That’s a terrible way to create AI regulations
If they actually cared about this issue we’d have predictable laws and regulatory bodies that let companies actually plan
There’s a reason royal fiat doesn’t lead to healthy economies. It’s just confusing and chaotic. It’s not clear why anyone would invest in a new model now.
Then the next administration comes in and instantly, by fiat, they decide to lift the ban. The market just gets jerked around with no ability to plan long term investments.
It’s a great way to regulate if you’re corrupt. When the rules are opaque and arbitrary, there’s a lot more room for corruption.
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Whether or not you agree with how US laws are drafted, this administration has no logical foundation for anything it does which is a massively different and worse problem by orders of magnitude.
This administration runs on whims. This is horrifying and there is real harm in this we have yet to see the full repercussions of.
This administration has been slapped back by the courts more then I would have expected though. If we had fewer laws granting pretty broad powers to the executive branch I have to assume more of the administration's actions would be stopped.
It just means that the entire system has not been captured by insane people that there is still some pushback.
Anyone who believes in the Unitary Executive Theory likely believes that the President wears imperial robes. The idea that the President should have unchecked power over the executive branch is insane and mocks the whole idea of coequal branches of government or checks and balances.
You can argue for reform, but nothing currently going on is reform. It is entirely running on fumes. The recent AI executive order is representative of this as is the constantly shifting policy driven by whoever has Trump’s favor at any point in time. There's nothing grounding any recent policy change of the United States.
I agree with you mostly, but that's beside my point. Some of the things the administration is doing fall under existing executive powers granted by congress, either directly or in enough gray area that it would require court challenges. Removing laws granting those powers should lead to either the administration avoiding the attempt if they know they'll lose in court or courts having a very simple case to deem said actions illegal.
You are not constructive when you only want to strap gov. powers. The resulting void is ripe for the private sector to capture. To counter this, you need capable public institutions, so a constructive approach would mean, more precise regulations with balanced liberties and bureaucratic aid, not plain less of it. (IMO, this general rejection without a propper problem description nor solution is a product of corporate propaganda to achieve this exact void.)
Its worth noting that I'm specifically talking about federal powers in the US here. I have a lower bar for state and local governments. The whole point of that system is to allow states to try different approaches and policies, if enough states agree on similar approaches maybe it can be pulled up to the federal level.
In the case of the Trump administration, this thread didn't have specific policies people took issue with but I'd say most likely candidates roll back to issues that I wouldn't want to see the federal government responsible for. Immigration is probably an outlier, though that's a whole can of worms and I disagree with most immigration restrictions in part because of the interplay between immigration and entitlement programs.
> this thread didn’t have specific policies people took issue with
Can you give me a consistent principal that that the government of the day is doing outside of flopping around screaming America First while shooting itself in the foot while harassing citizens and critics it deems undesirable? Meanwhile Trump preens about like a pig prancing in front of a mirror and everyone is too weak to publicly acknowledge the farce we have all helped facilitate.
- The immigration policy is nonsensical, incoherent and basically driven by, “I don’t like others”. If it were consistent we would have proper review processes. A respected Somali FIFA referee would not be banned from the US for reasons that apparently cannot be disclosed.
- The AI policy is just based on whatever exec has the right person’s ear as demonstrated by the export controls being enforced on Anthropic’s recent models entirely due to Andy Jassy talking to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
- Onshoring jobs has not moved in any meaningful manner, there is no evidence of this outside of Trump screaming about unproductive and illegal tariffs which he continues to try and argue are not the consumer tax that they are.
- Deconstructing science and practical field work has caused a humanitarian and supply chain disaster. Pest prevention programs are in chaotic states, diseases that the US helped limit worldwide are on the rise, and we have destabilized multiple regions where we used to provide food security which also helped prop up American agriculture.
- There is no crypto policy in the United States. Crypto businesses have spent money trying to stop this. What does crypto actually facilitate? The central bank wasn't created just to annoy people or impede their ability to profit. Should we go back to JP Morgan locking bankers in his personal library and berating them until they agreed to start lending money again?
Well I'm definitely not one to justify what the current administration is doing, maybe someone else coming by could try to help make that case.
I largely agree with your criticisms of them. Where I expect we differ is that I would rather remove powers currently granted to them rather than see further federal powers created.
For example, I don't want to see a crypto policy in the US and I'm not aware of what problem it would be solving. If people want to gamble on crypto that's their choice. If they get taken by rug pulls and scams, well that is the result of decisions they made. What I don't want is an ethos expecting the government to know what is best for everyone and force rules upon us because they believe we won't make good decisions and can't or won't be responsible for the outcomes.
