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Comment by giuliomagnifico | Hacker News Reader

“Regulate”? We can’t, and shouldn’t, regulate everything. Policymakers should focus on creating rules that ensure data safety, but if someone over 18 years wants to marry a chatbot… well, that’s their (stupid) choice.

Instead of trying to control everything, policymakers should educate people about how these chatbots work and how to keep their data safe. After all, not everyone who played Doom in the ’90s became a real killer, or assaults women because of YouPorn.

Society will adapt to these ridiculous new situations…what truly matters is people’s awareness and understanding.

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We can, and we should, regulate some things. AI has, quite suddenly, built up billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and become pervasive in people's daily lives. Part of how society adapts to ridiculous new situations is through regulations.

I'm not proposing anything specifically, but the implication that this field should not be regulated is just foolish.

You are using an incredibly poor rhetoric technique and setting up a strawman.

This is not about regulating everything.

This is about realizing adverse effects and regulating for those.

Just like no one is selling you toxic youghurt.

People think that we can just magically regulate everything. It's like a medieval peasant who doesn't understand chemistry/physics/etc thinking they can just pray harder to have better odds of something.

We literally CAN'T regulate some things for any reasonable definition of "can't" or "regulate". Our society is either not rich enough or not organized in a way to actually do it in any useful capacity and not make the problem worse.

I'm not saying AI chatbots are one of those things, but people toss around the idea of regulation way too casually and AI chatbots are way less cut and dry than bad food or toxic waste or whatever other extreme anyone wants to misleadingly project down into the long tail of weird stuff with limited upside and potential for unintended consequences elsewhere.

Again, another strawman.

Which people in specific think that?

All your argument consists of is, "Somebody somewhere believes something untrue, and people don't use enough precision in their speach, so I am recommending we don't do anything regulatory about this problem."

Having a virtual girlfriend is not selling toxic yoghurts, it doesn’t harm anyone, it’s like if you buy yoghurt and put in on a pizza… you can do want you want with the yoghurt like with the AI.

The important thing is keep the data safe, like the yoghurt that must not be expired when sold.

Despite what the free market religion has been telling for decades, we actually don't live in little parallel universes that don't affect each other. Even putting yoghurt on pizza has on effect on the world, not just the individual doing it. Not understanding this is what'll be the end of humanity. AI girl/boyfriends will have a huge effect on society, we should think hard before doing things like that. Slightly slower technological progress is not as disastrous as fast progress gone wrong.

The important thing to you.

We also don't want to regulate everything. Have you seen that someplace, or even here? Or it's an imaginary argument? The topic was regulating AI, and about that I like your thought: humans should be better educated and better informed. Should we, maybe, make a regulation to ensure that?

What’s your opinion on current trend of “casino-fication of everything”?

I understand what you’re saying but it’s a difficult balance. Not saying everything needs to be regulated and not saying we should be full blown neoliberalism. But think of some of “social” laws we have today (in the US). No child marriages, no child labor, no smoking before 19, and no drinking before 21. These laws are in place because we understand that those who can exploit will do the exploiting. Those who can be exploited will be exploited. That being said, I don’t agree with any of the age verification policies here with adult material. Honestly not sure what the happy medium is.

I already wrote “over 18”. AI is already regulated, you can’t use it if you’re under 14/18. But if you want to ask ChatGPT “what’s the meaning of everything” or “can we have digital children”, that’s a personal choice.

People are weird… for someone who is totally alone, having a virtual wife/child could be better than being completely alone.

They’re not using ChatGPT to do anything illegal, and already regulated, like planning to kill someone or commit theft.

I'm of the opinion that should be unregulated as well. Just like you say, what's important is people's awareness and understanding of the tool and how it works underneath.

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