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by dj_mc_merlin 1903 days ago
The author is not writing down action items after a meeting. It's the job of politicians (presumably) to draft up policy. Activism groups also push for specific regulation sometimes.

But stating your policy opens up another angle of attack: those who wish to undermine your ideas can attack your implementation rather than the concept.
2 comments
pc86 1903 days ago
It's at best sloppy to just say "this needs to be regulated, but I can't be bothered to suggest even one possible regulation that would fix anything I find so objectionable." The author has a doctorate and works at Microsoft Research on AI. If she thinks it should be regulated (which is absolutely a fair position to take) I'd much rather have her be the one suggesting regulations than some 80 year old lawyer who's been in Congress since the civil rights era or some special interest lobbyist.
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dj_mc_merlin 1903 days ago
Her understanding of AI does not translate to an understanding of how a society runs or how laws should be made. If anything, many people overgeneralize their expertise at one task to suggest bad solutions to problems from other domains. Especially engineers and PhDs.

I agree that she's still better than most US politicians. I have some faith in politicians from Western Europe to do half the correct thing, or at least not be swayed by arguments coming from money too much. Not that much faith, but still..

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PeterisP 1902 days ago
If someone wants to make an argument "this needs to be regulated" then they need to assert that the benefits of doing so outweigh the drawbacks. The article does not really do that; it points out a class of potential harm, but it does not try to present an reasonable argument that regulation is likely to succeed in preventing that harm; and the balance of pros vs cons can't even be discussed without at least some general idea about what kind of regulation we're talking about.
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Verdex 1903 days ago
> those who wish to undermine your ideas can attack your implementation rather than the concept.

Yeah, it's frustrating when people do this. But if you want to have real solution at the end of the day, then you'll need to hammer out all of your implementation issues.

If you produce an implementation that is flawed, then people will be able to evade the spirit of your regulation rendering it useless.

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