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The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

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Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#251

Post by brookst »

oblio wrote: post #249
brookst wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straw man. Nobody would say that. Is the jury still out on whether software does more good than harm?

Some categories, for sure. We have no idea about the impact of AI. It's almost like the EU is regulating stuff that's really scary.

Absolutely. The EU's regulatory posture is to prohibit things that could cause harm in the future. It's very consumer-first, risk-avoidant, and a fair way to do things.

For someone who's more willing to accept risk and who prefers regulating bad outcomes rather than just scary things that could possibly have bad outcomes but which nobody can predict, it looks over-protective. But I fully support the EU's right to take a wait-and-see approach and gradually accept AI if it goes well for the rest of the world.

Europe hasn't been at the forefront of any tech or cultural change for centuries, and seems to be getting along just fine.

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#252

Post by mschuster91 »

logicchains wrote: post #222
mschuster91 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually though it leads to a situation where no one has any trust left in government, which is extremely dangerous from a democracy perspective - it breeds resentment, splintering/secession and people taking the law into their own hands (or to put it bluntly, shooting at everything they deem a threat - including children playing hide-and-seek [1]). That's also the reason why there are so many doomsday preppers in…

> extremely dangerous from a democracy perspective How is it extremely dangerous? Over a hundred million people died in the 20th century from trusting their government too much, nothing compares to that.

Simple: if enough people do not trust the government and do not go to vote, the government loses its democratic legitimacy - and fringe extremists gain ever more power. What happened to the Republican Party should ring all alarm bells - the Bush era was bad enough, but look just how far the moderates have eroded from the party since these times. The fact that the current top runner for the GOP Presidency nomination in 2024 will be a man twice impeached and convicted of (for now at least) sexual assault or that a complete fraud (George Santos, if that even is his legal real name?!) could gain a seat in Congress is worrying - where have all the people gone that would have said "no, we want someone who can at least behave themselves in a somewhat decent manner worthy of the office"?

The alternative can be seen in France: many have voted Macron purely because he was (and is) better than le Pen and the other parties have all but eroded - and now the country is embroiled in riots because, surprise, the population didn't vote for this shit of a pension reform: they voted to simply not have a fascist in office.

> Over a hundred million people died in the 20th century from trusting their government too much, nothing compares to that.

Hitler's rise to power was precisely the other way around - mainly due the exploding inflation after WW1, an economy hampered by reparations and the subsequent loss of trust in democracy and the government. The people flocked to Hitler because he ran on a platform of scapegoating - Hitler's platform was to blame the "rich Jewish elites" and that their extinction would save the people.

The most troubling thing for me is just how many parallels the rise of Hitler has with our current economic situation. Rampant inflation and explosion of costs of living, government budgets strained by the combined cost of massive economic crises (2008ff financial crisis, euro crisis, migration crisis, COVID, Russian invasion), external enemies to rally the people behind (China), a loss of trust in democracy accompanied by a world-wide rise of charismatic strongmen (Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Xi, Salvini/Meloni), lies and propaganda running unchecked, open violence in the streets... history is repeating itself, right as the last survivors of the 1933-1945 era have died - and those few that are still alive have kept sounding the alarm for years now without being heard.

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#253

Post by mschuster91 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #217
mschuster91 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually though it leads to a situation where no one has any trust left in government, which is extremely dangerous from a democracy perspective - it breeds resentment, splintering/secession and people taking the law into their own hands (or to put it bluntly, shooting at everything they deem a threat - including children playing hide-and-seek [1]). That's also the reason why there are so many doomsday preppers in…

the US has more of a culture of self sufficiency. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It also has higher incomes that allow for such types of frivolous spending

> It also has higher incomes that allow for such types of frivolous spending

We have the same net income as the Americans in Europe (ludicrous tech salaries aside), we simply pay collectively with our taxes for stuff that Americans have to pay for on their own, first and foremost healthcare and retirement.

