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On AI regulation and messaging

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Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#441

Post by watwut »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #418
watwut wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. AI as a tech is not an issue. The wealth and power accumulation in the hands of Amodei, Altman, Thiel, Musk, Karp and the rest of CEO is the issue. Permanent underclass is ideological goal of the above people. AI is an impersonal technology with no goals or wishes.

I'm not sure how that changes anything -- sure, if you blocked people from using AI, it wouldn't have any effects on society, but once people have access, what they do with it matters. There's an inevitable effect that it has, and the only lever you have as an individual is being on the right side of that.

The problem is not access to AI. The problem is the lack of antitrust, the lack of white collar crime enforcement, the tax system that allows them to accumulate wealth while avoiding payments. The problem is legal regime with winner takes all monopoly creation support.

AI is the least of the problem.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#442

Post by urams »

infamouscow wrote: post #413
urams wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Specify the action for which you wish violence on these people?

BTW, not sure what gets more anti-human and evil than wishing violence on whole groups of people!

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#443

Post by advisedwang »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #428
advisedwang wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hyper business oriented, technology first view that is what HN typically has been is actually the exception. Open Source, hacker culture, scorn of "the suits", the love of sci-fi and it's attendant politics -- the bulk of actual technical people have a long history of being very politically aware and deliberately eschewing money for their values. It was rarely Marxist Class-Conciousness type stuff, but it…

Right, so why did this site revert to the mean then? Just because every noodle place is mediocre doesn't mean I want my noodle place to become mediocre.

My guess is growth alone explains the change. It went from being a niche site that had views representing that niche to a broad site with broad set of views represented in proportion to their prevelance.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#444

Post by xienze »

tmp10423288442 wrote: post #403
fragmede wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

The elephant in the room that a lot of people don't want to talk about is mass migration from countries where measles is still a major thing... surely that contributes a bit.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#445

Post by philipkglass »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #432
philipkglass wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copy the technology and give people access without trying to financially profit from it. Even if the US federal government refuses to act, smaller government entities can deploy their own compute clusters running strong open-weights models like Kimi K3, and provide their own citizens with free access to strong AI models. There may come a time when even Chinese providers no longer release strong model weights, but the…

The first one to AGI with enough compute to run the AI wins it all. Humans will not be able to compete.

If Anthropic is the first to develop AGI, then everyone else becomes subordinate to Dario Amodei? And if DeepSeek is the first to get there, everyone instead becomes subordinate to Liang Wenfeng? I cannot believe that there is a threshold of intelligence where getting there first means a decisive and durable advantage. If you do believe that getting there first means ruling the world, then our viewpoints are probably too far apart for mutual understanding.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#446

Post by simoncion »

ironqcold wrote: post #185
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…

I really can't disagree. What's the point of all this talk if for most ordinary people these technologies do more harm than good?

> What's the point of all this talk...

It signals to people who have money and/or influence that the speaker is "committed to doing the right thing" and "eager to find a workable path forward" that "meaningfully addresses the 'very real' concerns and misunderstandings that non-experts have about what the company the speaker is associated with are doing".

Once the speaker has signaled that, what more could they possibly do? They've signaled their willingness to open the channels of dialog with the rabble who are non-experts and -thus- cannot possibly be engaged with as equals. By doing this, the speaker tried their best, didn't they?

Or, to put it another way, it's PR and damage control... soothing theater for the folks who can actually affect them.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#447

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

kennywinker wrote: post #404
traceroute66 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 chan…

> Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone.

We do this. Have you ever heard of UN World Food Programme? $14B funding in 2022 (since then dropped drastically, guess why).

Has it solved famine? No. Would it solve famine if it got the funding it needs? Unlikely.

Because you cannot just spend billions of dollars to send amazin food parcels across the world and expect that to fix climate change, draught, poverty, colonialism, racism, illiteracy, lack of education, and propably 100 other issues all contributing to the fact that we still have not end hunger. And no, AI won’t solve it either.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#448

Post by simoncion »

GPerson wrote: post #436
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.

The early hacker culture in the 1970s inherited the political leanings of 1960s counterculture, so there’s nothing about being into tech that’s in opposition to class consciousness.

> ...there’s nothing about being into tech that’s in opposition to class consciousness.

I agree about the ethos and ethics of early hackers. But, I note that -by volume- most of the folks who do programming and nearly all of the people who are software-industry managers [0] are not hackers.

[0] I'm including managers at all levels, including the executive levels.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#449

Post by simoncion »

dandellion wrote: post #34
blfr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, it's not three years since. The real improvements in programming ability arrived in the last 6-8 months. Second, the Internet didn't show up much in GDP and similar measures either! But your point stands. Where are the amazing digital products/stuff? I get that it might take time to arrive as we scale up compute and learn new paradigms. But so much infra already exists (deployment pipeliens, everyone reachable…

I remember people moving the goalposts like that since, let me check... when did AI Dungeon go viral? Wow, 2019.

Yep. I've been hearing «Look, we only got tools that are really capable in the past 6->8 months... everything prior to that was unusable garbage, so anything anyone said about the field prior to that is totally invalid.» for years now.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#450

Post by bigbadfeline »

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…

D.A. >> Anthropic is ramping up its efforts very quickly in biology and medicine

At the same time, the best Anthro models refuse to answer biology questions, keeping the public in the dark not only about new AI-assisted results but also about conventional and health-protective research.

D.A. >> we hope to have incredible results in the coming years and some early glimmers in the coming months.

So, what changed? He went from a promise of AI bonanza any minute now to a promise to maybe cure cancer in the coming years, that's right, an unspecified number of years. Until that time, we're supposed to eat glimmers of hope because the AI-caused inflation will make food unaffordable.

D.A. >> When we’ve actually accomplished something real, the whole world will hear about it, as loudly as possible, you have my word on that.

And don't forget to stock on ear protection, because when something happens, it's going to be "as laud as possible", you've got Amo's word too - to marvel at in the meantime.

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