10 ms·
Indeed, I find quite ironic that some people in tech in the US complain about EU "regulations first" approach, but then their government seem to arbitrarily sto
by winterismute 3mo ago
Indeed, I find quite ironic that some people in tech in the US complain about EU "regulations first" approach, but then their government seem to arbitrarily stop things from being released because, well, there is no established policy on safety guarantees or other similar aspects.
- criddell 3mo agoMaybe this is a good opportunity for the European AI companies to jump ahead?
- jessepasley 3mo agoLol
- dopidopHN2 3mo agoThe US is already behind and has been technically. Can't wait for that part to sink in. This start to be a source of second hand embarrassment when I see US folk think their country is still leading the race technically.
- villish 3mo agoDefine leading then. Mythos and GPT score higher on all the benchmarks versus Chinese models. I suppose your anti-american mindset has given you a different definition of leading than the rest of us.
- dopidopHN2 3mo agoI'm american btw. I define leading by : Renewable energy, EV, sustainable agriculture, Drone warfare, public infrastructure, soft power, Grid management, Nuclear. I use AI every day since 2 years and it did not really occurs to me. I think its as important as the crypto industry. Edit: fair, its unhinge of me to say that on a post about LLM regulations. I still feel the same way. We will wake up and be the UK.
- madprops 3mo agoAI is probably old italian tech
- basisword 3mo agoThis applies to most things when it comes to the USG/citizens. Protectionism is communist unless they do it. Thinking about developing a nuke? Well bomb you first despite being the only people to ever use them. Free speech and press - unless we don’t like what you say.
- ronsor 3mo agoThis arrangement is already dubiously legal. The government is already being sued over the Fable incident with Anthropic. No amount of rules can stop people who are willing to break them. Only enforcement can.
- darig 3mo ago[dead]
- peter422 3mo agoAnthropic just needs to donate millions of dollars to a “MAGA Inc” like Greg Brockman did and they’ll get regulated properly from now on. It’s a perfectly good system for government regulation.
- thegreatpeter 3mo ago[flagged]
- colinbooks 3mo agoalways important to compare things that are actively happening to things that didn’t
- hilariously 3mo agoProbably not personal bribery?
- boredatoms 3mo agoOr perhaps threaten to donate $10b to the DNC
- Goronmon 3mo agoThat threat will probably result in a DOJ investigation into everyone involved until they hit something they think they can prosecute someone for, even if it's not true.
- refulgentis 3mo agoOur AI czar, David Sacks, whined and moaned about the idea of regulation, even said Anthropic begging for some guidance was asking for “regulatory capture” and was gloating about how right he was they wanted it, 2 weeks ago. I wonder if he understands why, now.
- GaryBluto 3mo ago> Anthropic begging for some guidance Anthropic was "begging" to make it harder for competing companies to be founded.
- ronsor 3mo agoThey got the "leopards ate my face" ending.
- refulgentis 3mo agoNo, it’s not leopards ate my face / irony / comeuppance, because that would involve regulation. I understand it’s very satisfying if you wanted Anthropic “punished” for asking for real regulation to see this. I can’t deny there was a little bit of me at first that felt that way. It’s untenable, a first order reaction, that I regret intellectually, because if you were against regulation, you’re certainly against waves whatever this is.
- ronsor 3mo agoI don't want anyone being punished. I want everyone to stop acting stupid. I would've much preferred if Dario hadn't run his mouth so much.
- blackqueeriroh 3mo agoYou actually think that would’ve changed things? I don’t. We’d still be here.
- 3mo ago
- alberto467 3mo agoLet’s be real, as an EU citizen I have zero doubts that those models would also have been blocked if developed in EU. I like the US approach better: regulate when the need for it arises, not before when you don’t know how the situation is going to evolve.
- JoshTriplett 3mo ago> regulate when the need for it arises I agree. But that need has absolutely arisen. The US government is not exactly the best steward for this kind of thing, but some model other than "race each other as fast as we can" is desperately needed here.
- fl0id 3mo agoIf they were real about risk, they would have to block a lot more models.
- ascorbic 3mo agoThey're not regulating though – they're arbitrarily blocking releases based on no clear criteria. The EU may be legalistic and rules-based, but I'd take that over capricious and arbitrary.
- axus 3mo agoIt would be really nice if the executive were blocking these releases based on some authority the legislative had granted it.
- MichaelZuo 3mo agoYeah it seems very shady to do it this way… far worse than the EU. The fact that they couldn’t clear an already low bar is a really bad sign.
- blackqueeriroh 3mo agoYes, Trump is the worstPresident we’ve had, the Supreme Court is captured by conservatives, the Republicans would rather die than vote against Trump, we know all of this. It’s bad, okay? And it’s not usually like this.
- WarmWash 3mo agoOn some level though we have to be cognizant of the potential for harm these models have. LLMs are still a little loosey goosey, and we are right on the cusp (if not there already) for an agent to hack a bank and steal money for some rando teenager with a penchant for jail breaking. The regulations are and will be negative, but don't lose sight of what LLMs can do off the leash.
- yunwal 3mo ago> On some level The appropriate level would be regulation though? Like I just don't get how we can argue that arbitrarily throttling companies is ok.
- WarmWash 3mo agoOpenAI fired the starting gun 3.5 years ago before anyone in the industry had a sound safety plan, and not much progress has been made since. So here we are, it's probably going to me messy and err on the side of over-bearing.
