GOP sneaks decade-long AI regulation ban into spending bill
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
We have an opportunity here to set rules that cars should yield to rapid transit public buses, that vehicles should behave in ways to increase the flow of traffic, etc etc... there are many options for setting rules that autonomous vehicles must follow which is in the best interests of the public not just the rider.
Correct, the Republican Party does not want anyone to be able to regulate that.
> It's just going to be everyone for themselves, the vehicles will just follow rules meant for humans?
The vehicles will follow whatever rules are in the best interest of the corporations that made them.
I think the simplest, clearest way to interpret this legislation is that it's a straight transfer of power from individual citizens to AI corporations.
The latter, when allowed to regulate, mostly prevent things from happening - housing, for example. Or new meds. Or wind farms. So, a good call imo
[1] https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1887223600727662657
And oh my, you even went with the "airplane crashes are caused by DEI" racist BS. The FAA allowed Boeing to conduct safety inspections for their own planes [4], and that's supposed to be a "DEI problem" instead of a spectacular lack of real regulation?
You can't even cancel your gym without sending a certified mail [5], and that to you is "excessive consumer protection."
You need to get your reality in check.
[1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/internet-service-providers-ha...
[2]: https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/01/hospitals-slash-staff...
[3]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/dubious-56000-alzhei...
[4]: https://archive.is/2024.01.12-153350/https://www.ft.com/cont...
1) This link is from 2013. The most recent article that I can find based on the same source (ACSI report) lists Anheuser-Busch as the most hated company for partnering with trans influencer [1]. Not what I expected (I barely heard of this before)! Do you still want to use this vibe thing as an argument for which companies should be considered bad?
2) What percentage increase of healthcare costs does that contribute, and when did it become a major issue? Healthcare costs were high for a long time. Typically people complain about insurance, but we know insurance is not really a major problem [2][3]. Americans actually pay lower fraction of the cost of healthcare out of pocket.
The reason healthcare is expensive is because provider prices are high, and the reason prices are high is because there's shortage. There's a residency position shortage causing a physician shortage, caused by AMA - the union of doctors. Doctors fight tooth and nail to not allow nurses to do more procedures. To open a hospital you need a "certificate of need" issues by governmental health agencies. But no, let's latch on some random piece from an outrage cycle.
3) High drug prices (again aside from a couple of edge cases like Shkerli or whatever his name is) are a well-known thing - US subsidizes drug discovery for the rest of the world. [4] and many more can be found.
4a) I gave you a source for the FAA dispatcher schools thing, did you read it? It documents the specifics. It's not from a right wing source, in fact they keep griping how they hate it that it took Trump to notice it. And of course it's definitionally racist - but not the way you imply. From the intent itself, to outright giving explicitly race-based organizations hints on how to cheat the screening test.
4b) As for FAA/Boeing thing, "The Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) program was established by FAA Order 8100.15()". It was done by regulators themselves, not some act by politicians. But yes if we add more regulators it will solve this problem.
4c) And of course the design defect that caused MAX crashes had nothing to do with self-inspection. Sure, FAA dropped the ball, but it's funny that your link is for some unrelated issue that caused "minor injuries" when you were initially talking about plane crashes. I guess this self-inspection thing is much more of an outrage generator!
5a) That's literally not what it says. It says "recommends" and provides alternatives, so yes, you can. Also you, of course, picked one extremely rare and local example.
5b) Is looks like a rare edge case and a problem I never had. I cancelled Comcast twice (as far as I recall) and didn't have any issues. My gym membership can be cancelled or paused online without any human interaction. Even given that there's some small consumer protection problem here, I want proper Kinder eggs far more often than I cancel services, so I'd take turning FDA into advisory-label type of thing even if it means I'd have to send Comcast a letter when I move.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-21-most-hated-...
[2] https://www.kff.org/health-policy-101-health-care-costs-and-... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-out-of-pocket-ex...
[4] https://www.nber.org/digest/may05/effect-price-controls-phar...
It's certainly not perfect, but it seems to work fairly well. I certainly haven't received any ballots to select, say, the next CEO of Meta, so I'll take it over ceding all authority to corporations.
> Bureaucracies are even worse and less accountable.
Less accountable than a corporation that is beholden only to faceless shareholders? Seems unlikely to me.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like either party. But in this case they are doing a good thing even if for questionable reasons. Although also, I do think that fear of having California regulate ai innovation known to the state of California to cause cancer, combined with the large market "veto power", causing harm vs e.g. China with regard to ai progress, is pretty credible.
