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Comment by a_wild_dandan | Hacker News Reader

> The government needs to provide urgent regulation to ensure that AI does not provide incorrect or damaging information and protect vulnerable people and the public.

Capital idea. The root problem here isn't unstable people acquiring killing weapons, or astonishingly inadequate mental healthcare! Don't expect that angle from...the founder of a mental health charity.

Is there a term for the embarrassingly large cohort of folks hellbent on forcing the state into everyone's personal lives to sand down every sharp corner? The opposite extremum seems to be the hardcore gun people. I disagree with them, but at least I understand them. The information/free thought antagonists I don't understand. I don't get their angle. And I don't believe their intentions are all conspiratorial.

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> Is there a term for the embarrassingly large cohort of folks hellbent on forcing the state into everyone's personal lives to sand down every sharp corner?

A not-quite-exact word that comes to my mind is busybody. (Note that it's not a polite thing to call someone.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busybody

> The information/free thought antagonists I don't understand. I don't get their angle. And I don't believe their intentions are all conspiratorial.

It depends on who you're talking about.

The ones on the contemporary left are easier to understand; it's ideologically coherent with their belief system when it comes to the role of the state. You can disagree with their ideology (well, maybe not in their presence if you like having functional eardrums) but you can't say they don't make internal sense.

The really wacky ones are on the contemporary right; depending on context they might support something enthusiastically or vehemently oppose it even though it's actually the same thing, it's just the context changing.

> Is there a term for the embarrassingly large cohort of folks hellbent on forcing the state into everyone's personal lives to sand down every sharp corner?

To a certain class of people (ie, people who have been sold on the hype of AI as the solution to all problems), AI is a magical technology. It follows that the solutions to its problems are therefore also magical. Even though if you substituted in any other media it would be clear how utterly goofy it sounded—“the government needs to provide urgent regulation to ensure that watercooler conversations do not provide incorrect or damaging information…”

Government is just people doing certain tasks.

That you are afflicted with some mind virus that any of this semantic gobbledygook is real is your problem.

We need people interested in doing those specific tasks because I for one don’t care you exist and have no obligation to carry your flag or chant your babble.

We’re arbitrary meat suits. It’s better for you to have such a group out there. I never asked to exist, feel no obligation to humans. I’d rather you not exist altogether.

So that’s why “government”. Too many others lack interest in you specifically and would just hang you from a tree.

Meaning is filtered by words. There are many meanings and feeings out there that don't have words to express themselves and can't spread.

Giving AI the ability to voice meanings and behaviours that should be illegal, is catastrophically weird.

Programmers (me included) will follow any logic that computers will process, even logic that leads off a cliff.

Every single day we get further away from understanding first-order truths. I'd honestly rather discuss social issues with a Dominican monk than tech people these days...

It is a seriously dangerous problem.

>Is there a term for the embarrassingly large cohort of folks hellbent on forcing the state into everyone's personal lives to sand down every sharp corner?

When the governement behaves this way, it's called the "nanny state". But the supporters of it usually lack self-awareness. Certain circles might call them bootlickers, but that's a more blanket term

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