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Luddites. If you look at the course of history, every attempt to slow the adoption of new technology has been a disaster for human welfare. This policy move is just like trying to ban the telephone or the printing press.
Counter-example: nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
In my limited experience the proposals by the EU commission are often readable and interesting. I might not agree with them, but I do appreciate that the thought process is made public years before ideas become laws. (As the article states, that is also very much the expectation here.)
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I see this more along the lines of preventing nuclear proliferation, chemical and biological warfare.
This is more like banning the production of chlorine gas because someone might put it in an artillery shell --- never mind all the other useful things you can do with chlorine gas. If you want to regulate externalities, regulate externalities: don't ban technology itself.
The EU isn't planning to ban underlying AI technologies, but instead to control its use in applications such as credit worthiness assessment
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That’s a different question. Even if you think certain technologies are overall negative, you may be forced to adopt them in order to remain competitive with other nation states. Nuclear weapons are probably the classic example here. AI seems similar to me.
Nuclear weapons are a huge net positive for humanity. Have we had another big industrial war since WWII? No. Why not? Because the combatants understand that nowadays total war means total annihilation. Now we resolve our disputes in other ways. Nuclear weapons gave us an age of peace.
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Agreed 100%. I appreciate the hacker mindset, but when things approach society-altering scale, "just because you can doesn't mean you should" should be the mantra, not "move fast and break things".
And who decides when that "should" condition is met? Over the past few years, I've seen far too many activists react to algorithms that notice true but politically inconvenient things by trying to shut down the algorithms, to pull wool over our eyes, to continue the illusion that things are other than what they are. Why should we keep doing that? I have zero faith in the ability of activists or states to decide when…
Tension between small-c conservatism that resists change and innovators who push for it before the results can be known is very important!
No one person or group needs to or will decide. Definitely not states. "Activists" both in favor of and opposed to changes will be part of it. The last few decades in tech the conservative impulse has been mostly missing (at least in terms of the application of technology to our society lol) and look where we are. A techno-dystopian greed powered corporate surveillance state.
We're not going to vote on it. Arguments like the one happening in this comments section _is_ the process for better or worse.
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Nuclear weapons are a huge net positive for humanity. Have we had another big industrial war since WWII? No. Why not? Because the combatants understand that nowadays total war means total annihilation. Now we resolve our disputes in other ways. Nuclear weapons gave us an age of peace.
There’s a survivorship bias here. If nuclear weapons did totally annihilate society we could not have this conversation.
The biggest threat, as I can see it, is a truly irrational actor. Luckily they're hard enough to build that this prerequisite has so far filtered out anyone truly irrational.
Bonus points if they name the overseeing organization the Turing Police. And if Switzerland goes its own way and allows citizenship for AIs. In all seriousness, I’m not sure if these legal restrictions will actually be effective. They are too broad, vague, and will likely just result in technological stagnation.