Edit: I missed the very end of your comment. No, I don't think we should empower banks to imprison individuals based on unpaid debts. That's already covered though, it isn't legal for a corporation or and individual to imprison a person. Why would we be reverting to such a world?
The lack of a logical foundation isn't the novelty. The whole system has run on whims and backfilled reasoning for a long time. That's the problem.
If it had always been the rule of law until now then we would have an apparatus set up to impose checks and balances and accountability on government officials, but because those things have so atrophied from continuous contempt and neglect, no one knows how to demonstrate that what Trump is doing is wrong without also conceding that half of what the government has been doing for decades is wrong. But they also don't want to stop doing those things and therefore have rather a dilemma.
Of course, that's assuming you actually demand logical consistency. If you don't care about that you can do whatever you want -- which is kind of the trouble.
While I agree as implemented today our system of checks and balances is faltering, those systems do exist. Separation of powers and our three branch system was designed precisely to try and force checks on power.
It may be failing, but the problem isn't that those systems weren't put in place.
You are biased, previous administration war on crypto was worse IMO. The attacks on private banking for companies dealing with crypto and 0 laws by the SEC.
This is a fact regardless if you like/dislike crypto.
I'm not sure how to weigh the previous administrations war on crypto and the current ones complete embracing of it. Not only does the president literally have his own cryptocurrency, they're trying hard to create a digital dollar based on crypto and likely amounting to public bank accounts directly with the federal reserve.
You may be right, but there is a significant difference in how badly regulating crypto affects the broader economy compared to what the current administration is doing.
In countries other than the US, most regulatory bodies are outside the government for exactly that reason - to take the power away from the political elite, whilst continuing to ensure safety and reason come first.
The new law the US is proposing here, is the exact opposite. A kingly appointed adjudicator to decide things.
I must have missed something very important in the article. What law is being proposed here?
> That’s a terrible way to create AI regulations
This administration doesn't do regulations, its extortion. Same as the tariffs. Just grease someone's palm and then the vague restriction is lifted.
I still can get de minimus from China no problem, as long as it’s Ali express. I wonder why? When anthropic answers that question, we will have access to fable again.
And that is the same as previous administrations, now you just see it openly.
Not that I'm ever one to support anything this regime does but I'm kind of okay with them pumping the brakes on this until we really get a handle on what the
The USG has limited capabilities on technologies from GPS chips to thermal imaging with "national security" implications for a while and now they're doing it but it seems people don't like how ill defined "Mythos-class" means. Would it be better if it was some %X on some benchmark that the frontier model peddlers could just limbo under to make it "acceptable" for release? Do we just accept that jailbreaking will never be prevented?
The part of all this I do have a problem with is the national state cybersecurity cat-and-mouse this kicks off. Will the US tech landscape have enough time to safely get a "Mythos-class" model to harden itself before China releases or leverages a "Mythos-class" cyber munition?
"pumping the brakes" would be fine. This is slamming to a full stop on a crowded freeway and causing a three car pile-up. Warning and advanced notice are the difference between regulation and tyranny, and in this case we're just getting tyranny
Same problem as always. This administration never figured out that how you do things matters. They love the drama of the crash more than actually implementing functional policies.
The goal of this administration has never been effective policy or at least not policy effective at doing things other than self-enrichment and disenfranchisement.
It's not even that. If Anthropic finds a way to variate citizenship the cat is back out of the bag. None of the AI-related worries I've ever heard about are addressed by limiting access to US citizens.
Given the current climate I'd be inclined to declare "tyranny" also but in this case I think given the degree of potential damage the slamming on of brakes is warranted when the alternative is, to strain a metaphor, going full speed off a cliff at relativistic speeds.
Fable was already out for three days. They could have made the call before it was released. They could have given Anthropic the weekend to fix the bug. They could have publicly announced what the issue is once Fable was offline (and they regularly do announcements on the weekends).
If the brakes really were warranted, the administration still screwed up terribly by leaving it out in the open for 3 days. But I'm not aware of any major tragedies in that 3-day window, so I have trouble believing it's really as dangerous as they say.
They didn't slam on the brakes though. They asked access to be limited to US citizens which ended up being hard to implement but is implementable and IMO addresses zero real concerns.
Yeah, we have a lot of critical infrastructure connected to the internet. Based on the trend the last few weeks, I expect major cyber attacks this year.
I expect that to happen no matter what we do (since the open source models are rapidly catching up), but gating access to the frontier models for a while sounds like a reasonable precaution — as annoying as it is to me personally, to be deprived of such shiny toys!
Fable is a massive step up and I didn't expect it public for another month or two. Something tells me we'll get it back in a few weeks though.
