it was better than banning AI in the free world and giving dictators advantages in AI tech.
The US doesn’t need to ban AI. It just needs to stop publicly deploying it, untested and unregulated, on the masses. And some of these big tech companies need to stop releasing open models that can be easily obtained and abused by bad actors. Dictatorships don’t actually like AI internally, because it threatens their control of the narrative within their country. For example, the CCP has been very cautious of it when compared to the US because it is concerned about how it could be employed against the party.
And this whole arms race argument sort of ignores the fact that the US continuing to mass deploy this shit at breakneck speed is already giving the dictators the advantages they need to fuck with democracy. No one needs to have a real war with the US if it starts one with itself.
frog@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Ah, the old “the only way to stop a bad person with a gun is for all the good people to have guns” argument.
davehtaylor@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Exactly.
Gods this whole “if we outlaw AI only outlaws will have AI” bullshit is so so tiresome and naive
frog@beehaw.org 6 months ago
It really is. I’m also not a huge fan of “everyone needs to have access to their own personal AI open source, otherwise only corporations will be able to use it”, like somehow the answer to corporations being shit is to give everyone else a greater ability to be shit too. What the world really needs is even more shit!
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Well fortunately it doesn’t matter what you think, and people will keep developing and improving open source AI nonetheless.
eveninghere@beehaw.org 6 months ago
The reality is, passing this huge amount of data was the only way these crazy current AI models work as powerful as ChatGPT. With a restriction like you fantasize, the AI programs would have been dominated by bad actors and the west would not have a counter technology for a decade if not longer.
Regulating the outputs of AIs would be a separate story. But it’s still overwhelmingly difficult. OpenAI is actually advanced in this region in the sense that they have in pocket the single best technology to politically balance the replies by a chatbot.
frog@beehaw.org 6 months ago
AI programs are already dominated by bad actors, and always will be. OpenAI and the other corporations are every bit the bad actors as Russia and China. The difference between Putin and most techbros is as narrow as a sheet of paper. Both put themselves before the planet and everyone else living on it. Both are sociopathic narcissists who take, take, take, and rely on the exploitation of those poorer and weaker than themselves in order to hoard wealth and power they don’t deserve.
eveninghere@beehaw.org 6 months ago
This is just labeling. You can label everything as bad at will. I’m fine with that, it’s called “you’re entitled to your opinion”. That’s not objective though.
eveninghere@beehaw.org 6 months ago
I already write one reply to tell my main point. But whatever argument you come up with, I don’t think that’ll match the reality as viewed by AI researchers. If you give me specific short questions I’d be happy to engage in a discussion, with conditions on time.
In any case, I won’t listen to metaphoric arguments like yours with guns because metaphoric arguments are very difficult to do scientifically. Every situation is different. I mean that anybody can always end the discussion saying “that’s oranges vs apples”, and everything time this happens you’d not have an objective way to counter that.
frog@beehaw.org 6 months ago
The metaphoric argument is exactly on point, though: the answer to “bad actors will use it for evil” is not “so everybody should have unrestricted access to this really dangerous thing.” Sorry, but in no situation you can possibly devise is giving everyone access to a dangerous tool the correct answer to bad people having access to it.
eveninghere@beehaw.org 6 months ago
I can say it’s both on point and not. For the not, you can ban the gun in the UK and it will be very difficult to bring one from the continent. Peace. But the same is not true for AI. If the UK government bans AI, Russia can still bring it through the internet.
And then I can still counter-argue that one, and then counter-argue this one also. See what a mess a metaphoric arguments bring.