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Comment by coffeemug | Hacker News Reader

Regulatory agencies limit uses of other products without acts of congress-- cigarettes, vapes, drugs, pesticides, chemicals, explosives. Even firearms, despite a constitutional amendment! Why not models? (Note I am not arguing it's a good idea; I'm making a narrow argument that there is precedent.)

EDIT: I agree that it should require an act of Congress to explicitly delegate this power.

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> Regulatory agencies limit uses of other products without acts of congress-- cigarettes, vapes, drugs, pesticides, chemicals, explosives.

Every one of those is by a regulatory agency that was explicitly empowered by Congress to do such regulation.

until it isn't, i.e. certain rulings over the last couple years...

You're talking about the EPA yes? Such ridiculousness

right, and one minute to the next a gun you bought could be a crime to own and land you in jail LOL.

congress has abdicated its role entirely.

  Dajcie mi człowieka, a paragraf się znajdzie

translates to:

  Give me the man and I will give you the case against him

The ATF was created by an act of congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968

All of the agencies responsible for those regulations were created by and get their funding from Congress. Currently, they're asleep at the wheel. Or a better idiom might be "cowering in the corner".

I would say, "sitting smugly astride the monster's back, confident that they will never be fed to it".

Fairly certain all those have "acts of congress" attached to them. I mean, it used to take a constitutional amendment to make something illegal but now we have tons of agencies responsible for regulating all the things.

Plus, they're relying on the "math is a weapon" law to ban "export" of the models.

Congress passed the Arms Export Control Act (22 USC 2778) in the Ford administration and it has been applied to software since at least the Clinton administration.

isn't this materially different in that it creates a kind of class system within the US?

the continued exploits of the same kind of class system the US has always had

how so? Is it a class system that only Raytheon employees can work on cruise missiles, not the average citizen?

(edit: not that these models are equivalent to missiles oc)

Cruise missiles are not general purpose tools, it's obviously not even remotely similar. Virtually everybody reading this could use Mythos immediately to do real work, collectively in virtually every part of the economy.

It's pretty problematic to not make it more widely available at least to US businesses, and there is not even a vetting process to get approved quickly and easily. If this is the new norm, the intended or unintended consequences of this type of gatekeeping will be an unprecedented consolidation of power amongst the largest corporations. Even more than we have seen over the last 20 years.

I would say this is a fairly equivalent dynamic in action, but it was concentrated to the defense industry. This suggests a future in which every company in the tech industry has "clearance required" or "citizens only" roles for the people who need to be able to use the find-security-problems-bot...

It has never taken a constitutional amendment to make something illegal.

slavery required the 13th amendment

Prohibition was the 18th amendment

> I agree that it should require an act of Congress to explicitly delegate this power.

Should ever new "weapon" invented require a new act of Congress? We've considered software subject this act since the 90s.

If everyone making AI is screaming up and down that we are in an AI arms race creating dangerous entities that will determine the fate of the world is the government just supposed to ignore them?

No. But it could be done in accordance with the rule of law and commitment to equal access rather than an ad hoc approach that creates the impression of corruption and picking winners.

None of those things are knowledge. I think theres something specific around limiting access to knowledge and capabilities that makes this feel insidious.

Information is covered by ITAR, so that's not new. You can illegally export information about an ITAR covered item by just allowing a foreign national the potential to see an item. They don't even have to prove the foreign national actually did see it.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M...

Land of the free, clearly.

"Malboro cigarettes may once again be sold, but Newport remains banned for everyone except large purchasers that have paid the appropriate bri... fees."

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