58 comments

  • ashleyn 12 hours ago

    How do we stop china and russia from developing it? How come nobody seems to be talking about the obvious international treaty that would be necessary to actually ban superintelligence from being developed? At least we can deliberate some kind of enforcement mechanism in the process...

    • cwillu 12 hours ago

      Plenty of people are discussing that.

    • mcv 7 hours ago

      By international agreement, obviously. There are tons of international agreements to regulate all sorts of things. It's generally a pretty good way to prevent a race to the bottom. Or in this case, a potential race to the end of the world.

      • mdp2021 7 hours ago

        > to the end of the world

        Or, if things go well, ending a long very bad chapter.

      • skeledrew 7 hours ago

        Why would China - or worse, Russia - sign any treaty with the US that'd make them worse off if they actually follow through?

        • dragonelite 6 hours ago

          The biggest problem is that the US has shown not trustable when it comes to treaty. You can have a treaty with the US but the US can just use Israel or some other proxy to do the advance research and development for them..

        • mcv 5 hours ago

          How would it make them worse off? If everybody agrees that AI is a threat to humanity, but also a possible edge over rivals, then the threat should be enough reason to get everybody to agree.

          There are international agreements on tons of things that work the same way.

          • mdp2021 4 hours ago

            > If everybody agree[d] that AI is a threat to humanity

            Which would be either very difficult or very ironical, given that realizing that humanity is a threat to humanity precedes that.

        • 1over137 6 hours ago

          Why would they trust the US to honour anything they sign? Look how Trump has ignored the trade deal he signed with Canada.

    • x312 10 hours ago
    • mitxela 8 hours ago

      Irrelevant. Let them - it brings negative value.

    • camgunz 8 hours ago

      Two things I would say. One: nuclear non-proliferation has been pretty successful; we can use a similar model for AI.

      Two, China's major motivation for developing competitive AI isn't to reap the benefits from an an important new technology. It's to undermine the economic development of the West and make them even more dependent upon the CCP. It's an extension of the policy that's made us dependent on Chinese labor and manufacturing: win on the economics by any means necessary, wait for the other producers to die, enshittify (extract geopolitical concessions, in this case).

      • mdp2021 7 hours ago

        > One: nuclear non-proliferation has been pretty successful

        A number of non adequately reliable actors owning "the bomb" and a number of threatened actors increasingly wanting "the bomb". Not really.

        • foolin 7 hours ago

          This is relative to something like every nation owning nuclear weapons by 1960 and civil wars usually beginning with a nuclear strike by a standing government.

          • mdp2021 7 hours ago

            Nuclear proliferation is not proper in context. The bill in question in the submission is not about preserving a status quo, it is about banning the technology.

            A ban on technology results in underground research, migration of intellectuals, monopolies, seething parties...

            • camgunz 4 hours ago

              The bill doesn't ban it. It pauses it until a regulatory body and processes are established. That seems pretty reasonable.

              • mdp2021 4 hours ago

                Explain «Banning Artificial Superintelligence so no person or entity [etc.]».

                Or you think that «Advanced AI development» does not imply attempting the achievement of Intelligence?

                • camgunz 21 minutes ago

                  I don't think working on LLMs is the same as working on superintelligence (personally I don't think superintelligence is on the table, but whatever)

            • foolin 6 hours ago

              I didn't say the challenges would be the same.. You just indicated they were worthwhile for anyone who believes the anthropic principle is why they haven't seen a world with no nuclear treaties decades later.

      • graemep 6 hours ago

        > nuclear non-proliferation has been pretty successful; we can use a similar model for AI.

        Development of nuclear weapons has continued, and a lot of effort goes into developing delivery systems.

        A number of countries have acquired nuclear weapons over the years: India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, North Korea. More countries have kept their options open and could develop nuclear weapons if needed.

        • camgunz 4 hours ago

          After over 80 years since the US used nuclear weapons against Japan, less than 5% of the world's countries have nuclear weapons, and no one's used one on another country since. If you don't think that's an incredible achievement you're unserious.

          • graemep an hour ago

            My point is that it has worked for nuclear weapons because there are deterrents to using them. The acknowledged nuclear powers have all pledged to only use them in self defence. No one is going to develop AI and not use it.

            • camgunz 16 minutes ago

              Countries use nuclear power too. The reason they don't launch nukes at the drop of a hat is MAD. I don't see how this isn't analogous to what we could do with AI.

      • skeledrew 7 hours ago

        > nuclear non-proliferation has been pretty successful;

        I'm assuming your bar of success takes in account that 8-9 nation states have nukes. So it follows that 8-9 nation states should have ASI.

        • camgunz 4 hours ago

          No I think it's fine for 9 countries to have existing models and to coordinate development with each other, which is the general outline of all NPTs.

    • neonstatic 12 hours ago

      Oh, that's easy. Bernie will pick 11 volunteers and together they will be dropped off behind enemy lines. Let's call them "the Dirty Dozen". They will capture the evil bastards who violated American law outside of US borders (that's just evil) and bring them to Justice™ (Impossible is nothing. Call 1-800-JUSTICE. Conditions apply).

      > the obvious international treaty

      That's even easier. We just take the international treaty on cloud computing as a base and...

      • camgunz 4 hours ago

        The point is an arms race is bad for everyone. "I don't know what WW3 will be fought with, but I do know WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones" type of stuff.

