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Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

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Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#101

Post by RandomLensman »

themitigating wrote: post #65
eterevsky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the AI regulations are reasonable and AI companies can't operate, the technology just isn't ready for wide-spread adoption yet. Conversely if the AI system is reasonable, but the regulations are making them illegal, then the blame is on the regulations. There is a trade-off between potential benefits and potential harm, and it's not immediately clear to me, who is in the better position to find it: the AI compan…

So it's subjective right? The balance. Since a company is usually harmed by increased regulation their opinion is biased. But there's no oppposite to this. Governments don't benefit if companies leave and in fact they lose out. This also includes the population (jobs etc) that means the opinion of the government isn't biased.

Regulatory moats can be pretty powerful - not sure regulations always harm all companies.

Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#102

Post by vlovich123 »

While I agree with other commenters that this is kind of hypocritical on its face, there is a strongman interpretation that’s more generous. It would probably go something more like this:

The US crafts regulations that work with businesses while the EU crafts them and is OK to sacrifice businesses. Additionally, the EU crafts regulations that can accomplish nothing but increase costs and reduce quality without helping the end goal. For example, all the cookie banners that have pervaded the internet. They don’t actually help reduce tracking, they make the web less usable, and they’ve made compliance more complicated, and building a website is more expensive as you have to add these banners. Sure GDPR has strengths but the cookie aspect is a miss. In fact, the EU is as easily bamboozled as the US considering that Google had a huge hand in shaping GDPR legislation.

Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#103

Post by ilyt »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #90
ilyt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell investors you're throwing away 10% of the market and they will fire you > The EU's makes up around 15-20% of world GDP depending on how you measure it, but that's subject to disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs. That would have to be corrected for tech spendings, for example the fact asia produces most of the electronics have zero effect on facebook's business profits.

Google search and many other big tech divisions already did that with China. When a country/region deviates from the rest of the world in a big way there comes a point at which you can't offer the same products and services as other markets.

There is a big difference between "censor everything you do to comply to goverment doctrine" and "just don't store PII unnecessarily".

Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#104

Post by epolanski »

bionhoward wrote: post #60
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a fan of no regulation unless actual harm has been shown first. I used to be, but some of the modern crop of CEOs has taken the wind out of that. They have done tremendous damage, very quickly, and the regulation has been unable to keep up, until severe damage has already been done. Once the bullet has left the gun, it can't be stuffed back in.

Can you be more specific, with examples? Who did what?

User privacy, cambridge analytica, facebook, and the impact those together had in several elections, most especially Trump 2016 and Brexit.

Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#105

Post by toth »

newshorts wrote: post #75
teekert wrote: post #27

Hmm, for a moment I thought there must be an error in the title and it should be "Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's ISN'T Any Real AI Regulation" But no, He is in front of US congress arguing for regulation, he is in the EU arguing against regulation. It's pretty obvious he's after whatever (de)regulation supports his business model. But I guess that's just his job. Let's hope regulators don't forge…

The real take away is that he’s out front shaping regulation before it impacts him. In the US he knows it’s easy to manipulate our policy with a little song and dance because our policy makers don’t understand what they are looking at. It’s a different story in the EU where you have competent leaders. That seems to be the reason for the inverse approach. US: “let me help you write the regulations ;)” EU: “you’re gonn…

As a EU citizen, I really wish we had competent leaders, particularly in Brussels. Have never seen any evidence that is the case, specially with regards to tech.

The last EU initiative at sweeping regulation in the tech space (GDPR) was disastrous. It imposed huge compliance costs for all entities, from large multinationals to small startups and business and even some individuals and nonprofits. For the multinationals that is totally fine with me, they can afford it, but for the other ones it is far from clear that the benefits outweigh the costs. They could have just made it not apply to small entities (either in revenue, number of users or some other metric) and it would have been arguably great. The way they did it they just gave a big advantage to large incumbents and put a strong handicap on EU based tech start ups (as well as other businesses to a lesser extent).

Years after the roll out, I still occasionally come across international websites that have opted to ban European visitors than figure out how to comply with GDPR.

