The acceleration of the divergence of the EU from the United States with respect to cutting edge software will be a site to behold. One is neutering and the other is cultivating.
Now the question is: what are they neutering/cultivating.
It might very well end in a "why did we start putting lead in gas again?" / "we can spray kids with DDT clouds right?" x100 moment
The problem is not drugs.
> DDT is classified as "moderately toxic" by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) and "moderately hazardous" by WHO
> "research has shown that exposure to DDT at amounts that would be needed in malaria control might cause preterm birth and early weaning ... toxicological evidence shows endocrine-disrupting properties; human data also indicate possible disruption in semen quality, menstruation, gestational length, and duration of lactation"
Honest SW innovations that don't aid in monetizing your eye-ball time to make you buys shit, or manipulating your emotions into making you feel insecure, or swaying your vote, don't make nearly as much money as what big-tech does.
Same as stopping food manufacturers from putting arsenic and lead in our food, or the auto industry from making only fuel inefficient air poisoning shitboxes, or big-tobacco who killed more people than the Nazis, the tech industry also needs regulations to protect the consumers, and honestly, it's long overdue and yet people on HN don't want this because they feel like this will stop them from becoming the next Zuckerberg.
You drew the line at software and automobiles, but it's not hard (and not a slippery slope) to authentically draw the line much further. All of civilization is bad for the planet and for us as well. Bread was a mistake.
I believe the Chinese Communists tried a similar thing[1]. I know you're just being poetic, but let's hope history doesn't repeat.
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And to be clear, I pretty much agree with your sentiment; the EU is overzealous and the US is light-years ahead in digital tech - and not only or mainly due to regulation. But let’s not pretend the US culture of “just do it and inshallah” is all rainbows and sunshine. With AI in particular there are existential or quasi-existential risks.
lol, there really are not. It's hilarious to see the upper echelons of many government's unironically believing this. they should definitely keep an eye on the development, but as of yet it is not even close to an existential risk.
OpenAI is also playing it safe to some extent, maybe to please the general public and serve the org’s own interests, or maybe they are genuinely concerned about real safety threats, who knows. At any rate their actions don’t align with your discourse.
Sure they do. You can still use GPT-4 now. If GPT-4 was actually an existantial risk they would have shut it down.
So since we're stuck with them, the best thing we can do is to try and prevent this problematic behaviour from taking place. If that somehow fails things are going to get nasty for a while.
But I do have some candidates, say gig-economy delivery apps that bypass minimum wage, and put drivers under auch time pressure that they are always panicking, besides peeing in bottles one of them hit my friend on a motorbike and nearly put him in the hospital.
Many the Deliveroo folks in London are driving illegal ebikes with 1000W motors at 45 km speed. I
Most of then are self-done conversion of $150 bicycle that is not even roadworthy, has old squeky rim brakes, no mirrors or horn or anything.
If I know this, deliveroo knows this, and I am confident that they are knowingly taking advatage of this situation. If they were fully employed, deloliveroo would have to provide them with vehicles, something roadworthy.
For example a Riese & Muller ebike is actually a roadworthy light moped with mirrors, ABS, etc.
Why is my safetu sacraficed to save deliveroo like 2 grand on vehile costs? Are lives so cheap?
The original comment was about how Europe isn't able to nurture technology.
Maybe US economy would be healthier if you did not allow like 3 companies to buy up all the competition.
If you did a like for like equivalent for American technology it can't even compare. You could find small countries in Asia that have done more.
What the author of the original comment is saying is thats not a surprise.
Surely you can't be serious with the EU almost lecturing the world on how AI should work, using Spotify? or even counting ASML and ARM? On what basis?
I would also argue that the labour exploitation is being done by American/European companies.
The point i'm trying to make with the EU is that it doesn't but wants to extraterritorially rule other countries, with no industry knowledge or stakeholders, other than a market to sell to. Where companies exist in question, are mostly American is because their government doesn't hamper development and lets companies thrive in a reasonable way that is balanced and fair.
The EU version is quite overbudensome where the company wont easily exist in the first place and that has no impact into the labour practices to outsourced companies anyway. There are plenty of European companies that manufacture in China and exploit labour - which is a separate argument to the ability for companies to be nurtured to exist.
I prefer this shit is clarified so everyone knows what is legal and not, and not have only the big corporations do the illegal stuff and apologize later.
But Microsoft trained their coding AI with GPL software but not with proprietary software impaling that they can risc screwing Open Source but not the paying GitHub customers or not sure why they did not used their own internal proprietary code.
Open AI trained with the entire inernet, books, ignored any license copyright cponcerns. Stability.ai also trained with lot of stuff. Adobe trained only with stuff they have licenses.
So as we can see until an USA judge decides how to interpret the existing laws then stuff are not sure, some companies take the risks other take less risks, others no risk.
But if USA some other judge in a superior court my decide something else, so IMO USA also needs to take a decision and not let FUD (deserved or not) about AI to spread.
I seen many do not know that the issue ChatGPT had in Italy was about a data leak. There are laws on what you do when this happens, probably are similar laws in USA , maybe in USA is harder to start a investigation or maybe there were some lobbying involved.
Is the jury still out on whether software does more good than harm?
I think the only harm an AI can do is the kind that come from errors (human or otherwise). Such as the boeing 737 Max, where people misuse software.
The type of 'harm' that some people attribute to AI such as loss of economic utility, to me, is not harm. And legislating that away is dangerous.
We have no idea about the impact of AI.
It's almost like the EU is regulating stuff that's really scary.
For someone who's more willing to accept risk and who prefers regulating bad outcomes rather than just scary things that could possibly have bad outcomes but which nobody can predict, it looks over-protective. But I fully support the EU's right to take a wait-and-see approach and gradually accept AI if it goes well for the rest of the world.
Europe hasn't been at the forefront of any tech or cultural change for centuries, and seems to be getting along just fine.
"Centuries" is mega hyperbole when you look at physics, chemistry, etc, etc up until at least 1930.
The other is Europe
Not a surprise all big tech is in US. If EU wants to play this card, US will get even stronger at keeping tech talent.
(I reside neither in the US or EU)
I did consulting and for a fair amount of projects where we had to block all European traffic while GDPR compliance was sorted out. There was almost never anything we had to actually do/change but the threat was looming and it was easier to just not take the risk.
Not necessarily the case. There's many reasons someone would leave the US (or North America in general) for the EU/EEA. The US is becoming less attractive to some given the current political weirdness. There's plenty of interesting work to be done in the EU and EEA that's not "hindered" by GDPR, and many developers who relocate to the EEA actually _like_ GDPR, and regulation aimed towards protecting individual rights. That, at least, is the case for me. Having had the opportunity to relocate anywhere, I ultimately picked the EEA.