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California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

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Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#161

Post by johnnyanmac »

pishpash wrote: post #117
johnnyanmac wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s akin to requiring manufacturers to disclose whether a product is hand made or whether machines were used to reduce the need for humans to do repetitive manual labour. Let's go off this lens... why is this bad? >The bots that are used to help humans achieve nefarious goals will simply continue to pretend to be human. Good. Now I can catch them, report them, and CA can fine them. Again, I don't see the downside.…

But the discrimination angle is interesting. What if a law required everyone to be "transparent" and respond truthfully to "are you [some race]"?

But a bot isn't a human. It doesn't have any rights nor even indirect rights like animals do. It's a tool and I don't see anything wrong with tools being clear about what they are. And I especially do not like beokg tricked by a non-human pretending to be human.

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#162

Post by johnnyanmac »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #125
johnnyanmac wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Online platforms with over 10 million monthly U.S. visitors would need to ensure bot operators on their services comply with these expanded disclosure rules. Dang can check for you.

You're claiming that news.ycombinator.com has over 10 million monthly U.S. visitors? Most of us are just bots.

I was going to say no, but decided to try and look it up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33454140

A lot more than I expected, but we're in the clear... For now.

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#163

Post by johnnyanmac »

scarab92 wrote: post #140
johnnyanmac wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it luiddite-ism to not lie? The core issue here isn't even about tech. It's about transparency.

Because they aren't lieing, they are simply not disclosing whether their actions are the result on an organic neural network or a silicon one. Society almost never differentiates between goods and services produced directly by human hands, versus with the aid of tools.

Thars called a lie by ommission. If the default assumption is that you're chatting with humans, then there's some deception in a non-human masquerading as one.

>Society almost never differentiates between goods and services produced directly by human hands

Sure we do. We all have different expectations of a human service vs. Using a tool for something. Self checkout, for example. Or a robotaxi vs an Uber driver. Humans themselves can be a service and that can affect how we want to pay or approach one.

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#164

Post by scarab92 »

pishpash wrote: post #117
johnnyanmac wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s akin to requiring manufacturers to disclose whether a product is hand made or whether machines were used to reduce the need for humans to do repetitive manual labour. Let's go off this lens... why is this bad? >The bots that are used to help humans achieve nefarious goals will simply continue to pretend to be human. Good. Now I can catch them, report them, and CA can fine them. Again, I don't see the downside.…

But the discrimination angle is interesting. What if a law required everyone to be "transparent" and respond truthfully to "are you [some race]"?

Discriminate just means differentiate.

The parent comment isn't talking about race, they are talking about discriminating between human and human tool (bot).

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#165

Post by doctorpangloss »

bhaney wrote: post #16
doctorpangloss wrote: post #10

Should PUBG mobile players be told they are winning against bots? Should psychics tell you they cannot really speak for the dead?

Yes and yes

I'm mocking the idea of a consistent answer. Of course you can be consistent, but you'll wind up with a bunch of rules that are stupid.

Do we make it illegal to pretend Santa is a real person? Do you see? It's exactly the same thing.

But I don't think that's a good idea, about Santa. OChatbots disclosing they're bots makes sense, but not because it's logical or whatever. And I'm not even sure if it makes sense to do in the context of entertainment, where suspending disbelief is common.

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#166

Post by scarab92 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #124
tenpies wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bothers me that they didn't consider that this should be bilateral: a bot must confirm that it is a bot, and a human must confirm it is a human. I wouldn't want humans pretending to be bots, for a variety of reasons.

> I wouldn't want humans pretending to be bots, for a variety of reasons. I don't have an opinion yet, but I can't think of a specific reason to object to that (other than a default preference for honesty). Could you give an example or two?

What you'll find is that most people form a knee jerk opinion first, most often in opposition to change, then retrospectively seek reasons to justify their opinion after the fact.

In other words, people, generally, cherrypick evidence for their opinions, rather than picking opinions for their evidence.

A good sign this is occuring is when the reasons provided are vague, the prevalence of that negative outcome is rare, or are hypothetical scenarios which rely on companies or people behaving in unlikely and unnatural ways (like ignoring broader incentives).

The result is luddite-ism, and proposals exactly like this one, whereby regulations are proposed even in the absence meaningful and demonstrable harm.

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#167

Post by scarab92 »

pishpash wrote: post #116
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had a number of encounters with ISP tech support where the humans seemed a lot like bots…

All support is basically like bots nowadays, that's why they can be replaced by bots so easily.

It's all neural nets.

The differences are just implementation details (i.e. whether the transistors are carbon or silicon based).

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#168

Post by rightbyte »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #109
tenpies wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bothers me that they didn't consider that this should be bilateral: a bot must confirm that it is a bot, and a human must confirm it is a human. I wouldn't want humans pretending to be bots, for a variety of reasons.

I’ve had a number of encounters with ISP tech support where the humans seemed a lot like bots…

I think they used to have a lot of canned responses which made them feel like bots.

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#169

Post by rightbyte »

scarab92 wrote: post #141
lupire wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Luddites were activists defending humanity against the harms of mechanization, yes.

Machines have resulted in extraordinary improvements in quality of life for humans. Luddites should be ignored because they are alarmist, and care not for whether their concerns are warranted or necessary, much like Californian politicians.

The Luddites were some sort of proto-socialists. The conception about them being mainly anti-machine is propaganda to mock them.

Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots

#170

Post by slg »

scarab92 wrote: post #153
slg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Society almost never differentiates between goods and services produced directly by human hands, versus with the aid of tools. This is objectively wrong. "Handmade" is an incredibly common marketing keyword slapped on all sorts of products to imply quality.

That's a completely voluntary marketing decision. There's no law requiring manufacturers to identify hand made versus machine made, and often, there aren't even clear definitions for what hand made means.

Those goalposts moved fast from "Society almost never..." to "There's no law requiring...".
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