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Comment by tiahura | Hacker News Reader

Do you feel the same way about FDA approvals?

I mean, it seems like common sense - a limited beta test before widespread rollout. I'm not convinced they'll ever come up with a good framework for dealing with the cyber & bio issues, but getting triggered by a beta test rollout seems overboard.

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It is common sense, and with literally any other administration in the past century it would seem like a good idea.

I have zero confidence that this particular administration has any interest in regulating the industry for the good of the country, much less for the good of humanity. They will use regulation to maximize personal profit for themselves and their cronies, at the expense of the nation. I would not have thought that of any other US administration in the past 100 years.

In the longer run, it probably won't matter. If the level of corruption we see currently becomes the norm, then the US is facing much bigger problems than counter-productive industrial policy.

It has already become the norm

The FDA has incredibly detailed guidelines that need to be followed, and a clear process to be followed. This is none of that.

If you're arguing they should have believed the AI doomer hype years ago and developed decades of regs at the drop of a hat, sure, i guess you can. That's a topic for historians.

But, the question today is what to do today, a rolling deployment seems pretty hard to argue with.

I'd add, I think it's significant that we haven't seen any administration grandstanding on this specific issue - no Hegseth tweets etc.

The difference is that FDA approvals are a well-defined process with specific and actionable criteria for the release of a new product. Whereas this is the administration running on vibes and favouritism

I'm not going to defend the administration on most things, but your characterization isn't entirely fair. The record seems to suggest that the administration deferred to Amazon and the NSA, which seems sensible.

Perhaps you can fault them with not coming up with an objective framework earlier, but that's a different criticism.

150 years ago, Bayer Inc. was mass producing Heroine. 130 years ago Merck and Parke-Davis were mass producing Cocaine(TM) -- all with zero oversight. It would be another 50 years before we even had an FDA and another 50 before the FDA was a reasonably well-oiled machine with a solid set of processes and requirements. Even then, it couldn't really (and can't really today either) prevent these non-US companies (both Heroine and Cocaine were German) from making and selling elsewhere.

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