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SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

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Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#71

Post by echelon »

sanxiyn wrote: post #49
ubj wrote: post #34

> The creator of a model can not ensure that a model is never used to do something harmful – any more so that the developer of a web browser, calculator, or word processor could. Placing liability on the creators of general purpose tools like these mean that, in practice, such tools can not be created at all, except by big businesses with well funded legal teams. This matches my thoughts on why this is ultimately a b…

As I understand this law does not mandate you to ensure anything. It requires you to follow best practices (to be determined), report safety incidents, etc. You are not even liable for safety incidents, you just need to report them, although it may be embarrassing. Overall, it seems highly reasonable.

> requires you to follow best practices (to be determined)

Trigger happy regulation for a field that hasn't even come into full swing. It's indicative of an over-active immune system; lawmakers with nothing better to do.

Pass laws against improper use and go after the malicious users. Don't ban the technology, the research, or even the applications. (Of which there will be abundant good uses. Many of which we've yet to even see or predict.)

Our culture has become obsessed with regulating and limiting freedom on the very principle that it might be harmful. We should be punishing actual measurable, physical and monetary harms. Not imaginary or hypothetical ones.

If California passes this, AI companies should leave California behind.

Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#72

Post by drcode »

65a wrote: post #66
drcode wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is meaningless if you don't specify what threshold there should be for harm Otherwise you also have to complain about the stifling of open source bioagent research, open source nuclear warheads, open source human cloning protocols Those are also all dual-use technologies that are objectively morally neutral

Laws should be about the outcome, not about processes that may lead to an outcome. It is already illegal in California to produce your own nuclear weapon. Instead of outlawing books, because they allow research into building giant gundam robots, just outlaw giant gundam robots.

> Laws should be about the outcome, not about processes that may lead to an outcome.

Some outcomes are pretty terrible, I think there are valid instances where we might also want to prevent precursor technology from being widely disseminated to prevent them.

Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#73

Post by mehulashah »

This is a well-articulated response to the SB-1047 bill. I want to underscore the undercurrent of the message — that with the proposed regulations on creators, it will accomplish the opposite of what it is intended to do. The landscape will be less open and diverse, handing the power to a few.

Another point that gets buried is that AI is about the data. Without the transparency of what these models are built from, it leads to potential dangers as well as inappropriate use of materials.

My bet is on the open ecosystem if it doesn’t get legislated away.

Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#74

Post by sanxiyn »

65a wrote: post #66
drcode wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is meaningless if you don't specify what threshold there should be for harm Otherwise you also have to complain about the stifling of open source bioagent research, open source nuclear warheads, open source human cloning protocols Those are also all dual-use technologies that are objectively morally neutral

Laws should be about the outcome, not about processes that may lead to an outcome. It is already illegal in California to produce your own nuclear weapon. Instead of outlawing books, because they allow research into building giant gundam robots, just outlaw giant gundam robots.

Laws also should be possible (preferably easy) to implement. Why does DMCA ban circumvention tools? Circumvention is already illegal and it is piracy that should be outlawed, not tools to enable piracy? The reason is piracy tools are considerably easier to regulate than piracy.

Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#75

Post by samtho »

drcode wrote: post #59
ubj wrote: post #34

> The creator of a model can not ensure that a model is never used to do something harmful – any more so that the developer of a web browser, calculator, or word processor could. Placing liability on the creators of general purpose tools like these mean that, in practice, such tools can not be created at all, except by big businesses with well funded legal teams. This matches my thoughts on why this is ultimately a b…

Your argument is meaningless if you don't specify what threshold there should be for harm Otherwise you also have to complain about the stifling of open source bioagent research, open source nuclear warheads, open source human cloning protocols Those are also all dual-use technologies that are objectively morally neutral

> Otherwise you also have to complain about the stifling of open source bioagent research, open source nuclear warheads, open source human cloning protocols

No, actually you don’t.

This is just a slippery slope that suggests that any of these examples are even remotely comparable to AI. There is room for nuance and it’s easy to spot the outlier among bioagent research, nuclear warheads, human cloning, and generative artificial intelligence.

Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#77

Post by bee_rider »

failTide wrote: post #63
bee_rider wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand the long term plan, or maybe I don’t believe lawmakers understand where we are going long-term with this stuff. We’re still in the very early days. Unless the academic community really drops the ball, in 5 or so years they’ll be training models around the quality of the current state of the art on professors’ research clusters (probably not just at R1 universities). I’d be shocked if, in the…

> A typical American might read hundreds of books over the course of their life Probably only if you count books like green eggs and ham.

Sure, but those kinds of books are explicitly intended as part of the path of learning to read, right?

Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#78

Post by exe34 »

verdverm wrote: post #23

(f) “Covered model” means an artificial intelligence model that meets either of the following criteria: (1) The artificial intelligence model was trained using a quantity of computing power greater than 10^26 integer or floating-point operations. (2) The artificial intelligence model was trained using a quantity of computing power sufficiently large that it could reasonably be expected to have similar or greater perf…

In a way this could be what gives us AGI that runs in your pocket. If there's an upper limit on what can be used, then human ingenuity will be funnelled towards whatever does fit in. Of course, this is only in the USA. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc will still be free to persue the technology.

Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#79

Post by realce »

echelon wrote: post #71
sanxiyn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand this law does not mandate you to ensure anything. It requires you to follow best practices (to be determined), report safety incidents, etc. You are not even liable for safety incidents, you just need to report them, although it may be embarrassing. Overall, it seems highly reasonable.

> requires you to follow best practices (to be determined) Trigger happy regulation for a field that hasn't even come into full swing. It's indicative of an over-active immune system; lawmakers with nothing better to do. Pass laws against improper use and go after the malicious users. Don't ban the technology, the research, or even the applications. (Of which there will be abundant good uses. Many of which we've yet…

> Don't ban the technology, the research, or even the applications.

Where is the ban here?

Re: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety

#80

Post by thijson »

narrator wrote: post #3

The politicians are gunning extremely hard for open source AI. It's crazy. "Soros argued that synergy like that between corporate and government AI projects creates a more potent threat than was posed by Cold War–era autocrats, many of whom spurned corporate innovation. “The combination of repressive regimes with IT monopolies endows those regimes with a built-in advantage over open societies,” Soros said. “They pose…

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