Don't get me wrong, the GDPR was meant to address real on going abuses of personal data, and did some things right, but it could have easily had most of the benefits for a fraction of the cost if they did things right. Unfortunately, like all almost all regulators, Brussels tends to pay a lot more attention to hypothetical benefits of regulation than its predictable costs.

Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#106

Post by sharemywin »

jamincan wrote: post #84
themitigating wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's subjective right? The balance. Since a company is usually harmed by increased regulation their opinion is biased. But there's no oppposite to this. Governments don't benefit if companies leave and in fact they lose out. This also includes the population (jobs etc) that means the opinion of the government isn't biased.

> Since a company is usually harmed by increased regulation their opinion is biased. I know this is the prevailing point of view in business, but is it actually true? How many bank failures would have been avoided if US banking regulations hadn't been slackened so much?

When the government covers your loses and even let's you take bonuses for fucking up and causing a recission why wouldn't you think regulations slows you down.

how many guns would get sold if the government didn't created laws that protects the industry from liability.

or section 230 which shields websites from the rent seeking of the cable companies but allows them to rent seek advertisers.

Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#108

Post by ttlsa »

xiphias2 wrote: post #72
soco wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The regulation is meant to protect the EU citizens which couldn't care less about the financial incentives of a US company or their hype du jour. If hypothetically no AI can be created with respecting the citizens, what should the choice be, block or accept Skynet? (I said "hypothetically")

As an EU citizen I think it's about joining SkyNet or falling behind in productivity. I prefer joining SkyNet.

If, hypothetically, a SkyNet like AI actually existed, how much damage to humanity would you be ok with as long as productivity and quality of life went up went up for those who were spared? Let's assume that you and your loved ones are among those who have been guaranteed safety by this AI.

I am sorry if the tone comes across as snarky. Not my intention. Genuinely curious.

Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#109

Post by vlovich123 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #102

While I agree with other commenters that this is kind of hypocritical on its face, there is a strongman interpretation that’s more generous. It would probably go something more like this: The US crafts regulations that work with businesses while the EU crafts them and is OK to sacrifice businesses. Additionally, the EU crafts regulations that can accomplish nothing but increase costs and reduce quality without helpin…

Another strong man. The US hasn’t started considering how to regulate so Sam is saying “great, here’s how you regulate” in the EU they’ve already outlined principles (proposed regulations? Can’t recall) and maybe he sees those as problematic and that his discussions with them haven’t yielded improvements.

Of course even the strongman interpretations are problematic here but just saying. I think there may be more nuance here than the hot take based on the headlines alone.

> …he was miffed by the way the European body defined “high-risk” systems..

> According to Time, the OpenAI CEO said “If we can comply, we will, and if we can’t, we’ll cease operating… We will try. But there are technical limits to what’s possible.”

> He called for some regulation “between the traditional European approach and the traditional U.S. approach,” whatever that means.

It’s important to catch the author’s non-neutral tone here. They’ve clearly staked out a position and it’s worthwhile to keep that in mind.

Re: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Leave the EU If There's Any Real AI Regulation

#110

Post by spacebanana7 »

fhd2 wrote: post #56
spacebanana7 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EU market is too big to ignore It's not what it used to be. The EU's makes up around 15-20% of world GDP depending on how you measure it, but that's subject to disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs. Meta only gets around 10% of its ad earnings from the EU [1]. I'm not aware of the figures for Google and Microsoft or whether such figures are even available. Many global banks left the US or reduced it to…

I arrive at something like 25% of global nominal GDP according to Wikipedia, but I just quickly added up the numbers in my head, might be wrong. The Facebook ad numbers are probably not too relevant of a comparison though, since Microsoft and OpenAI have a different business model. I'd suspect the share of potential global revenue must be something in the >20% range. But even if the EU was only 10% of the potential r…

> I bet as long as they can find a way to make more money in the EU than they spend, they will

I think this is where the structure of the regulation becomes important.

If GPT-4 had to be retrained with regulator friendly data or assume liability for misinformation in the EU then there might not be enough of a profit incentive to stay.

I imagine they'd stay in the EU however if they just had to add more banners, data localisation and reporting. Albeit with whining.

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