…but I think I kind of agree with this argument. Technology is a tool that can be used for good or for ill. We shouldn’t outlaw kitchen knives because people can cut themselves.
We don’t expect Adobe to restrict the content that can be created in Photoshop. We don’t expect Microsoft to have acceptable use policies for what you can write in Microsoft Office. Why is it that as soon as generative AI comes into the mix, we hold the AI companies responsible for what users are able to create?
Not only do I think the companies shouldn’t be responsible for what users make, I want the AI companies to get out of the way and stop potentially spying on me in order to “enforce their policies”…
> We don’t expect Adobe to restrict the content that can be created in Photoshop. We don’t expect Microsoft to have acceptable use policies for what you can write in Microsoft Office.
Photoshop and Office don't (yet) conjure up suicide lullabys or child nudity from a simple user prompt or button click. If they did, I would absolutely expect to hold them accountable.
The political economy equilibrium enabled by technology very much goes the other way though. Once politicians realize they can surveil everyone in real time for wrongthink and wrongspeak they have existential incentives to seize that power as fast as possible, lest another power center seize it instead and use it against them. That is why you are seeing the rise of totalitarianism and democratic backsliding everywhere, because the toxic combination of asymmetric cryptography (for secure boot/attestation/restricting what software can run), always online computers, and cheap data processing and storage leads to inexorable centralization of soft and hard power.
Some manufactures of knives could still be recalled for safety reasons, and MS Office/Google Drive certainly have content prohibitions in their TOS once you’re dealing with their online storage. I agree with your metaphor in that I doubt much use would come from banning AI entirely, but I feel there must be some viable middle ground of useful regulation here.
OpenAI didn't encourage anyone to do anything. They made some software that semi-randomly puts words together in response to user input. This type of software isn't even new—I can definitely get Eliza to say terrible things with the right input, and Eliza even bills herself as a therapist!
Let me get this straight - so the safety team at OpenAI - what exactly are they working on? Is it all focused on censorship of inputs and results, and steering how you think? Or are they not responsible for designing against these horiffic outcomes as a primary goal?
I would take the view that their safety team is maybe focused on the wrong things (former) and has been captured by extremists instead of pragmatists, but that's like just my opinion man. I'll use Anthropic and Venice until I notice less steering in my threads, personally. An GPT that constantly eggs me on isn't a thought-partner, it's a dopamine device. If I'm going to outsource my thinking to an LLM I need something I trust won't put it's own spin on things or gas me up into taking action I never originally intended to do without critical thinking first.
> These stories never make clear if the change is bounded by the location of the users.
IANAL but my understanding is that people outside the UK won't have their free speech affected and will still be able to ask Grok to create pornographic images of children for them. As the founding fathers intended.
Fair enough. People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy' or 'not my king', and the person holding up a blank sign was intimidated by police. Slightly better, I guess.
You've backtracked from your 'blank sign' position. I'm pointing out that your "People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy'" might be on similarly shaky ground.
If it's not clear, I'm also heavily implying that you should be questioning the veracity of whatever source you're getting this easily-debunked tripe from.
> You've backtracked from your 'blank sign' position.
I wouldn't say backtracked. I acknowledged a correction. The pont still stands, people are being arrested and/or intimidated by police for expressing a non-hatespeech, non-violent opinion.
> I'm pointing out that your "People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy'" might be on similarly shaky ground.
I gave a source elsewhere in this thread.
> If it's not clear, I'm also heavily implying that you should be questioning the veracity of whatever source you're getting this easily-debunked tripe from.
It's not tripe, and if you want to attempt to go ahead and debunk it. I was wrong about the arrest for the blank sign as admitted, I'm not wrong about people being arrested for holding up signs expressing non-hatespeech, non-violent opinions, for which sources are abundant.
Presumably AGCOM are accountable to the Italian government and therefore ultimately the Italian people. Or do you just mean 'unaccountable' in the sense that Americans should be able to do whatever they please, wherever they please, and they don't appreciate being hindered by trivial things like other country's laws.
"UK police made over 12,000 arrests under laws criminalizing communications causing 'annoyance or anxiety,' with arrests rising 58% since 2019" [1]. Only 10% lead to a conviction. What then, is it, other than a government issuing arrests for speech?
The vast bulk of those cases are about online harassment, usually against former spouses, public servants, etc. If you are aware of a case where an individual was arrested for just expressing their opinion you are welcome to provide the evidence. Until then this is just FUD. Censorship is bad, protecting the rest of the citizens from harassment is the kind of thing that is actually useful.
Are you expecting me to comb through thousands of cases? Obviously they were arrested for saying legal things, if their arrest doesn't follow a conviction in 90% of cases.
I expect that when you say someone was arrested for speech and it's government overreach (as opposed to a legitimate arrest), you should show us the speech they were arrested for, to back up your claim that it's overreach.
Please read the report linked in the article. This in not a policy announcement. This a report from a government-appointed official illustrating that there is a theoretical possibility that the current legalisation may be interpreted in a way they didn't intend.
It didn't happen in the US though, so that's neither here nor there. America's political system is not some benchmark that the rest of the world needs to judge themselves against.
"Can"? Sure. "Does"? Now that's debatable. Still waiting for the latest scandal to wrap up. Any day now. Surely it was the last. Surely the limp response hasn't led to more. _Surely_ arresting people for talking about it on social media hasn't led to more of it going on.
In no way am I excusing the horrible treatment black people and indigenous people have received in the USA. It’s awful and definitely crimes that should have been prosecuted and the failure to do so is a stain on America and the ideals people want it to hold. But noting that it’s qualitatively and quantitatively different from a government organized industrial extermination machine doesn’t seem like something crazy. And pretending like power dynamics aren’t in play in terms of prosecuting Nazis is naive - it’s literally what Nazis said at the Nuremberg trials - it’s a sham trial because it’s just the victors killing the defeated. But it did manage to establish some kind of minimum legal framework even if it’s not as far as we’d have liked. Also important to remember that the US committed abhorrent legitimate war crimes in Vietnam even by Nuremberg standards - but the US is a super power and it’s an unsolved problem about who will hold a superpower (or even a nuclear power) to count for crimes against humanity.
