspiring against democratically made decisions
| about AI, instead they are "ammassing war chests to fight AI
| regulation", how submissively worded, but that's expected when
| they have a grip on all mayor communication channels.
| stego-tech wrote:
| This is why I've refused to buy into the argument from these
| ghouls that AI would make the world a better place, and their
| occasional lip-service of requesting AI regulation for "human
| safety": their own actions paint a dystopian world of mass
| surveillance, even heavier labor exploitation, the return of
| company scrip and stores, and the wholesale neglect of human
| well-being, all while blocking the very regulation they claim to
| want and/or need to succeed safely.
|
| If these people genuinely believed in the good of AI, they
| wouldn't be blocking meaningful regulation of it.
|
| https://green.spacedino.net/ai-will-never-create-utopia/
| terribleidea wrote:
| > their clamoring for AI regulation for "human safety"
|
| > they wouldn't be blocking regulation of it
|
| Which is it? Do they want regulation or not?
|
| The answer is, in fact, they do want regulation. They want to
| define the terms of the regulations to gain a competitive
| advantage.
| stego-tech wrote:
| That's quite literally the point I was making. They're lying
| to everyone while demanding protective backstops for their
| highly speculative investment.
|
| None of these companies, investors, or executives are making
| AI that's actually going to improve humanity. They never,
| ever were, and people need to stop taking them at their word
| that they are.
| bilsbie wrote:
| The government is far more dangerous than anything that you want
| it to regulate.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Corporations and individuals with more capital and power than
| medium sized states are more dangerous than my tiny state and
| local governments, where I actually personally know some and
| have taken part in choosing my representatives.
| rexpop wrote:
| Only insofar as it's subject to regulatory capture by monied
| interests.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| AI regulation should wait until after the crash. That way AI can
| be regulated for what it does and not the fever dream pushed by
| marketers.
| andy99 wrote:
| At that point nobody will care though. People pushing for
| regulation (not uniquely) want power- those that can write the
| regulation will be in a position to exert a lot of power over a
| lot of people/companies, making it an attractive thing to push
| for.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Is that a lot?
| Deegy wrote:
| They know that LLMs as a product are racing towards
| commoditization. Bye bye profit margins. The only way to win is
| regulation allowing a few approved providers.
| delusional wrote:
| What profit margins?
| kibwen wrote:
| It's still technically a profit margin if it's less than
| zero...
| Deegy wrote:
| It is unclear. Everyday I seem to read contradictory
| headlines about whether or not inference is profitable.
|
| If inference has significant profitability and you're the
| only game in town, you could do really well.
|
| But without regulation, as a commodity, the margin on
| inference approaches zero.
|
| None of this even speaks to recouping the R&D costs it takes
| to stay competitive. If they're not able to pull up the
| ladder, these frontier model companies could have a really
| bad time.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Probably it's "operationally profitable" when ignoring
| capex, depreciation, dilution and other required expenses
| to stay current.
|
| Of course that means it's unprofitable in practice/GAAP
| terms.
|
| You'd have to have a pretty big margin on inference to make
| up for the model development costs alone.
|
| A 30% margin on inference for a GPU that will last ~7 years
| will not cut it
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Perhaps P/E ratios?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The ones they hoped for.
| bko wrote:
| There are profit margins on inference from what I understand.
| However the hefty training costs obviously make it a money
| losing operation.
| flir wrote:
| The only way to win is commoditize your complement (IMO).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| That's a good line but it only works if market forces don't
| commoditize you first. Blithely saying "commoditize your
| complement" is a bit like saying "draw the rest of the owl."
| flir wrote:
| Free models given away by social media companies (because
| they want people to generate content) and hardware
| companies (because they want people to buy GPUs, or
| whatever replaces them). Can the current subscription
| models compete with free? It's just a prediction - it could
| well be wrong.
| fuzzy_biscuit wrote:
| They are more likely trying to race towards wildly overinflated
| government contracts because they aren't going to profit how
| they're currently operating without some of that funny money.
| vpShane wrote:
| Yeah, but we can self-host them. At this point in the span of
| it, it's more about infrastructure and compute power to meet
| demand and Google won because it has many business models,
| massive cashflow, TPUs, and the infrastructure to build
| expanding on their current, which would take new companies ~25
| years to map out compute, data centers and have a viable,
| tangible infrastructure all while trying to figure out profits.
|
| I'm not sure about how the regulation of things would work, but
| prompt injections and whatever other attacks we haven't seen
| yet where agents can be hijacked and made to do things sounds
| pretty scary.
