RetroFed
The Great AI Misdirection: "Regulation Can't Keep Up"
https://readuncut.com/the-great-ai-misdirection-regulation-cant-keep-up/
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“Move fast and break things” was cute when it wasn’t propping up the entire American economy.
JhexIt is objectively one of the stupidest “strategies” ever… literally like saying “jump without looking” with the huge bias of one who did so and happen to land on a soft pillow and ignoring the thousands before and ofter who died trying the same stupid stunt
The problem is that Americans have been indoctrinated in celebrity worship: if Singer Z has a couple of great songs, he certainly knows how to raise kids, cure illnesses and fix the economy, right?!
It’s somewhat deeper than that: the ethos of “move fast/break things” came about during the explosion of tech startups in the last decade and a half or so, where being first to market was the pass/fail condition of getting any valuation whatsoever for your startup. It’s an approach that works for some domains (I would argue that those domains tend to be less technically interesting and rigorous, but I digress).
There were some organizations that pointedly too the opposite route, and operated much closer to “build it once and build it right” - to wit, the original iteration of WhatsApp (before it was subsumed and ruined by Meta) was built that way, and that’s specifically one of the reasons why it was so good for so long and gained such a massive userbase.
Anyways: applying “move fast/break things” and all of the idiotic, caustic “engineering leadership” koans that spring from that font of misprioritization and useless metrics is now and will continue to cause the art and serious practice of software engineering to get whittled away bit by bit. The only places where you CAN’T do that these days is in highly regulated contexts (aero/defense; biotech; medical; other similarly regulated fields), but even that is starting to crack.
RhaedasIt worked to some degree for SpaceX because to make new rockets you have to and will blow some up. That philosophy doesn’t work well for other things.
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It’s time for a mass removal of boomers from political power. They do not understand technology, and have trillion dollar companies, acting as complete monopolies, spoon feeding them poison and they’re perfectly happy to sacrifice us all.
We need a maximum voting age. People that won’t be around for dinner shouldn’t be in charge of the groceries.
You know how that would end….
If we can all sit around and agree that once you hit a certain age you shouldn’t be allowed to drive anymore Voting should be the topic right after
Well? Very well?
The people in charge don’t actually need to understand technology. This is what subject matter experts are for. You hire subject matter experts to research the technology in question and collaborate with them to come to a decisions about how regulations should be enacted. I don’t know where we got this idea that someone who’s job is legislation should be a subject matter expert on technology (or aerospace, or I dunno, fucking education, engineering or whatever), but it’s actually a bad precedent we’re setting because that’s not what a legislator is supposed to be doing. Lawyers don’t have to understand technology or medicine or fluid dynamics in order to practice law. They hire and utilize people who specialize in those fields.
Okay but when you only listen to people on the teat if 3 big companies you’re not getting expertise.
Legislators don’t need to be experts, but they’re effectively illiterate here.
Absolutely agree. The corruption is the problem, but is that an age based thing?
Not inherently, no. But in practice, absolutely. Especially when you consider that people who have been in power for a long time almost certainly have better/deeper connections/corruptions than someone who just got elected into their first term
No. That’s not the story people are telling about AI regulation. It goes like this:
If we regulate AI, that will give an advantage to AI companies in other countries. They will surpass our AI capabilities and leave us in the technological dust.
There’s a related story:
If we regulate AI, we’re likely to create more problems because Boomers don’t understand technology.
Oh its much worse than that. There is this segment of rich tech bros who have emerged from an unregulated silicon valley. After decades of having their egos stroked there is a sort of tech fetish cult emerging. Thiel is the most prominent example of this but there are many others who are into this as well. They literally believe that AI will herald some sort of religious revelation. If you are opposed to AI or seek to regulate AI of course you are the antichrist. I wish I was making this up.
The only reason this matters is because these rich tech bro assholes haven’t ever had to pay taxes and the more money you have, the louder your voice is and the more you can pay to influence politics.
It’s definitely not just boomers who don’t understand technology. I’d wager there’s more Boomers who understand tech than there are Gen Z who understand tech.
I also actually think the story goes more like “if we regulate AI we can’t take kickbacks, use the unregulated AI market to enrich ourselves, or use the tech for our techno-facist nanny state big brother dreams”.
Because while the general red tape does take a little while, they aren’t even trying to regulate AI on a large scale. Smaller governments are making a tacit effort but by and large most of them see this as a way to enact mass surveillance policy.
Mmmm, the first part you mentioned was talked about in the article
I think both are true.
Tech innovation is normally faster of the process of approving a new law and of course any law you write trying to regulate something in your state is not applicable everywhere else.
True, but that is not limited to AI
That guy in the comic saying “roofs are impossible” is every American about every single topic.
In the US we can only regulate who goes to what bathroom, all other regulations just don’t work.