I can only see this working if we jump straight to 100% self-driving. Otherwise, you'll have to make transitory guidelines for drivers without driverless tech, such as "yield in x situation when you see the rapid transit public bus." But if you do this, you're making the driving rules more complex and less predictable. That means you're creating more dangerous situations for drivers.
But of course, we're not going to go straight to 100% driverless. We're going to have some portion of people driving their own cars for a long time, especially in the USA.
It simply means that Federal law will take priority in terms of specific AI laws and they can’t pass a patchwork of restrictions on the technology so that in Podunk, Flyoverstate the technology is illegal and that impacts the whole country.
The reason this is important is that in the United States there is 1 Federal government, there are 50 states, roughly 3,000 counties, 19,500 municipalities, and 16,500 townships. They don’t want startups to face roughly 40,000 law making bodies with varying laws while the technology is in it’s infancy.
The Feds have pre-empted many other technologies including: air travel, railroads, auto safety, banking, environmental regulations, medical devices, maritime law, labor relations, nuclear energy, taxation on internet communications, etc etc.
It didn’t create a dystopian world where rules don’t exist.
So if a bank has an automated loan approval system that consists of a series of IF-THEN statements, and one of those statements amounts to IF (applicant.race != "White"), loan.reject; this ban would forbid a state from taking action?
> New York's 2021 law mandating bias audits for AI tools used in hiring decisions would also be affected, 404 Media notes.
Suppose the bill said "no laws about horses!". Okay then if you want to make a law regulating the manufacture of horse shoes, you target the law to "odd-toed ungulates" instead.
Federal law might supersede state law in areas where the federal government has express powers, e.g. interstate commerce, but if a state is adding AI-related provisions to existing policy in an area it already has authority over, I can't imagine how Congress could attempt to suppress that.
Sure, federal law could likely supersede state law if a state is trying to restrict AI as a commercial service in itself, as that would cross into interstate commerce territory. But if a state already has regulatory authority over e.g. how insurance companies operate within their jurisdiction, adding provisions that relate to how AI is used in the process of providing insurance coverage doesn't seem like something the Congress could legitimately intervene in.
It's not like the laws prohibit any use of AI, it's literally basic safeguards and human in the loop provisions but the text of the bill as written would make those laws illegal.
Which is not surpsing considering it comes coupled with massive cuts in Medicaid - private Medicaid plans are some of the most egregious players in terms of denials.
Here is a simple website which uses the 5calls API to get your reps and gives you a script to talk to them about this https://www.deny-ai.com/call-your-representatives
Reading basic history shows it's always been this way. As a simple historical example the soon to be Confederate states complained about "state's rights" for slavery but when they seceded they enshrined slavery in their constitution and notably didn't leave it up to their states (so clearly that institution was more important to them than state autonomy). It's always been a convenient veneer over policy.
Const. of C.S.A. art. I, § 9, ¶ 4 restricted their federal legislature's power:
> No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.
The next section similarly restricted the states' power to "pass any bill of attainder, or ex post facto law" but did not reference slavery.
Their Constitution also had a clause about how new territories needed to allow slavery so choice definitely wasn't their priority:
Article IV Section 3(3)
The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several states; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form states to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states.
"I congratulate the country that the strife has been put to rest forever, and that American slavery is to stand before the world as it is, and on its own merits. We have now placed our domestic institution, and secured its rights unmistakably, in the Constitution. We have sought by no euphony to hide its name. We have called our negroes 'slaves', and we have recognized and protected them as persons and our rights to them as property."
Edit: The privileges and immunities clause of the US 14th amendment seems to have a parallel in the Confederate Constitution so it's not entirely clear that the Constitutions are the same here (and it seems like if the Constitution didn't protect slavery it was an oversight or someone just forgot to tell their vice president). Apparently the privileges and immunities clause in the US Constitution was essentially nullified later (the US Supreme Court seems to have just wacky interpretations sometimes) but seems intended to confer rights to people in states. I'm a bit out of my depth in finding primary sources on this though, except for the excerpt from the VP who has a very clear opinion (and I have a tendency to not immediately believe what a VP is saying).
Article IV Section 2(1)
The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
> The U.S. Constitution states in Article IV, Section 2, "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States." The Confederate Constitution added that a state government could not prohibit the rights of slave owners traveling or visiting from a different state with their slaves.
Similar to the Fugitive Slave Clause, this does not invalidate the Dred Scott opinion that "a State may unquestionably prohibit slavery within its territory."