|
| It's a race towards AGI at this point. Not sure if that can be
| achieved as language != consciousness IMO
| Arainach wrote:
| >Yeah, but we can self-host them
|
| Who is "we", and what are the actual capabilities of the
| self-hosted models? Do they do the things that people
| want/are willing to pay money for? Can they integrate with my
| documents in O365/Google Drive or my calendar/email in hosted
| platforms? Can most users without a CS degree and a decade of
| Linux experience actually get them installed or interact with
| them? Are they integratable with the tools they use?
|
| Statistically close to "everyone" cannot run great models
| locally. GPUs are expensive and niche, especially with large
| amounts of VRAM.
| vpShane wrote:
| Correct. And glad you're aware of the challenges with
| running them.
|
| I'm not saying the options are favorable for everybody, I'm
| saying the options are there if it becomes locked in to 1-3
| companies.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| The bottleneck for commoditization is hardware. The manufacture
| of the hardware required is led by tmsc and samsung being a
| close second. The tooling required for manufacture is
| centralized with ASML and several other smaller players like
| Zeiss and the design of the product centers around nvidia
| though there are players like AMD who are attempting to catch
| up.
|
| It is a complex supply chain but each section of the chain is
| held by only a few companies. Hopefully this is enough
| competition to accelerate the development of computational
| technologies that can run and train these LLMs at home. I give
| it a decade or more.
| baxtr wrote:
| Isn't that a bit like saying: storage is commodity and thus
| profit margins will be/should be low.
|
| All major cloud providers have high profit margins in the range
| of 30-40%.
| kupopuffs wrote:
| this is slightly more nuanced, since the AI portion is not
| making money. it's their side hustle
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Storage doesn't require the same capex/upfront investment to
| get that margin.
|
| How much does it cost to train a cutting edge LLM? Those
| costs need to be factored into the margin from inferencing.
|
| Buying hard drives and slotting them in also has capex
| associated with it, but far less in total, I'd guess.
| missedthecue wrote:
| The "few approved providers" model is what they have been
| fighting _against_ since the Biden admin
| nradov wrote:
| Another way to win is through exclusive access to high quality
| training data. Training data quality and quantity represent an
| upper bound on LLM performance. That's why the frontier model
| developers are investing some of their "war chests" in
| purchasing exclusive rights to data locked up behind corporate
| firewalls, and even hiring human subject matter experts in
| order to create custom proprietary training data in certain
| strategic domains.
| boh wrote:
| They're also fighting for regulation to keep the competition at
| bay.
| skywhopper wrote:
| I like how building up millions of dollars to bribe elected
| officials is reported on in such neutral terms.
| amelius wrote:
| Modern times. I wouldn't be surprised if you learn about it in
| business school.
| glitchc wrote:
| Every generation has its own copyright war. First file sharing,
| then blockchains, now LLMs. As long as digital comouters are
| copy-on-write, this debate shall continue. It will only get
| solved once we have viable quantum computers.
| yonatron wrote:
| "multi-million dollar warchests" Millions, lol. Wrong era, Dr.
| Evil!
| ramblenode wrote:
| Here is my (hot take) proposal for regulation:
|
| 1) *All major players open source their unobfuscated training
| data.*
|
| a) The evidence so far shows that every major AI company engaged
| in intentional and historically unprecedented copyright violation
| to obtain their training data.
|
| b) LLMs have now poisoined future data for any new players. This
| is a massive negative externality, and we shouldn't accept this
| externality as a moat locking out future players from
| competition.
|
| 2) *Levy a 20% royalty on all future genAI revenue to authors and
| artists who appear in the dataset and exempt genAI from future
| copywright violations.*
|
| a) The current copyright model is bad for both authors and AI
| companies. It's hard for authors to collect from violations, and
| it's expensive and tedious for AI companies to comply with
| innumerable individual copyrights. Simplify the regime for
| everyone, and properly reward the people whose work is the
| foundation of these models.
|
| b) The specifics can be worked out, but, among other things, the
| royalty should be proprotional to the token count of a work, not
| just number of works.
| neilv wrote:
| Only "multi-million"?
|
| Someone once told me about being a new journalist, on the city
| beat. They said something like: I wasn't surprised to find that
| bribery was going on; I was just surprised the bribes were _so
| small_.
| jordanb wrote:
| Someone always makes this kind of comment and I've always found
| it being pretty middle-brow. I think there's a classic comment
| that the USA spends more on potato chips than on lobbying.
|
| I think the best explanation is that there's a pushing a rope
| phenominum where there's still a limit on the amount of money
| the American political corruption system can absorb.
