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Comment by d3m0t3p | Hacker News Reader

> I also feel like guarding their consumer product against bad-faith-bad-use is basically pointless. There will always be ways to get bomb-making instructions

With that argument we should not restrict firearms because there will always be a way to get access to them (black market for example)

Even if it’s not a perfect solution, it help steer the problem in the right direction and that should already be enough.

Furthermore, these researches are also a way to better understand LLM inner working and behaviors. Even if it wouldn’t yield results like being able to block bad behaviors, that’s cool and interesting by itself imo.

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No, the argument is that restricting physical access to objects that can be used in a harmful way is exactly how to handle such cases. Restricting access to information is not really doing much at all.

Access to weapons, chemicals, critical infrastructure etc. is restricted everywhere. Even if the degree of access restriction varies.

I've ended up with this viewpoint too. I've settled in the idea of informed ethics.. the model should comply, but inform you of the ethics of actually using the information.

"The model should ..."

Well, that's the actual issue, isn't it? If we can't get a model to refuse to give dangerous information, how are we going to get it to refuse to give dangerous information without a warning label?

> the model should comply, but inform you of the ethics of actually using the information.

How can it “inform” you of something subjective? Ethics are something the user needs to supply. (The model could, conceptually, be trained to supply additional contextual information that may be relevant to ethical evaluation based on a pre-trained ethical framework and/or the ethical framework evidenced by the user through interactions with the model, I suppose, but either of those are likely to be far more error prone in the best case than actually providing the directly-requested information.)

> Restricting access to information is not really doing much at all.

Why not? Restricting access to information is of course harder but that's no argument for it not doing anything. Governments restrict access to "state secrets" all the time. Depending on the topic, it's hard but may still be effective and worth it.

For example, you seem to agree that restricting access to weapons makes sense. What to do about 3D-printed guns? Do you give up? Restrict access to 3D printers? Not try to restrict access to designs of 3D printed guns because "restricting it won't work anyway"?

Meh, 3D printed guns are a stupid example that gets trotted out just because it sounds futuristic. In WW2 you had many examples of machinists in occupied Europe who produced workable submachine guns - far better than any 3D-printed firearm - right under the nose of the Nazis. Literally when armed soldiers could enter your house and inspect it at any time. Our machining tools today are much better, but no-one is concerned with homemade SMGs.

The Venn diagram between "people competent enough to manufacture dangerous things" and "people who want to hurt innocent people" is essentially zero. That's the primary reason why society does not degrade into a Mad Max world. AI won't change this meaningfully.

There's very little competence (and also money) required to buy a 3D printer, download a design and print it. A lot less competence than "being a machinist".

The point is that making dangerous things is becoming a lot easier over time.

you can 3-D print parts of a gun but the important parts are still metal which you need to machine. I’m not sure how much easier you just made it … if someone’s making a gun in their basement are you really concerned whether it takes 20 hours or 10? What you should be really concerned about is when the cost of milling machines comes down, which is happening, quick, make them illegal

People actually are concerned about homemade pistols and SMGs being used by criminals, though. It comes up quite often in Europe these days, especially in UK.

And, yes, in principle, 3D printing doesn't really bring anything new to the table since you could always machine a gun, and the tools to do so are all available. The difference is ease of use - 3D printing lowered the bar for "people competent enough to manufacture dangerous things" enough that your latter argument no longer applies.

FWIW I don't know the answer to OP's question even so. I don't think we should be banning 3D printed gun designs, or, for that matter, that even if we did, such a ban would be meaningfully enforceable. I don't think 3D printers should be banned, either. This feels like one of those cases where you have to accept that new technology has some unfortunate side effects.

> Even if it’s not a perfect solution, it help steer the problem in the right direction

Yeh tbf I was a bit strong worded when I said "pointless". I agree that perfect is the enemy of good etc. And I'm very glad that they're doing _something_.

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