I wonder if that it's not clearly protected based on US jurisprudence is an oversight because apparently the Barron v Baltimore decision wasn't well known at the time according to the wiki article you linked on it and the VP was so adamant that it is.
> In thus constructing the fundamental law, of course, a struggle has occurred in the secret sessions of the Montgomery Congress, in which those refusing to close the door against the reception of anti-slavery States have achieved a victory.
https://www.cw-chronicles.com/blog/admission-of-northern-sta...
That said, I think it’d be smarter of the GOP to let California do just that. It’s a chance to move that tech money out of California and into another more regulation friendly state.
This is the same state that banned plastic bags to "save the environment" - did they mandate paper bags then? Renewable, compostable, organic paper? No! They allowed plastic bags to be replaced with... Super thick plastic bags! Which I assure you, stores go through at least 80% as many as before because people usually don't bring bags, but now they're 4-5x the plastic.
And they added a ton of regulation on straws based on that literal child's insane napkin math that went viral, that claimed that America uses 7 or 8 straws per man, woman, and child, per day. Now we get to use multiple paper straws that dissolve in your cup immediately.
California is awash in best-intentions, but utterly useless and counterproductive, regulation. Just another downside to one-party rule. Neither party does a good job with zero counterbalance to their power and ideas.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4460
"When the UK Environment Agency did a life cycle assessment of supermarket carrier bags (PDF) they found that non-woven polypropylene bags needed to be re-used at least 11 times to have lower global warming potential than single-use HDPE, or High-Density Poly-Ethylene, bags. Cotton shopping bags need to be used at least 131 times. Paper bags were the big losers. They aren't likely to survive the 4 uses needed to reach the same global warming potential, but are much more toxic to produce than plastic."
11 uses out of a reusable bag is not a tough threshold to hit. I've got one I know is from 2018 in daily use still and has crossed the Pacific several times.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
> no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10 year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act
States never got to control Federal spending, AI or otherwise.
But the Tenth Amendment pretty strictly limits how much the Feds can control state spending and legislation, too.
This is a straightforward declaration of Commerce Clause authority. This SCOTUS has made it clear the “Dormant Commerce Clause” is not stirring awake, so if Congress wants to preempt state regulation of interstate commerce they have to do so explicitly.
Sure it does.
It's basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Dole again.
The Feds can't say "you can't regulate in a way we don't like" to the states. They can apply "reasonable conditions" along the lines of "if you do x we will take away related funding y" but the entire point of the Tenth Amendment is that states have more rights than the Feds unless otherwise stated.
Federalism as protected by the Tenth means California can require things like "may contain lead" on labels, even though some of those products may be sold outside of California.
They absolutely can when it comes to interstate commerce, which by precedent has a rather broad definition under which this kind of regulation easily fits.
Dole was about using spending power to constrain vaguely related state legislative powers. Not the same thing at all.
National Pork Producers Council v. Ross is much more relevant:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-468_5if6.pdf
If Congress had spoken on pork labeling requirements, California would have been out of luck under the Commerce Clause. But because they hadn’t, California was free to regulate.
Seems trivial to work around since there is no legal definition of AI.
Instead of making your law specific to AI system, you can simply make it slightly broader in scope so it includes AI systems in practice.
For example, prohibition on AI facial recognition in public spaces -> prohibition on any computerized facial recognition
I'm asking, because my take is that totally unregulated AI will sooner or later lead to such applications. And you can't really advocate that privacy laws will stop that - after, that would hinder the progress of things like "automated decision systems".
Almost certainly yes. The provision defines it as
> The term "automated decision system" means any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence that issues a simplified output, including a score, classification, or recommendation, to materially influence or replace human decision making.
https://d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/Subtitle_C_Communicati...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/21/artificial-i...
For example, states can allow people to drink under age 21, on the interstate highways they own.
But the Feds can refuse to pay for the highways if they do.
Seems much less relevant to me but maybe my thinking is too small minded (probably because I don't believe LLMs are a path to AGI).
This is an outright lie. The relevant bit of legislation is cited in the article:
"no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10 year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act"
> States are free to raise their own taxes and spend them how they see fit.
The language above very clearly forbids them from spending said tax revenue on regulating AI.
The same folks have long been salty that California sets higher standards for vehicle emissions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_standard#State-level_...) and are looking to kneecap that sort of action here.
This seems like a really good thing. I would have been more inclined to mock any heavy-handed attempts at regulating AI, anyway.
Essentially, this is saying that the executive can't create regulations that add regulations that limit what businesses can do (which would be relevant when the party in power of the executive changes)