Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

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https://replacement.ai/complaints

At the bottom of this page, there is a form you can fill out. This website says they will contact your local representative on your behalf. (And forward you any reply.)

Here's the auto-generated message:

I am a constituent living in [state] with urgent concerns about the lack of guardrails surrounding advanced AI technologies. It is imperative that we act decisively to establish strong protections that safeguard families, communities, and our children from potential harms associated with these rapidly evolving systems.

As companies continue to release increasingly powerful AI systems without meaningful oversight, we cannot rely on them to police themselves, especially when the stakes are so high. While AI has the potential to do remarkable things, it also poses significant risks, including the manipulation of children, the development of bioweapons, the creation of deepfakes, and the threat of widespread unemployment.

I urge you to enact strong federal guardrails for advanced AI that protect families, communities, and children. Additionally, please do not preempt or block states from adopting strong AI protections that may be necessary for their residents.

Thank you for your time.

[name]

New York

Oh, too bad. I initially shared it on LinkedIn but deleted it once I saw this. I’m all for establishing in the mind of the commons, that displacing humans from the economy is inane, and to see the open dialogue on the subject. I’m not up for some little team to try to control things.

What you call "some little team" others might call grassroots politics. And it's the alternative to top-down partisan politics.

Ideas are nice, and important, but there needs to be an action vector for those ideas to have practical value.

Grassroots politics is a superset of what I'm objecting to which is a (premature) drive to have the problem taken care of by someone in government. Before we get there, we want a healthy public dialogue where people can organize themselves into camps, using good old fashioned social media. Bring your memes, your satire, stuff like this. What's the position to take to a politician? It's unclear yet.

Substituting direct political action for complaining and memes on social media has a long history of making people feel like they're "contributing to the discourse" while actually having no practical political impact at all.

The community needs to know what the issue is, the issues need to ‘ripen’ in that respect. Pursuing a PAC before that, means it will be too random. The discussion here shows we don’t yet share common understanding of the key issues with GenAI.

I don't think it's premature at all. HN often objects to this sort of "overreach" and then witnesses the consequences firsthand (eg. Apple's App Store censorship). We can already demonstrate that AI has mishandled intellectual property and caused damage to rightsholders - I definitely don't think robots are coming for my job but I absolutely support corrective regulation. The alternative is forfeiting copyright as we know it.

The US cannot move fast and break things forever. If American businesses want to sell digital tchotchkes, then we first have to convince rightsholders that they own anything of value.

Copyright? That’s certainly an issue, but a left turn from OP’s website.

To me it seems like contacting your local representative is actually pretty in line with your goal of "establishing in the mind of the commons". I'm not sure what the little team is that you think will be controlling everything.

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