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#254

Post by ithkuil »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #200
ithkuil wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a position I do share, but let me play the devil's advocate for moment: What if an AI research company doesn't want to be a supervillain or do bad things but they (or their investors) decide it's safer to just do the research in a jurisdiction where they face less risk of being subjected to regulatory burden especially during the early exploratory stage. Surely they'll care about abiding to the rules of one of…

Flashback to 1880 Oklahoma, US: "What if an oil research company doesn't want to be a supervillain or do bad things but they (or their investors) decide it's safer to just do the research in a jurisdiction where they face less risk of being subjected to regulatory burden especially during the early exploratory stage." Edit: In case anyone is confused, Post 1880, Land in modern day Oklahoma was considered "unassigned"…

I'm sorry but despite the edit I still fail to get the point you're making.

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#255

Post by aqme28 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #206
Taywee wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as unanswerable a question as "how many lives would have been lost by dangerous medications with long-term side effects that didn't become apparent in the term of testing?" We can't really know whether it was a net good or a net bad because we can't take a look at the reality that didn't happen. What we do know is that there were deadly medications on the market before the FDA. There were medications available o…

Actually there is a huge amount of research into this. The wide consensus seems to be that the FDA is far too conservative and overall having more lax approvals would have saved many more lives in net.

Studies saying that the "FDA is too conservative" does not mean that the optimal situation would be no FDA at all.

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#256

Post by hef19898 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #207
hef19898 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus, no idea what to say here... Just one thing: mRNA vaccines, coming out of cancer treatment research, one of the most sucessful companies is actually German, and they use the mountains of cash they made during Covid, partnering with Pfizer on Covid vaccines, to really push the cancer research. Unregulated medical research is bad, like in really, literall Nazi doctor bad. Shocking it still has to pointed out...

this is a straw man, less regulation does not immediately mean Nazis. I mean come on be reasonable

A buncjlh of the EU rules around medical research and drug development is, in fact, based on experience with leteral Nazo experimentation done by the likes of Dr. Mengele. Dor once not an internet drope, but rather historical fact.

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#257

Post by renjimen »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #245
Taywee wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is so disingenuous it's ridiculous. It's like opposing gun regulation with some contrived scenario about water pistols and Nerf guns.

It is enough to recognize that at minimum, people disagree about which software things cause harm whereas people overwhelming recognize that lead in food is bad. Given that reasonable people disagree, it's not even close to comparable.

Well yeah. Lead in food is very specific. Software is very broad. Nobody said all software was bad.

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#258

Post by bitL »

ldhough wrote: post #236
bitL wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France's industrial might is going down quickly and Germany without cheap resources is losing against China that copied most of its tech. Moreover, China is already outcompeting US in the AI albeit focusing on population control models. EU will become an open air museum for rich travellers.

> China is outcompeting the US in ... population control models. I feel 100% OK with being "outcompeted" in this space.

That's fine, but the point is that EU will be super vulnerable to any AI because they didn't invest in it nor created an environment hospitable for it.

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#259

Post by csomar »

Taywee wrote: post #164
endisneigh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. There are people who think guns are harmless and do not need to be regulated. There are those who do. At the end of the day guns do not shoot people on their own, though.

Yes, but gun regulations don't operate under the assumption that guns shoot people on their own. They operate under the understanding that people who do damage can do much more damage with guns than without. Pretending that any of the regulation of guns or AI is done with the understanding that they are anything other than powerful tools that can be used by humans to do profound damage is a strawman argument. We all…

Given that Switzerland allow guns, this idea is that guns will make it worse is wrong. People don't need guns to make significant damage. Because guns are harder to get in Europe, nut-jobs used trucks.

The solution is to educate people to do less self or other's harm. To understand how to operate with these things.

But educating people is expensive and difficult. It also sometimes backfire in creating a population that's much harder to persuade. So yeah let's regulate these idiots to death...

Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

#260

Post by konschubert »

aqme28 wrote: post #255
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there is a huge amount of research into this. The wide consensus seems to be that the FDA is far too conservative and overall having more lax approvals would have saved many more lives in net.

Studies saying that the "FDA is too conservative" does not mean that the optimal situation would be no FDA at all.

I don’t think anyone in this thread here is saying that there should be no FDA regulation at all?
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