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Comment by IAmGraydon | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if all those calling ChatGPT and the like “AI” when it’s nothing of the sort regret doing so now. AI is a scary word for certain groups, while machine learning (which is what this is) isn’t. Now you have a bunch of Luddites with pitchforks looking for a witch to burn.

What this act will do is severely stunt the European economy compared to the rest of the world, which will be racing ahead (as long as countries like the US don’t pass similar laws). By the time Europe realizes its mistake, it will be too late to catch up.

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ChatGPT is most certainly AI: all of machine learning is a subset of the field of AI, as is much of symbolic logic and Bayesian inference. It's a massive and wide-ranging academic discipline.

Maybe you're thinking of "AGI", which is a term that appeared in the late 90's to make the distinction between the expert systems of the time and machines that could think like a human?

Even when considering AGI, by the most generous definitions GPT 4 probably could count as a basic one.

The act is about automated processes, "AI" or not.

Do you think it’s coincidence that it came about during the middle of a massive hype wave with widespread talk of how AI will figuratively take over the world? Automated processes have existed for nearly 100 years.

Are you blaming them for pushing updates to existing regulations and reacting in a timely manner to the direction the markets are pushing their money into ?

I really don't agree with this take.

Consider, for example, GDPR. Its implementation in Europe essentially forced compliance worldwide (with some smaller companies choosing to just not support users in the EU). And that's a good thing.

It's a large enough market that it can and should lead the way in sensible protections.

This isn't about luddites looking to burn witches. There are very sensible and immediate risks that we need to get ahead of. As someone in the ML/AI space I'm glad that many of the risks are coming to light. We don't need AGI for there to be serious problems with abuse of language models.

Yes, cookie banners are widely regarded as very good.

1) cookie banners are unrelated to the GDPR. 2) implementations of cookie banners that don’t allow users to reject cookies as easily as accepting them are illegal. 3) it is widely regarded as good that companies are obligated to disclose which third parties they are sharing your data with.

> cookie banners are unrelated to the GDPR.

But they showed up to “comply” with gdpr.

> implementations of cookie banners that don’t allow users to reject cookies as easily as accepting them are illegal.

But they are still everywhere, because GDPR is threatening but largely toothless

Yes, GDPR was all about cookie banners. Quality contribution and argument.

I’d rather cookie banners than an opt-out system

GDPR affects data, which is the basis of all computing. AI isn't - and this will mainly affect the companies building AI to forego offices and remote workers in the EU, not deployment in it.

when you call something “public action” people—in general—are all for it, but when you call it “government regulation” suddenly people start to get worried. when you say something is “literally” true, the literal and inflexible among us get annoyed when you don’t actually mean literally. words have fluid meaning and unusual connotations and if you can’t accept this you’re in trouble

So what's AI then?

A machine that can think, not a machine that spits out strings of text that fool humans into believing it can think. The map is not the territory.

> The map is not the territory.

Turing would argue that if the map resembles the territory so faithfully that you can't distinguish between them, the difference is moot. We're not there yet, but we're a hell of a lot closer than we were ten years ago.

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