[erksa]

> We are also able to limit who can do what by requiring formal education and licenses for all kinds of professions.

I agree with your take for the most part, however cautiously more optimistic about this. Removing the barrier of entry for most thing will lead to more people be able to contribute in professions that they otherwise would not have the know how to do.

This will lead to more good things than bad things I think, but we seemingly only focus on the bad extremes and assuming everything else is the same.

Modern Javascript has reduced the barrier of entry to software development. It has had an massive impact on the industry and with an influx of people which leads to the industry seeing more and more creative solutions, as well as some really wild ones.

Maybe I'm terribly naive, but I think we seriously underestimates how many people wants change -- just missing the push to spring into action. For some the moment is about to arrive, for others it will come later.

[revel]

I think you're getting to the heart of what a smart approach to regulation would look like (for me at least). Try as I might, I can't imagine a situation where someone is able to subvert an LLM to come up with a world-ending scenario using its knowledge of onion-based recipes or by painting fingernails. There is no point to regulating every single potential use of an AI: to do so is to cede the future to a less scrupulous nation. We already know the kind of data and functionality that will likely lead to a dystopian hellscape because we already do those things and they are already regulated.

Paradoxically, a heavy-handed approach to regulation could guarantee a bleak future for humanity. We risk increasing the incentives for malicious use at the same time as we make legitimate use prohibitively expensive / regulated out of existance. If the war and crime machine is cheap and easy to monetize, don't be surprised when that's what gets built.

The future could be unimaginably better for everyone, but we won't realize that future unless we get the regulation right.