Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 100 posts

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#41

Post by timonovici »

nv-vn wrote: post #28

This is what we get for all the stupid fear-mongering done by people with no understanding of "AI". Pop scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk weighing in on a field with 0 overlap with their expertise is treated by the media as some kind of prophecy sent from the heavens. Don't get me wrong, there's scary shit happening with AI that we can legitimately talk about, but we are so far from a world with senti…

https://youtu.be/GAXLHM-1Psk?t=945 - I think this commentary by Maciej Ceglowski rings true here.

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#42

Post by timonovici »

timonovici wrote: post #41
nv-vn wrote: post #28

This is what we get for all the stupid fear-mongering done by people with no understanding of "AI". Pop scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk weighing in on a field with 0 overlap with their expertise is treated by the media as some kind of prophecy sent from the heavens. Don't get me wrong, there's scary shit happening with AI that we can legitimately talk about, but we are so far from a world with senti…

https://youtu.be/GAXLHM-1Psk?t=945 - I think this commentary by Maciej Ceglowski rings true here.

Ah, it comes a bit later, at 19:00 -

"At that point people who are angry, mistrustful, and may not understand a thing about computers will regulate your industry into the ground. You'll be left like those poor saps who work in the nuclear plants, who have to fill out a form in triplicate anytime they want to sharpen a pencil."

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#44

Post by blattimwind »

kolikotime wrote: post #3

Wide ranging restrictions such as these are being tactically applied throughout the world. Germany and France enacted similar policies last year. As Ian Hogarth sketched out last year, we're entering an era in which AI becomes part and parcel of a country's geopolitics, an era of AI Nationalism so to speak. Hogarth expressed the opinion that Google's purchase of DeepMind(A UK based company initially) is going to be s…

> Germany and France enacted similar policies last year.

Source?

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#45

Post by JustSomeNobody »

gumby wrote: post #7

What a bunch of maroons. This stupid approach was such a disaster in the days of crypto controls. Lifting them protected Americans and unleashed a huge number of new capabilities.

You mean easing them? IIRC, there are still restrictions in place.

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#46

Post by coldcode »

Veedrac wrote: post #18

The publication mentioned: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/11/19/2018-25... Relevant excerpt: The representative general categories of technology for which Commerce currently seeks to determine whether there are specific emerging technologies that are essential to the national security of the United States include: (2) Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology, such as: (i) Neural ne…

If they want to control all of this stuff programming will become almost impossible since everyone is using these things today; it puts your coding in the hands of lawyers (no you can't call that method, its against the law). Even mobile and desktop OS's these days include many of those things, not to mention a big chunk of cloud systems like Amazon become a minefield.

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#47

Post by dboreham »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #39
gumby wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s it meant open source software (we didn’t use this term back then) like Kerberos were considered munitions and it was illegal to provide them to non-us persons without a license. At Cygnus we generated a version with no cryptography at all and sent it to Switzerland where someone wrote crypto routines (available in the open literature) that interoperated, and the everyone on the planet had access to it (but…

That mean we have two free products. Compete each other. Open source is not one software to rule them all. If you think it is restrictive to Russia, china or Swiss, open your own sources!!! Do not just suck. Give up your milk and let the world be free not just free according to contribution by American. We need more maker not free rider.

Actually it meant one version: the one produced outside the USA (since there was no restriction on using that inside the USA). So the law achieved roughly nothing besides exporting coding jobs.

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#48

Post by Semaphor »

blattimwind wrote: post #44
kolikotime wrote: post #3

Wide ranging restrictions such as these are being tactically applied throughout the world. Germany and France enacted similar policies last year. As Ian Hogarth sketched out last year, we're entering an era in which AI becomes part and parcel of a country's geopolitics, an era of AI Nationalism so to speak. Hogarth expressed the opinion that Google's purchase of DeepMind(A UK based company initially) is going to be s…

> Germany and France enacted similar policies last year. Source?

Searched and couldn't find anything for Germany.

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#49

Post by gumby »

bsaul wrote: post #30
gumby wrote: post #7

What a bunch of maroons. This stupid approach was such a disaster in the days of crypto controls. Lifting them protected Americans and unleashed a huge number of new capabilities.

« Lifting them protected americans and unleashed... » Source ?

End to end encryption is now common which protects everyone. SSL/TLS is now unbiquitous as are secure messaging apps. Crypto research looks for volnerabilities in all sorts of software. This protects everyone, including Americans.

Re: The Commerce Department is considering national security restrictions on AI

#50

Post by 3pt14159 »

I understand why they want to—even to the point of thinking it would be the right move if only it would actually work—but it won't work.

True, software is dual use[0] but it's too slippery. Even things like nuclear weapons designs[1] are getting pretty easy for people to get their hands on. This stuff is just text! How are you going to stop this from spreading? It won't work.

Besides, top-shelf AI tech isn't much better than mid-shelf stuff. For example, self-driving car technology. We're talking about the difference of 1000kms with no intervention by a human driver vs 5000kms. A terrorist weaponizing self-driving tech for, say, a mobile weapons platform (AKs connected to remote triggers, say) doesn't need the top shelf stuff. They need an auto that can go maybe 10kms.

Thing is, unlike most people I talk to in tech, I actually support the majority of the objectives intelligence agencies in the west have. I just don't know how you solve this one. We need free speech to be a liberal democracy but information itself is becoming dangerous. How do you square that?

Further, if the power of individuals keeps going up due to technological advancement how do you maintain security and freedom at the same time? The only way I can see it working is for individuals to continue to get more peaceful.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology

[1] Thank goodness weapons grade fissile material is hard to make.

Post reply on HN