The government software infrastructure has holes that makes Swiss cheese look solid as a rock.
There is no way these systems could be secured in a decade, but I don’t believe they will even try. Knowing developers that have walked those halls, it is not and will not be a priority.
Expect systems to start failing.
I'm feeling strong alignment with your perspective here. Thanks
> and in this case we're just getting tyranny
You expected different with this administration?
Of course I expect the government to act better than this! But I am not so naive as to assume my expectations will be met.
A broken clock is still occasionally right.
I have no insider information so this is all appreciation, but:
When it comes to legislative things, there is pretty much always a timeline in which to become compliant. I do wonder if there was opportunity to give warning etc. but Anthropic decided to perform an immediate full stop deliberately causing the metaphorical three-car pileup, because the more painful for the users, the more pressure from the people there will be on the government to undo this.
See also: those painfully annoying cookie banners that are malicious compliance in the most irritating way possible, which GDPR does not require, in order to make people think GDPR is dumb.
> The USG has limited capabilities on technologies from GPS chips
Are you referring to Selective Availability? That ended decades ago.
Selective Availability accuracy restrictions ended decades ago, but GPS technology is still subject to various military and export-control restrictions.
Not selective availability. COCOM Limits that prevent a GPS chip from operating above a certain speed and altitude.
It’s funny because it’s just (relativistic) math. It would cost a couple hundred bucks to roll your own with no restrictions.
In a parallel universe where we have Biden (or Democratic Party) administration, how different do you think the regulations / approach would be for this fast moving and unpredictable technology?
It’s hard not to see this ban as being motivated by retribution for refusing to use the models for spying and autonomous warfare.
Probably using the rule of law in some way? Talking about it in public? Legislating? You know... government type stuff?
Like Biden did for crypto? Oh wait, no he had a backdoor war using the banking system and refused to enact new laws.
Refusing to enact new laws around a thing most people don’t like, don’t want, and don’t care about (oh and is used for scams often) is quite different than a secret back door war.
The crypto "industry" had a series of multi-$B scams, seems like strong regulation would be called for. On the other hand, Trump executed a rug pulling token for himself and his wife days before his 2nd term and sells pardons to fraudsters and money launders. I know that inspires confidence.
Yes you’re right. Paying off POTUS’s family through a series of pump and dump schemes is much better than what Biden did.
They at least wouldn't depend on how extensively you publicly glaze the President.
There is not a single chance this would have happened under that admin. Not one single chance.
They probably would have been in line with Executive Order 14110, the Biden administration's detailed description of a principled approach to regulation of the AI industry. It would have been aligned with the Trump administration's stated goals as well, but a coalition of rich VCs successfully bribed him to rescind it as one of his first acts in office, because the primary principle of Trumpist government is that people who pay Donald Trump a lot of money get what they want.
It doesn’t really matter what party does it
The ideal case is a statutory agency with regulatory authority that sets very clear standards for what model capabilities can and cannot release. Those are set ahead of time and well known by frontier model providers.
Most normal regulations are managed through the administrative procedures act process. That’s a legal requirement that involves deliberation and public comment.
I’d argue you could pretty easily enumerate most capabilities that have been obvious concerns for a while. For example, cyber security.
This structure can last decades and reassure players they can operate in the market without rules changing suddenly without warning.
Some kind of sudden, temporary action like this export control tool is legally fragile. Even if sometimes necessary in exceptional cases. But if the administration sees this as a permanent way of working, they won’t be helping anyone (but maybe themselves through grift).
If the administration truly cares about functional regulation (which maybe they don’t) they need a sturdier legal structure that lasts past Trump. Not flimsy edicts that change with the wind
I wholeheartedly agree with what you’re saying in general. I do wonder though, given how rapid advancements in AI are occurring, if even an agency with statutory authority would be able to establish a predictable regulatory environment, let alone do so while maintaining a lengthy public comment period and a whole of government approach. There are obvious flaws with the current administration’s approach to, well, almost everything. But I’m not sure if this is even a tractable problem with the governance structures we have been employing over the last 50 years.
Nothing being talked about with Mythos wasn’t a known AI risk 12 months ago. Those rules could have been established to guide frontier labs.
But yes crazy things happen. Maybe it won’t catch everything.
The right answer are giving the govt / this agency explicit legal, short term model pause capabilities to let the rule making process happen if something completely out of band happens. Or let the agency study/approve models prior to release.
Not sudden, unexpected application of export laws.
Yet in this case, for Fable, cybersecurity risks have been well know for some time. A rule created years ago when we knew this would happen could have given frontier labs and the market predictability.