|
| We have long had robust laws that prevent people outright
| paying for political or regulatory outcomes (which used to be
| much stronger under honest services). We also had robust laws
| limiting the amount of campaign contributions.
|
| As that system has been torn down, we've seen the amount of
| money flowing in increase.
| bawolff wrote:
| The thing is, lobbying isn't literally a bribe. Lobbying
| involves all sorts of expensive activities, like compiling
| reports, doing research, etc in addition to the more sketchy
| semi-bribe stuff.
|
| All that adds up. How many FTE lobbyists is a few million
| dollars? It just doesn't seem like all that much if they are
| trying to do a hard core lobbying campaign.
| nradov wrote:
| The tech industry lobbyists should be able to eat their own
| dog food by using AI to do all the research and report
| writing now (half joking).
| jmyeet wrote:
| As a reminder, Princeton did a study and found that public
| support for a bill has almost zero impact on whether or not that
| bill passes [1].
|
| This government is bought and paid for by the ultra-wealthy and
| large corporations with a system of legalized corruption that
| began long before the disastrous Citizens United decision [2] but
| that decision put things into overdrive.
|
| When this bubble bursts as I firmly believe it will, it's going
| to get much worse because Congress will launch into action... by
| bailing out those that invested billions into AI without any
| prospect of ever recouping that money.
|
| [1]: https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem-tmp
|
| [2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/citi...
| jmward01 wrote:
| I believe that the right regulation makes a difference, but I
| honestly don't know what that looks like for AI. LLMs are so easy
| to build/use and that trend is accelerating. The idea of
| regulating AI is quickly becoming like the idea of regulating
| hammers. They are ubiquitous general purpose tools and putting
| legislation specifically about hammers would be deeply
| problematic for, hopefully, obvious reasons. Honest question
| here, what is practical AND effective here? Specifically, what
| problems can clearly be solved and by what kinds of regulations?
| parliament32 wrote:
| The most sane version of regulation IMO is the (already passed)
| EU AI Act. It's less about control of AI itself, more about
| controlling inputs/outputs. Tell users when they're interacting
| with an AI, mark/disclaimer AI-generated content, don't use AI
| in high-risk scenarios, etc. Along the lines of "we don't
| regulate hammers, but we regulate you hitting people with a
| hammer".
|
| https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/
| nradov wrote:
| Why should a user care whether the entity they're interacting
| with meets some arbitrary political definition of "AI"? Does
| it matter whether an article that I'm reading was written by
| AI or by a monkey randomly banging on a keyboard? Regulations
| seem totally pointless, just another excuse to shovel
| taxpayer money to a bunch of bureaucrats with fancy degrees
| who are incapable of finding real jobs.
| mrdevlar wrote:
| This is silly.
|
| Regulation exists to help balance out the power disparity
| between consumers and corporations that sell AI. The EU
| wrote a good AI law, it's mainly focused on access to goods
| and services and the impact that AI can have in those
| domains. Among other things, it almost entirely bans
| surveillance pricing. Makes companies liable if an AIs
| discriminate on their behalf. Also restricts the use of
| facial recognition.
|
| This is it's role, to equalize the power disparity by
| prohibiting companies that do business within the EU from
| engaging in these predatory practices.
| parliament32 wrote:
| [delayed]
| bawolff wrote:
| The headline says that as if a few million is a lot of money to
| spend on lobbying.
| Animats wrote:
| Are we seeing lobbying for liability exemptions for AI errors?
| That's probably the biggest practical concern on the consumer
| side.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Oh wow! I think I found part of the problem. I replied earlier
| about algorithmic accountability, and the need for Algorithm
| Impact Assessments, and I got a snarky reply and down voted like
| I've never seen before. I guess accountability hits a nerve.
|
| So I'll just say...
|
| Algorithm Impact Assessments
|
| Algorithm Impact Assessments
|
| Algorithm Impact Assessments
| nradov wrote:
| I down voted you because this is a stupid idea which wouldn't
| do anything for accountability. There's no need for algorithm
| impact assessments. I don't want my tax dollars wasted on more
| bureaucratic garbage. It would end up being totally politicized
| and subjective because there's no consensus on impacts.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Thank you for the confirmation.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Fighting regulation and taxation of the big tech megacorps is why
| the leaders and big investors / owners of these companies are
| looking the other way and being friendly with an administration
| that is increasingly supremacist and now even discussing
| denaturalization of legal immigrants (taking away citizenship).
| It's despicable cowardice.
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