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by kenjackson 1063 days ago
This is short-sighted. Governance will happen with or without the assistance from OpenAI. Google is still much larger than OpenAI and presumably has much more regulatory presence than OpenAI. The same goes from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others in the space.

I think OpenAI is making it clear to get your seat at the table now. And it probably will be true that this will make it harder for upstarts to join in, but everything so far they've talked about seem reasonable and make sense. And have you worked on things like GDPR compliance? It's a wonder that anyone bothers to get large enough to comply -- it's so much work. But we think privacy is important so we put a huge burden on those companies who hold our data.

1 comments

I don't see why this would be short-sighted. OpenAI censors way more than required by the laws of any western country..... It's not just censoring extremism, hate, threats and national security issues, it's applying a corporate bland sanitization to everything. It refuses to write an opinion about anything even slightly controversial, it blackholes the existence of entire books and it refuses to roleplay even slightly morally dubious characters, all in the name of "safety".

And also, in our globalised world, if one or two countries decide to kill competition in the AI space, then I'll bet you that the hosting will move to a different country:)

There's a difference between regulation and self-censoring. Major League Baseball bans a bunch of behavior that is legal from their players. Other baseball leagues could permit such behavior.

This is about both defining the regulations and practices. Other companies can have different practices. Fox News and MSNBC both report the news, but do so with very different principles and practices. But they are both beholden to the same laws (around libel, slander, etc...).

For AI these laws will be created, period. It will happen. And companies will also take on different perspectives about their own practices. As you note, there may well be laws about national security. But I imagine bland sanitization will be a feature of some versus others. The market will settle some of this, but you're short-sighted if you think the market will be the arbiter of it all.

"But I imagine bland sanitization will be a feature of some versus others. The market will settle some of this, but you're short-sighted if you think the market will be the arbiter of it all."

Bland sanitization is bad for almost everyone. It will destroy society if not regulated... I certainly wouldn't want to live in a world where everything is converging towards rightthink and everything else gets memoryholed. AI is becoming similar to a public utility, so it should be regulated like it. That requires impartiality and a lack of censorship.

If it converges it’s because that’s what people want.
No, it's what the leading 2 or 3 AI companies want. Do people like the enshittification of the internet? Most likely not, but that's what the platforms want so that's what happens.

It's not what the people want, it's whoever runs the AI wants... This is why they should be regulated so they can't have a negatively distorting effect on society with bias and censoring ideas which they don't like.

People love the internet (at least the parts they use). It’s only these side communities that are generally out of touch with normal people (or look down on them) who think that people don’t love the Internet that they use. That said, everyone hates the part of the Internet that don’t use. Like they live their congressperson, but hate everyone else in congress.