    • moojacob 12 hours ago

      Make it international law and bomb anyone who doesn’t comply

  • graemep 6 hours ago

    I assume the US will also ban the use for foreign models as part of this.

    Pausing development means the people with the currently most advanced models are shielded from competition, especially if foreign competition is not allowed.

    A new agency will impose heavy regulation which can easily be twisted to favour incumbents.

  • zoobab 7 hours ago

    I propose an amendement with Death Sentence with Lethal injection, 20 years in jail is not enough if we follow the gradation of sentences.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection

    • mdp2021 7 hours ago

      I propose the twisted massage suggestive torture machine that appeared in the first episode of Monkey Punch's Lupin III. /J

  • fwlr 10 hours ago

    Man, it would be awesome if I could tell my boss “No, I don’t want to go to prison for 20 years” when they ask me if some magical AI thing can be done.

  • mdp2021 9 hours ago

    And members of the Dems give further gifts to the opponents.

    Question: how aware are they?

    Given the missed "intellectual solidity" of the submitted proposal, there is a chance that their effective support to the other party is not conscious.

    And in terms of civilization, the confrontation is downgraded to ventral partitism, hysterical: "not like it" vs "really want it or do not mind".

    • mdp2021 6 hours ago

      The USA should finally revise their system and create more parties. It is absurd that power be left bouncing on the rhythm of "never this, we'll pick whatever that".

    • mdp2021 3 hours ago

      Again and again the scum reacts but does not reply.

  • add-sub-mul-div 14 hours ago

    Okay that kicks the can down the road, but what will we do twenty years from now?

    • thesid 4 hours ago

      make a new bill

    • 11 hours ago
      [deleted]
  • BoingBoomTschak 6 hours ago

    Finally, the Butlerian Jihad is entering the Overton window.

  • yieldcrv 10 hours ago

    Oooh ok, dead in the water even if we pretended that any party would be able to pass the filibuster after midterms

    Speaking of which, doesn’t this bill die after midterms anyway?

    So this is just the bonus round where every inane idea gets introduced for the headline before being reset

  • Neywiny 14 hours ago

    I'm usually in agreement with him but that's dumb. 4 function calculators surpass human cognitive capability. It's too broad

    • cwillu 13 hours ago

      You (conveniently?) left out the words “across a a broad range of domains and tasks”.

      • Neywiny 4 hours ago

        I think the other fellas covered it but are 4 functions a broad range? My scientific calculator does way more than that. My graphing even more. It's too open ended. It would become one of those laws that's just used to prosecute whoever they want and not one that anybody could tell you definitively if you'll be violating or not

      • avaer 11 hours ago

        Surely we can agree that calculators are widely used across a broad range of domains and tasks.

        Obviously it's not the intent of the bill to jail calculator makers. So the bill should be written to make it clear exactly what it's criminalizing.

        • cwillu 9 hours ago

          Calculators are widely used yes, but calculators most certainly do not exceed human capacity on a broad range of tasks.

          • mdp2021 9 hours ago

            Still very much not an Euclidean definition, is it.

  • dyauspitr 10 hours ago

    For the first time I completely disagree with Bernie and banning AI development is the stupidest thing I can think of.

    • washadjeffmad 6 hours ago

      The HN title has been editorialized... and techno-oligarchs really, really hate Sanders.

      The bill isn't about using LLMs to merge your pull requests, it's about discouraging people or companies who might be working on their own private Manhattan Projects from intentionally trying to create the impact equivalent of nuclear weapons, or "Artificial Superintelligence".

      We're getting closer than not to an A(S)I arms race. Sanders has lived his entire life in that, and I've been smelling it for a while, too.

      • mdp2021 4 hours ago

        And you would use an LLM to perform actions when it is not a superintelligence?! We want morons to be under much more than restraining order distance.

  • throw310822 6 hours ago

    This person has missed reading classes, is dishonest or just stupid. The law proposal bans research on ASI, and sets penalties for those who transgress the ban. Seems quite obvious to me. The law that bans clandestine efforts to build nuclear weapons is not "proposing to sentence nuclear physicists to 20 years in prison".

    (Btw, "up to" doesn't mean "to". Second comprehension mistake in a few lines- I bet all current generation of LLMs have better understanding.)

    • mdp2021 4 hours ago

      > The law proposal bans research on ASI

      Which is exactly the same as the submission's post, obvious interpretations of "AI" aside: how can we implement Intelligence without enabling superintelligence at the same time?!

      And of course we must implement Intelligence, finally: we have implemented further morons, of which we already had plentiful abundance - already the LLM stage must be corrected!

      • throw310822 3 hours ago

        We might agree or disagree with the statement that AGI and ASI are dangerous (economically, societally, existentially) and research needs to be paused- which means making their development (temporarily) illegal. If you accept that it is the case, though, you need to accept that there are penalties for those who violate the law.

  • olivierestsage 14 hours ago

    Smart guy

  • rf15 12 hours ago

    ...and I say you're not going too far enough.

    Let's just slap 20 years on the scifi grifters too, please.

    • moezd 11 hours ago

      Developers are mostly fine, they are already buried in work and won't stop to question long and hard enough. It's the managers and sci-fi grifters that make this entire topic toxic, by assuming no limits should apply to them.

    • fragmede 9 hours ago

      and farmers too! Did you know they just steal the resources they need to grow our food? They don't pay anything for sunlight or air! Who's investigating them?

    • mdp2021 7 hours ago

      > scifi grifters

      That would be?

  • iioiio 14 hours ago

    [dead]