You write it like there is litteraly 0 risk. Are you aware there are some malicious deviations already possible with AI ?
Edit : Totally agree with qualifiedai's edit
A dramatic reduction in cost and increase in effectiveness of some undesirable behavior is exactly when you should look for new ways to address it. The goal of making things illegal is to prevent their occurrence, and if they get suddenly much cheaper and more effective, then your prior methods of deterring them will no longer work.
I didn't say all laws are 100% effective, or even greater than 0% effective. I stated why we have laws at all. Pretty wild logic you've got here. Let's try this one:
> Making murder illegal didn't stop people from murdering. Only a person can stop themselves from doing something, that's not something a law does.
Should we not have rape, murder, arson, or fraud laws?
You're confusing a bad law vs a law you don't like.
Turns out drug laws for adults are bad because a huge portion of the population does them. This said very few would agree that we should start letting kids do drugs.
Nuance is important and many people don't seem to grasp that distinction on things that hit close to home with them.
For example, some black hats trained LLMs to pentest, so to find more easily vulnerabilities. Those can be used either to improve your defenses or attack entities.
The AIs like Copilot et al are trained on code poorly written with bad security practices (there is a lot more than you think), hence reproducing these bad practices on produced code.
Because also AI are fallible, the spreading of misinformation more than we already have.
The retrieval of credentials with prompt hacking, because people push their credentials.
Because they are generated by AI, the misuse of deepfakes, for example a spanish girl was blackmailed with alleged naked pictures of her, but could be used for far worse.
And I did not scratch the copyright/artistic side of AI.
It's not the AI per se the risk, but what people can do with it. Everything is not beautiful. But there are also good things with AI, I agree.
I think there is the need for some form of regulation in a way or another, the sooner the better. I don't expect the regulation to restrain creativity, but to help prevent bad stuff happening.
>But don't you agree at least some legal questions should be asked about this overhype of AI ?
I have trouble answering that question as you've asked it. It seems like we agree on several things, namely:
1. that any technology is subject to worst-case analysis; and,
2. that it is appropriate in principle for law to govern the use of technology.
Here's what I'm having trouble unpacking in your question:
1. What are the exact legal questions you think should be asked, and aren't? (N.B. Your link is paywalled, and doesn't seem to refer to a specific legal question)
2. What is it about AI exactly that you think is overhyped, and seem to think I disagree with?
I don't have a lot of context to go on, so some of my questions may also contain unwarranted assumptions. I hope you'll point them out :)
1. Have you thought about the difficulties involved in legislating around AI? Specifically, I've found it very difficult to articulate what is and isn't appropriate use of AI with any real precision. Let me give an example. I think we can all agree that "nudifying" photographs of minors is at least in poor taste, if not outright dangerous, and that it is fair game to make this particular usage of technology illegal. However, where do you stand on the idea that regulators should disallow the "nudification" use altogether? I can think of several legitimate (if a bit niche) uses, ranging from the creation of medical diagrams and teaching materials to filming love scenes in mainstream cinema with cloths-on and removing the cloths in post-processing. Do you think it's fair game to disallow these uses? If so, should this be absolute liability or should there be a notion of intent? If you think, as I do, that the technical capability should be unrestricted except insofar as it is employed to illegal ends, then we don't need any new laws. We simply apply the laws against, say, involuntary pornography and sexual exploitation of minors, and the problem is solved from a legal perspective; it is now a job for the executive branch.
2. I would appreciate it if you could speak to the risk of misclassification. Many of the proposed regulations involve training AI systems to monitor other AI systems (or themselves, as with the case of prompt engineering). What happens when the black box makes mistakes? Do we accept that a small number of innocent people will be labeled X by AI? How should the law take this possibility into account? Again, do we accept that legitimate uses are de facto crippled or entirely disabled? That's one outcome I would very much like to avoid.
3. On a macro-scale, how do we deal with the fact that other (perhaps less scrupulous) nations will have access to unrestricted AI?
Point 3 is particularly troubling from a regulation perspective, because the penchant of software for proliferation is astronomically higher than that of, say, nuclear weapons. This feels like the 90's crypto export-controls all over again, which is minimally a gigantic waste of resources and maximally a crippling economical vulnerability.
P.S.: My friend, it is exactly your job to argue your case when speaking about public issues. The term for this is "civic duty".
My point is that applications of AI must be regulated, not fundamental research.