A decade or two of stagnation would be frustrating for those in the field but probably overall a good thing. Plus I don't think this would affect research at all so not even.
Is a decade or two of a head start given to high-tech totalitarian regimes like China overall a good thing?
> Plus I don't think this would affect research at all so not even.
Limiting use of AI reduces interest of the public and young researchers and engineers, contributes to brain drain and limits availability of large datasets that are an important asset for AI development.
I disagree. As a senior-year PhD student, I am relieved that the EU is taking a stance on this matter and hope that others in the West will follow suit (it's probably too late for China). I am relieved because I personally have grave concerns about the uses of AI in society and have thought for some time that some kind of formal and official framework is needed. AI researchers haven't yet managed to establish such a framework, so legislators have stepped in. The framework still seems pretty "green" and like it will take a lot of development and improvement, but that a first step was made is important.
So in fact you might say that having a legal framework in place makes AI research more attractive, because the student is not left to wonder about the ethics of her research on her own.
As to the availability of large datasets- how do you see that this would be affected by the legislation being considered?
I should also point out that the reliance on large datasets is a bug, not a feature, of the currently dominant AI techniques and that an alternative is sorely needed. If large datasets became less easily available, that would give a good incentive to researchers to go do something new, rather than throw a ton of data to an old benchmark to improve it by 0.2%.
I have zero faith in the ability of activists or states to decide when it's safe to deploy some new technology. Only the people can decide that.
Tension between small-c conservatism that resists change and innovators who push for it before the results can be known is very important!
No one person or group needs to or will decide. Definitely not states. "Activists" both in favor of and opposed to changes will be part of it. The last few decades in tech the conservative impulse has been mostly missing (at least in terms of the application of technology to our society lol) and look where we are. A techno-dystopian greed powered corporate surveillance state.
We're not going to vote on it. Arguments like the one happening in this comments section _is_ the process for better or worse.
For example, we should be much more cautious about using AI to decide "who should get pulled over for a traffic stop" or "how long a sentence should someone get after a conviction". Many government uses of AI are deeply concerning and absolutely should move more slowly. And government uses of AI should absolutely be a society-level decision.
For uses of AI that select between people (e.g. hiring mechanisms), even outside of government applications, we already have regulations in that area, regarding discrimination. We don't need anything new there, we just need to make it explicitly clear that using an opaque AI does not absolve you from non-discrimination regulations.
To pick a random example, if you used AI to determine "which service phonecalls should we answer quicker", and the net effect of that AI results in systematically longer/shorter hold times that correlate with a protected class, that's absolutely a problem that should be handled by existing non-discrimination regulations, just as if you had an in-person queue and systematically waved members of one group to the front.
We don't need to be nearly as cautious about AIs doing more innocuous things, where consequences and stakes are much lower, and where a protected class isn't involved. And in particular, non-government uses of AI shouldn't necessarily be society-level decisions. If you don't like how one product or service uses AI, you can use a different one. You don't have that choice when it comes to hiring mechanisms, or interactions with government services or officials.
Reading the article, it sounds like many of the proposals under consideration are consistent with that: they're looking closely at potentially problematic uses of AI, not restricting usage of AI in general.
Wanna give some examples or are you just dog-whistling?
I don't know that I agree that there exists an algorithm that can determine what is factually true, so I'm not sure I agree that an algorithm can "notice a true thing".
Do you have an example of when an algorithm noticed something that was objectively true but was shut down? Can you explain how the algorithm took notice of the fact that was objectively true (in such a way that all parties agree with the truth of the fact)?
I can't think of a single example of an algorithm determining or taking notice of an objective fact that was rejected in this way. But there are lots of controversies I'm not aware of, so it could have slipped by me.
I don't think "reflects the corpus of training data" gets entails "is therefore an objectively true fact". In fact, I think a lot of people that complain about AI gender stereotyping for jobs or personal traits would _exactly describe the problem_ as AI is "reflecting the corpus of training data".
I don't think anyone disagrees that the AI/ML learns things reflected in the corpus of training data.
My request for an example is one where the AI/ML is reflecting an "objective truth" about reality and people then object to that output. But "the AI/ML is reflecting an objective truth about the training data" fails to satisfy my request for an example, because it falls short of demonstrating that the training data was an accurate and objective reflection of reality.
We're just using different adjectives based on gender.
Of course, perhaps the parent is referring to something else. I'd also like to see some examples.
What happens if you and others have conflicting views on the "larger societal context"? Who wins, obviously you because you are right?
AI has become political football now and everyone with an issue finds an AI angle. In all this game few are actually interested in AI itself.
That being said.. I don't trust the gov to decide what should be on the internet. I have to resist all attempts to do so, while acknowledging some gov suppression is probably beneficial. It's a duality and despite being no one side of it you can acknowledge the importance of the other side.
> A decade or two of stagnation would be frustrating for those in the field but probably overall a good thing. Plus I don't think this would affect research at all so not even.
I agree. And frankly, technological "progress" for its own sake reeks of technopoly [1]. Technology should serve society, not the other way around.
[1] A term coined in a very good book by Neil Postman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly:
> Postman defines technopoly as a "totalitarian technocracy", which demands the "submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology".
And I absolutely could not care less about "great companies rising" either now or hypothetically in the future.
Some applications of AI tech are very clearly MORALLY WRONG and cause harm. Currently that harm is limited because the reach of these tools is limited and that is the only thing holding them back from doing worse.
If companies need that dynamic to rise and be great then they can just not as far as I'm concerned.
Won't they just leave? They could just go somewhere where this isn't banned.