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Opinion | AI Causes Real Harm. Let's Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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Technology
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I don't know, I'm much more concerned about the possibility that we develop huge automation capabilities that end up being controlled by very few people.
As for the specific issues in the article - yes, they're real problems. But every advance in communication and information technology makes it easier to surveil or defame, and can be used for bad policing.
Right now there's a push to regulate the internet to "prevent CSAM" by blocking encryption, and I'm afraid a push to regulate AI will not get better results.
Sure, we can ban predictive policing and demands some amounts of transparency (and the EU already wants to do that). But if we try to go further and impose restrictions on the AI models themselves, this will most likely solidify that AI is controlled by few powerful corporations. After all, highly regulated models by definition can't be free and open.
So we should just give up and accept surveillance and defamation without trying to come up with any legal counter measures?
Totally agree that KOSA and the like are awful, but the existence of shitty regulations doesn’t negate the need for positive regulations.
I just don’t see this? So regulating powerful companies use of AI will… solidify their power? I’m not connecting the dots here but that might be on me, as I think there are plenty of highly regulated spaces that still see innovation.
Some regulation proposals seem fine to me, like the proposed EU AI act.
But for some of the problems the article lists, like defamation or porn generation, you just can't prevent if you have free and open models out there. You can make these things harder - and people already work on that - but if I have a free and open model, I can also change it (and remove restrictions).
The only way to stop those uses would be to keep AI tightly controlled in a walled garden. In capitalism, those walled gardens will belong to companies.