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Comment by jevgeni | Hacker News Reader

Do you want to take a test and get a license to work on AI? Because that's how you are going to get there.

This doesn't seem enforceable. Plus this would be a good use case for 2A.

I would say it's fairly easily enforceable if the government simply passes a law that requires a "licensed AI Engineer" to approve a design before it gets used commercially.

This is how many other engineering disciplines work. Most people don't realize most engineers actually work under an exemption to this rule. But the mechanisms exist.

I don't think this is the way it will unfold though. Giving licenses to SWEs gives them even more leverage in the job market, which I don't think software companies will want to do and would fight that type of regulation tooth-and-nail.

That would likely accelerate the fall of society as we know it. I can’t think of a stronger financial incentive to go underground, or simply pack up and leave the country.

Before the recent AI boom in the US, China was known to have better opportunities for AI researchers. Hugo de Garis and Ben Goertzel both went over to China for that reason some time ago. Interestingly, De Garis predicted that a world war would eventually start over the issue of AI prohibition.

Maybe you could elaborate on how you define opportunity. If it resulted in more employee leverage, where they could double their salary, do you think people would still flee the market?

They weren’t doing it “for the money”. It was the only way they could get funded at the time to be able to work on AI at all. Similar analogy to the hypothetical where AI is regulated.

> I would say it's fairly easily enforceable if the government simply passes a law that requires a "licensed AI Engineer" to approve a design before it gets used commercially.

Would this include any type of AI because a simple linear regression is technically "AI".

This seems to me to be a problem specifically because the issue people have with models like dalle is that they could be used for harm (e.g., generated deep fake porn, cp, etc.), but that is left up to the consumer. The same could be said about any product. This seems to be akin to trying to "ban math" like then the US tried to ban the export of crypto. It necessarily fails in the end because no regulation can actually stop it, and once it exists it exists.

Plus, one could just set up a foreign hosted VPN and sell their "regulated" product from outside the US anyway.

This isn’t unique to software. The same issue exists in other engineering domains.

For example, some industrial programs require adherence to ASTM standards for pressure vessels. This extends to seemingly common tools like air compressors, which some people take umbrage with. It really comes down to the way in which industry/regulators craft the standards.

The best way IMO is to make the applicability risk based. Can the linear regression result in loss of human life? If so, maybe being “stamped” by a licensed engineer is appropriate. Approval by a licensed engineer essentially says a competent has ensured the relevant best practices to mitigate risk has been implemented.

> Would this include any type of AI because a simple linear regression is technically "AI".

I can't predict what lawmakers do, but it wouldn't surprise me if the first draft said before someone explains to them what Excel spreadsheets do when drawing trend lines.

That said, the general gist here is an extension of the UK's Data Protection Act and it's successor in the EU's GDPR: while those said "don't process personal data without permission", I can easily believe it would be analogous to "don't process real data without the OK of a chartered engineer".

> Plus, one could just set up a foreign hosted VPN and sell their "regulated" product from outside the US anyway.

Absolutely; the internet mocks national sovereignty.

Also, Stable Diffusion isn't a US product in the first place, it's a UK corporation and a German university research lab, amongst others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion

I think the reason it isn't enforceable is because the software will just be made in another country. This bypasses the entire issue. And if necessary you just get an American "AI engineer" to rubberstamp it.

I'm sure you could get someone to rubberstamp it. But, in practice, this is more difficult than you may think. If you are a licensed civil engineer and I show up to your office and ask you rubberstamp my bridge design, most would not because that creates a large legal liability for them. By stamping it, you are saying it meets the necessary design standards. If something goes wrong, the regulators are going to come after the person who certifies it for use.

That is also why it gives engineers more leverage. If a manager needs some to certify it, that licensed engineer has much more ability to push back on the design. The liability the stamp conveys is also why they tend to get paid more than unlicensed counterparts.

Then industry will just go back to calling various "AI" technology what they really are: machine learning, computer vision, etc. Suddenly no one will be doing AI and the regulation won't be able to keep up.

Lawmakers know about this kind of shenanigans. What you describe is the kind of thing which ends poorly for the person who thinks they have a cunning plan for getting away with $act.

Back when encryption was categorized as a "munition" under ITAR, and it was illegal to export PGP from the US except when printed on a t-shirt, there was talk of trying to claim that if it was a "munition" there was a right to it under the US second amendment. I don't think this got anywhere. You're better off taking a first amendment line of reasoning under US law.

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