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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26256 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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I don't see why regulation is a bad thing here. I don't want AI making hiring decisions, or monitoring what I write on the internet for wrongthink, or deciding verdicts in criminal trials. Anything that helps prevent that (even if imperfect and incomplete) is a good thing in my view.

(You may say that the use of AI in these domains is inevitable and cannot be prevented - but then, why get upset about the regulation in the first place? Why worry about something that you think will have no impact anyway?)

This is the type of vague, awful, impossible regulation that is focused on writing politically correct reports and which actually kills innovation.

I think there should probably be less innovation in this space.

What, specifically, are you worried about losing or missing out on?

I think that's totally fine, but the problem I have is that youve got politicians writing these laws with little to no outside consultation with experts on AI, so they end up being vague and applying to things that aren't AI.

The Qing dynasty also saw no need for disruptive innovations.

And lasted longer than most modern governments.

Went out with a bang, though.

I don't want AI making hiring decisions, [...] or deciding verdicts in criminal trials. Anything that helps prevent that (even if imperfect and incomplete) is a good thing in my view.

What's better about a person making those decisions? The criteria I can think of (accuracy, speed, interpretability/legibility, compliance with standards) don't always favor human decisionmakers.

(I don't want anyone monitoring what I write on the internet for wrongthink, so I'm with you there)

Keeping humans in the loop puts pressure on the processes to be more legible and comprehensible. If you dump everything into an inscrutable ML model, then the danger is that people will simply offload their thinking to the model and take its word as law. When your account gets banned at youtube, no one can actually say why (except in high profile cases) - it’s just, “The Algorithm said so, and we trust The Algorithm”. I don’t want society to work that way. I want there to be a person who has to take responsibility for the decision, and who can explain their reasoning. No hiding behind a binary blob of trillions of parameters.

Of course, humans can build labyrinthian inscrutable bureaucracies too. And humans can be outright evil. But I’d still rather take my chances with humans. Unlike AI, they have skin in the game - they are conscious entities, they have desires and fears. They can be persuaded or bribed, they are subject to political and social pressures, they will grant exceptions under the right circumstances. These are not aberrant modes of operation - they are necessary to the functioning of a humane society.

(2) "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM" MEANS ANY MACHINE-BASED SYSTEM THAT, FOR ANY EXPLICIT OR IMPLICIT OBJECTIVE, INFERS FROM THE INPUTS THE SYSTEM RECEIVES HOW TO GENERATE OUTPUTS, INCLUDING CONTENT, DECISIONS, PREDICTIONS, OR RECOMMENDATIONS, THAT CAN INFLUENCE PHYSICAL OR VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS.

This is not limited to ML, this bill applies to any computer program.

The regulation is bad because even if you remove direct references to age, color, disability, ethnicity, genetic information, limited proficiency in the English language, national origin, race, religion, reproductive health, sex, veteran status and so on, you will still have disparate impact, either because the AI inferred them from oblique references (Latoya Washington living on MLK Boulevard) or because causes of disparate impact correlate with age, color, disability, ethnicity, genetic information, limited proficiency in the English language, national origin, race, religion, reproductive health, sex, veteran status and so on.

The bill opens the doors to non-stop litigation. When a real person or an expert system lower the credit card limit of Latoya Washington living on MLK Boulevard, they leave behind a trail that shows their chain of reasoning worded in a way that pointedly avoids any references to age, color, disability, ethnicity, genetic information, limited proficiency in the English language, national origin, race, religion, reproductive health, sex, veteran status and so on. Everyone knows this and isn't triggered by obvious disparate impact. When the same bank uses an ML model to do the same thing, there's an obvious way in for a lawsuit: disparate impact? check, AI? check, time to sue, good luck proving that your model didn't lower the credit limit because Latoya was black.

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