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 bet…
To add to this a lot of the AI stuff is being posted open source to Github. At first it's to detect faces in a photo for social media tagging. Then it gets used to detect people in a camera feed on an automated turret.
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 bet…
> We need free speech to be a liberal democracy but information itself is becoming dangerous. How do you square that?
You can't. Either speech is free or it's not. There are reasonable restrictions - literally inciting violence or things done to intentionally cause harm ("Fire!" in a theater, etc).
For information, the only thing you can do is make it classified, which is hard to do when it's a private company doing the innovating.
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 bet…
> We need free speech to be a liberal democracy but information itself is becoming dangerous. How do you square that? You can't. Either speech is free or it's not. There are reasonable restrictions - literally inciting violence or things done to intentionally cause harm ("Fire!" in a theater, etc). For information, the only thing you can do is make it classified, which is hard to do when it's a private company doing…
There is precedence for using restrictions on freedoms to preserve those freedoms, a good example is Germany which very highly values freedom of expression - but has strong laws to defend those freedoms against anti-democratic forces - often referred to as “militant democracy”: it’s a system that’s not paradoxically intolerant of intolerance and so far seems to work well - and it shows that it is possible to draw a line somewhere in the law without needing to resign oneself to having to tolerate virulent evil in the name of freedom of speech.
> We need free speech to be a liberal democracy but information itself is becoming dangerous. How do you square that? You can't. Either speech is free or it's not. There are reasonable restrictions - literally inciting violence or things done to intentionally cause harm ("Fire!" in a theater, etc). For information, the only thing you can do is make it classified, which is hard to do when it's a private company doing…
There is precedence for using restrictions on freedoms to preserve those freedoms, a good example is Germany which very highly values freedom of expression - but has strong laws to defend those freedoms against anti-democratic forces - often referred to as “militant democracy”: it’s a system that’s not paradoxically intolerant of intolerance and so far seems to work well - and it shows that it is possible to draw a l…
>> a good example is Germany which very highly values freedom of expression
Can you give references?
In my experience of living in Germany, freedom of expression is welcomed as long as it's the right kind of expression.
You couldn't export software implementing cryptography, but there wasn't any similar restriction on books about cryptography, even if the book contained detailed descriptions of the algorithms and the mathematics!
The PGP source code was published as a book to avoid this https://philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/BookPreface.html
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
They may be short and sweet but I certainly don't feel they're unsubstantive. It seems you're the decider, though, so no problem I'll leave.
I'm sorry, dang. I appreciate your work here. I like to use farce to point out what I see as inconvenient truths. I can accept that they're not welcome here.
I'm curious how export restrictions would affect open source projects like Tensorflow and PyTorch. Would they be forced to become closed source? Could the license just include a disclaimer: "You're not allowed to use this if you're in one of the following countries: ..."? Would sites like Gitlab and Github be forced to implement per-repo geoblocking? Could they somehow be moved to ownership by a non-American entity t…
PGP printed their code in a book and exported that. The clarified matters and the courts ruled that source code was protected by the First Amendment. This is still true unless the courts overturn precedent.