Comment by reom_tobit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reom_tobit | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Pointing out what you see as bad regulation, doesn’t imply that all regulation is inherently bad, or that less regulation is inherently good.

I won’t argue about the merits of each of the above cases you’ve cited (Berlin rents & GDPR), as I think they’re quite complex conversations to have and they could both take hours.

As it relates to the linked article, “AI” will continue to have an impact on our lives, more so than it does today. Whether or not this legislation is good or not, doesn’t preclude the idea that this space will require guards to ensure that citizens are being treated fairly.

Black boxes are not a good way to run a free and fair society, and any being introduced should be met with deep care and skepticism.

Whether the EU will do a “good” law on this is yet to be seen, but frankly I’d much rather it get looked into during the relatively nascent stages, rather than letting these systems loose on everything and then cleaning up the mess afterwards.

When you can't even define `AI` clearly, how do you expect to understand it and regulate it ?

The draft law says any logic or knowledge based systems - This could mean anything from an if-else switch to a neural network.

If waiting till black box AI creates a mess and cleaning it up later is immoral, than so is prematurely killing something before you even get to know what it is.

Regulation has to be clear, simple and easy to understand. This proposal is none of the above. Given the loopholes that Berlin govt. introduced in the law (which btw, got through as it was deemed unconstitutional), even after playing a long, big PR campaign, about combating housing issues, I have no doubts that any such law regulating "AI" will turn into a similar sham.

As I said, these systems should be met with skepticism. I would rather someone write a draft law that starts a conversation, rather than just let these systems run amok.

Pointing out what you see as bad regulation, doesn’t imply that all regulation is inherently bad, or that less regulation is inherently good.

Well, this is a post about Bayesian inference, so technically pointing out bad regulation should cause people to update their beliefs by adjusting the prior probability that any new piece of regulation will be bad. Assuming people reason based on experience of course, which is reasonable.

What we have here is an unclear and highly controversial problem that many people would argue doesn't even exist at all (I don't see anyone in my own life who has been harmed by AI for example), a very vague and poorly worded regulation, which nonetheless has massive fines attached to it. That makes it pretty much a textbook example of bad regulation. And unfortunately this is the latest in a series of such anti-technology regulations from the EU, which doesn't seem to be learning how to write higher quality regulation or how to judge proportionality.

The EU as a bloc will presumably have a less dynamic AI sector as a result I suppose. I’m fine with that personally, but perhaps I’m a bit of a luddite on this issue. I just believe we should cast a very close watch on any algorithm that could make decisions about citizens. If anything, the current laws do not go far enough in my opinion, but that’s another conversation entirely.

It just means that the status-quo will be re-inforced: everyone uses AI, and it's American or Chinese AI. These kinds of laws don't actually change consumer behavior, because they don't reflect anyone's real concerns outside of Guardian op-ed pages and maybe HN. They just allow EU Commissioners to posture and try to spin weakness as a moral virtue, resulting in the EU falling ever further behind.

Then I suppose the EU will be punished for this in the global markets. I’m not interested in reading grand motives into these things. It’s easily done the other way around, and doesn’t add much to a discussion.

The man on the clapham omnibus might not care about these laws, but if that was the standard for every bit of legislation, we’d have a very different set of laws in our respective nations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com