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Comment by dontreact | Hacker News Reader

This is the first instance I've seen of the tech industry calling for regulation. I admire this and the idea that people running a corporation can understand that despite their best intentions, in the long run the corporation will act to maximize profit via legal means, even if an action is not in the best interest of society. And so in some cases we need to make certain things illegal. I would love to see a company do this sort of thing for a broad set of tax loopholes as well, for example.

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Companies calling for more regulation is a ubiquitous phenomenon.

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

More regulation generally gives an advantage to larger companies over smaller ones since it creates barriers to entry; compliance costs usually increase sublinearly with revenue. (E.g., it's a lot easier for Microsoft to hire a dedicated lawyer than it is for a garage start-up.)

This idea that "companies always want less regulation than is socially efficient" is usually based on a misunderstanding of economics.

Maybe if you can't do business without making sure you're not causing harm, you shouldn't do business at all.

Of course anti-competitive lobbying happens all the time. But if it's not economically feasible for a Scrappy Gang of Dropouts in The Garage follow to regulations that protect people's lives and freedom in this country, I'm cool with them finding another country, or their own deserted island perhaps.

I think you missed my point and the discussion on Wikipedia. You seem to be assuming that essentially all regulations are correctly aligned with the public interest. If that were the case, you'd be correct that compliance costs would (in an efficient equilibrium) be correctly internalized, merely excluding inefficiently small companies from the market [1]. However, this is not the world we live in. Uncountable historical examples, and the massive size of the corporate lobbying industry, are clear evidence that companies often shape their own regulations to their benefit. So on priors it's much more likely that Microsofts public call for regulation -- which is just a particular form of lobbying -- is in their own interest, not some pure expression of civic duty.

[1] Of course, we are not automatically in an efficient equilibrium, and there exists worlds where the reduced competition due to barrier to entry create costs that are larger than the benefits of the regulation. But I'm happy to put that scenario aside.

Okay, so that outlaws commercial transportation. Or at least I haven’t heard of any of them making sure they’re not causing harm.

I'm glad you called out regulatory capture. The cynic in me wonders if Microsoft is so far behind in some AI aspects like this that they're taking this approach to slow down Amazon's and Google's forays into selling this tech to businesses and government.

The real cynic would say that Microsoft knows that this stuff is coming in legislation anyway (because too many people are too pissed off by now), and those who are on the bandwagon early - and actively helping to push it forward - will be rewarded with positive PR, while also helping to sink competition that's not so fast on the uptake.

I doubt Microsoft is behind in face recognition, which is an AI task that's been studied and done to death in academic literature. Microsoft has actually made some of the most important discoveries in AI (invented ResNets, co-authored Faster R-CNN), they can surely pull up a mere FR system.

This actually made me pause and think about what is already known about me. I wonder if there is a word for the collective knowledge about an individual.

There's always the call for regulation - if a competitor has a product which is ahead if you in some way wher you for whatever reason can't or won't compete. See for instance Steve Cook's recent comments about GDPR and privacy.

In this case it's almost the opposite I think. MS has good technology and that is why they would want regulation. If there's regulation then any potential competitor will now have a much harder time creating a competing product.

Curious...do you have a link to that?

It's very strategic on Microsoft's part.

They aren't the industry leader, so leading the conversation on regulation helps them to impact the market leader.

It also let's them steer the conversation on regulation before it becomes a conversation occurring outside their control/influence.

Self-regulation is EXTREMELY common for both those reasons in the corporate world. It also never actually works as well as independent regulation, and when there are issues in independent regulation, it frequently occurs as a result of that independence being undermined/corrupted by revolving doors/lobbying/etc.

It's a nice press release, and smart on Microsoft's part, but don't fool yourself into thinking it's not in their self-interest to be doing this. To date, I don't think I can recall any instance of a public corporation acting against its own self-interest for moral reasons.

> It's very strategic on Microsoft's part. They aren't the industry leader, so leading the conversation on regulation helps them to impact the market leader.

On the other hand, if Microsoft is sincerely worried about this technology (and potential negative impact it may have on it's image just like Amazon a few months ago), then it makes sense they would be lagging behind as they would be more concerned about assigning resources and releasing product?

Maybe I'm just reading into it, but this looks like:

   a) Anti-AWS (conceding loss of JEDI contract)
   b) Regulatory capture for the remaining big cloud players

I think you are close or exactly on target.

Adding new regulations for emerging technologies can reduce uncertainty. Why invest in something if you don't know if the government will curtail it in the future?

The idea is to be established in the field before regulation. That way you can lead the conversation around regulation which would, in effect, cement your continued relevance.

I am kind of wondering what is in it for Microsoft. No public company does anything against their own self interest. Is this just a play to regulate smaller companies out of the market? What are the strategies and tactics that MS is using?

Really? Elon Musk has been making such calls for quite some time - although it has been regarding AI in general and not just facial recognition. The last time I heard him talking about it, he seemed rather disheartened by the fact he'd been unable to have any impact.

Apple has been doing so for a few months at least.

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