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I have a new take on AI containment breaking (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 day ago* by to c/technology@hexbear.net
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New take.

It's not marketing.

The private american companies are scaremongering to get ai regulated. Why? Because their Chinese competition is open source.

They are scaremongering that ai is dangerous and existential and needs shut down switches and the like. They want this despite it being a pain in the ass for themselves because it will force all open source ai into legal problems that closed source ai in private companies will not have because of "kill switches" and the like.

They are losing to Chinese open source ai and want to weaponise fear into regulation against open source.

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[–] 23 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

I think a big part, along the same vein, is that these companies want to be part of the regulating authority, as 'experts' in the field. Never gonna be on it if you oppose it.

If a business can get its greasy hands on influencing its own regulation, they can basically do whatever they want while regulating out all their competition.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Yep. OpenAI has been pushing for regulation since 2023, this isn't new.

    Companies love doing this stuff. Play dirty and be unethical in a new, unregulated market, then once you're at the top you can build an expensive wall of regulation to prevent competition.

    Uber / Lyft did it. The social media companies did it. Hell, even the oil companies did it.

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  • [–] 4 points 16 hours ago*

    The company I work for does it. Couple years ago we spent millions on various 'experts' to attend all sorts of meetings to 'help' write new legislation.

    The new legislation was so nichely worded that it made every competitor's offering no longer legal, the execs popped champagne as they celebrated our service becoming literally the only legal one of its kind (for a while).

    We wasted millions on lobbying, and probably tens of millions wasted by competitors forced to adapt. The result is a stupidly obtuse law that does not improve the offering, but adds pointless requirements and needless bureaucratic cost, nothing of value achieved.

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