- yunwal 3mo agoI'm fine with erring on the side of overbearing, as long as it's not blatant cronyism
- mrngld 3mo agoToo overbearing though and you get... Mistral? A continent that hasn't been on the leading edge of anything (other that expansion of the regulatory state) for decades, and Europe feels it in their employment numbers. Current French (8.2%), Spanish (10.3%) or even Swedish (8.6%) unemployment would count as a disastrous recession in the US. In the US we call 2007-09 the "Great Recession", which peaked at 10.0%, and that relatively brief time left a generational mark. That's a somewhat routine number by EU standards. Not to mention you end up with bizarre effects. If the UK were admitted as the 51st state it'd immediately be the poorest. (Yes, some EU countries are wealthy, but they're also the size of US counties, if we cherry pick just Manhattan we could make some spectacular comparisons too) So, it's a complex issue but the tradeoffs are absolutely tangible yet often dismissed.
- 9dev 3mo agoIt’s a bit in general, because if you actually read the EU AI legislation, most of it follows the right ideas and provides more safety, in the sense that OpenAI and Anthropic used to pretend to care about, but never really did.
- brookst 3mo agoThe ideas are debatable but generally correct. The EU's problem is that regulation stops at the ideas, and it is intentionally designed so to be impossible to ensure compliance in advance. So the regulation is really after the fact and a subjective judgment by regulators. So there's tons of risk even if you genuinely believe you're complying with the prescribed intents. My opinion on EU regulation would flip 180 degrees if they offered any kind of pre-clearance where you could propose a product, feature, or policy and be told in advance if it meets their subjective requirements. IMO you can have clear, specific requirements in advance, or you can have a body that provides interpretations of spirit-of-the-rules regulations in advance. Having neither is a problem. (yes, I'm aware of the argument that if you tell companies what's legal in advance they will just do the bare minimum or find loopholes... I don't find that to be a legit rule of law system)
- 9dev 3mo agoI understand that desire entirely, but I’m not sure if it would work that way. Take an ISO 27001 certification (or SOC, if you like): There is no one clear set of things to do, but both guidance and requirements that you need to address and be able to defend your concrete implementation. And I generally like that a lot better than having a set of hard this-way-or-no-way checklists that invariably consist of 80% bullshit ceremony for giant corporations. ISO nudges you toward that too, but if you’re able to deliver the same security guarantees with less, auditors will usually be happy. The same, in general, works for GDPR regulations as well: The law is mostly about doing the right things, but not spelling out the billions of cases and permutations and strategic decisions involving privacy in one way or another.
- dreamfactored 3mo agoIt's deliberately not prescriptive as the implementers are the ones best placed to solve for requirements - you don't want policy makers providing technical checklists. And it's not unstructured - ISO 42001 essentially encodes it.
- brookst 3mo agoIt would only be ironic of you assume those same people who thing the EU over-regulates also support this US government regulation. It's N=1, but I believe both that the EU approach discourages investment and innovation in the EU, and that this US policy will do the same in the US.
- tptacek 3mo agoI see it too, but worth noting that this is basically unprecedented at least within the last 25 years; I think you have to go back to export controlled cryptography for another example of this kind of abrupt and targeted regulation.
- jameshart 3mo agoWe’ve seen more examples recently. TikTok, wireless routers, polestar cars…
- boelboel 3mo agoHuawei, Foreign gambling sites were banned on dubious reasons in 2006 (in reality American companies weren't as competitive and las Vegas needed to be protected), Japanese electronic tariffs in the 80s/90s ... US never exactly believe in full on 'free trade'.
- smallmancontrov 3mo agoThe US believed in free trade precisely when the politically connected needed labor arbitrage, and protectionism exactly when the politically connected needed protection. The pretense of underlying ideals was never more than a political tool - political economy was always political.
- coffeemug 3mo agoIt depends on whether you believe US action is overdetermined, but I think if Trump didn’t get elected we would have continued on the path of free trade. His election wasn’t predestined. He had just the right mix of features to win at the time, but if this basket of features didn’t exist it’s not hard to imagine the country going down a very different path.
- smallmancontrov 3mo agoIf we had continued on the path of free trade without "dealing in" those displaced by free trade, the pressure would have continued to grow. It certainly could have exploded in a different direction, at a different time, with a different champion, but so long as it was repressed instead of addressed it was always destined to explode.
- dylan604 3mo agoIs it really ironic or just yet another example of how the current administration just keep finding ways to line their pockets? Big Tech has lots of money, and they'd just like to get a little taste. Placing arbitrary restrictions is a pretty good motivator for those being restricted to find some way to make necessary contributions.
- frollogaston 3mo agoI'm fine with this in principle, it's more like regulations last. They looked at the end result and decided it was too powerful to let loose. But also expect the Trump administration to unfairly use it as leverage against US corps. Meanwhile EU prevented itself from building competitive LLMs in the first place.
- yapyap 3mo agoits the typical US regulations for consumer but not for corporations, disgusting
- al_borland 3mo ago> there is no established policy on safety guarantees Which is the government’s own fault. Elon Musk talked back in 2018 about how he went to Washington and met with Obama and Congress, but they did nothing. In 2020 Andrew Yang’s entire run for president was centered around the risk of AI displacing job. He lost, no one did anything. A couple years later we say the consumer facing LLMs start to roll out. Still, no one does anything. They have time to micromanage the industry, but in all these years they haven’t found the time to establish any meaningful policy?
- WarmWash 3mo agoDeeper than that, what to do with a super smart AI has been floating around intellectual circles since the late 00's. Google had been pussy-footing AI research due to deathly fear of awakening an ASI, because their safety teams still had no answers. Then Altman came along...
- CamperBob2 3mo agoIn your opinion, what was the appropriate action you believe should have been taken in 2018?
- vrganj 3mo agoRegulation is a good thing, even if HN hates it. It's a way to clearly agree on ground rules that you can plan around, not more, not less. The alternative is not no rules, do whatever you want. The alternative is executive capriciousness arbitrarily setting the rules based on whims and messing up your plans.
- nonethewiser 3mo agoWho specifically? Probably just different people.