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On AI regulation and messaging

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Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#401

Post by mr_toad »

traceroute66 wrote: post #136
kilpikaarna wrote: post #32

> I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust. I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. [...] > I don’t think that a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin (which some have advocated that Anthropic do) is the way to win back that trust — at this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is mo…

> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…

> Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks and academic papers as you like, but the reality on the hospital ward will always be different.

And they’ll be using detailed medical records. Personalized medicine and the use of ML in medicine has been around longer than LLMs (and will continue regardless). There is a lot more data available than just studies and textbooks.

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/treatment/pers...

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#402

Post by iAMkenough »

skybrian wrote: post #301
traceroute66 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…

“Cure cancer” is vague shorthand. A more charitable interpretation would be something like “provides important assistance to research scientists who come up with new cures to most kinds of cancer.”

No, I think Dario wants to actually “own” the cure to cancer.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#403

Post by tmp10423288442 »

fragmede wrote: post #345
jacquesm wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has that model been proven to work for other diseases?

I mean, we were making progress with measles but then RFK happened.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Measles cases have been on a long-term upward trend in the US since the bottom around 2000: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-measles-cases?t...

In Canada, measles cases suddenly exploded in 2025 as well, and they don't have RFK Jr. there: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/measles-rubella/

The policies around measles vaccines have shifted a little since RFK became HHS Secretary, but not in a material way. Generally the messaging has focused on putting measles, mumps, and rubella in individual vaccines rather than combined, but at no point has the federal government recommended not to get vaccinated. That, combined with the Canadian data, implies that RFK or other changes to US health policy are not likely to be the cause of the measles outbreaks.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#404

Post by kennywinker »

traceroute66 wrote: post #157
eloisant wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides cancer isn't really "a disease" but rather "a family of diseases" that can vary a lot. Even breast cancer can be one of many different cancers. It's like saying "we'll cure infectious diseases"

> It's like saying "we'll cure infectious diseases" Don't worry, I'm sure that's his next blog post. Right after Claude has finished solving famine and poverty. ;)

The solution to famine and poverty is not exactly a mystery.

We have more than enough food on the planet for everyone, and we have the ability to deliver bombs or soldiers or amazon packages to anywhere in the world in days or hours. Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone.

What people mean when they say “solve famine” is can we make people not starve without actually doing or changing anything - which is of course impossible.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#405

Post by siva7 »

eloisant wrote: post #146
traceroute66 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…

Besides cancer isn't really "a disease" but rather "a family of diseases" that can vary a lot. Even breast cancer can be one of many different cancers. It's like saying "we'll cure infectious diseases"

Claude cured a deaf person. Just look up news. All this negativity on HN is depressing..

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#406

Post by urams »

dgellow wrote: post #43
kilpikaarna wrote: post #32

> I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust. I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. [...] > I don’t think that a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin (which some have advocated that Anthropic do) is the way to win back that trust — at this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is mo…

The effective altruist and longtermist crowd are into it as a religion. They would happily sacrifice anything human to satisfy their dreams of AI. They care way more about what the AI needs than their what their fellow humans need. We will end up with an AGI having better living and working conditions than humans and the whole AI industry will be clapping

It's so weird how distorted your view of any of these concepts are from what these people actually say. I don't think you've ever seriously looked into either group if you believe any of their views support what you say. In fact, many EAs and "longetermists" are explicitly AGAINST the development of AGI.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#407

Post by kennywinker »

lesuorac wrote: post #351
subygan wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're right. it coincidentally solves cancer and infectious diseases as well. the ultimate utopia

Look, it's really simple we'll have 3 laws that the robots follow and nothing will go wrong.

Except instead of bots that follow asimov’s three laws we’re getting bots that follow the ferengi rules of acquisition.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#409

Post by maxnevermind »

throwaway_7274 wrote: post #214

Just want to say, this comment section on this website would have been unthinkable a few years ago. It’s wild: all the engineers have developed class consciousness. I wonder how that happened? Anyway, it’s fun to watch, but remember to stay sane guys, be aware of the pendulum dynamics.

> I wonder how that happened?

My explanation is - the technology is amazing and engineers admired it, but CEOs kept talking about an exponential curve while engineers on the ground started to notice signs of Gartner hype cycle curve.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#410

Post by Karrot_Kream »

reducesuffering wrote: post #389
gibspaulding wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild indeed. It seems like a couple of years ago the HN and LW commentariat had a lot in common, but they’ve drifted so far in opposite directions that they look more like opposing political parties today.

I mean one look at both commentary and it's clear HN has devolved considerably. Just look at the atrocious difference in intelligent reasoning in this thread's comments compared to a LessWrong post right now: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9RL9MuGZjzm4q3gKG/what-just-...

LW stayed selective as a forum, HN became the home of refugees from Reddit. HN reads more like yet-another-subreddit these days than an independent forum.

FWIW I think this is an artifact of site design more than anything else. A commentary site like HN in 2026 encourages hot takes and karma farming. All the "social media" with higher quality commentary like Substack and LessWrong center a large text blob of thought at the top and encourage reading more than writing. This puts up just enough of a barrier to write a hot take that you need to read the whole article and puts enough UI friction from leaving a throwaway angry comment that those folks will scroll away.

HN on the other hand all but encourages shallow posting. The article isn't posted, commentary is more prominent than the article itself. Leaving a comment takes 2-3 clicks and the comment editing flow excludes every other comment on the site, encouraging a write-first mentality. Ranking commentary based on upvotes offers a sweet dopamine hit over collecting karma. In 2026 these all encourage low quality engagement.

HN's UI has stayed relatively the same over the years while the Internet around it hasn't and I think its UI now acts as a low quality commentary attractor. LW changed its site design to stem the tide of low quality comments that show up here. LW comments certainly have their problems, but then, we humans all have problems :) On balance the community is much sharper and much more capable of having intellectually heavyweight, sober discussions on controversial topics. Of course nothing seems to trump my own friend network.

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