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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

There’s a libertarian sentiment that that doesn’t sit well with “AI is harming people” sentiment. If AI has harmful uses, and I think anyone sensible would have to agree that it does, then giving everyone unrestricted AI is likely to make it worse.

It’s sort of like gun nuts arguing that more guns is the answer. I mean, ok, maybe you’re a responsible gun owner or AI user but relying on personal responsibility doesn’t fix systemic problems. There are bad people out there.

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If food has harmful uses, and I think any one sensible would have to agree that it does, then giving everyone unrestricted food is likely to make it worse.

You can do this with cars, tools, computers, ... whatever you want. So, no, I think your point is wrong.

We do in fact have car and food safety laws. Regulation is normal.

Guns are highly regulated. Try getting a gun in liberal California, where Reagan screwed us.

Now, what I want to regulate are accordions.

I am a responsible accordion owner and I think we’re doing ok :)

Haven’t tried getting a gun in California. How bad is it? How could it be improved?

> Haven’t tried getting a gun in California. How bad is it? How could it be improved?

You have to pass a basic knowledge test, have a clean background, prove residency in the state, be 21 (or 18 for hunting rifles, IIRC) and then wait 10 days.

Which is to say that it’s a very burdensome process if you think you should be able to go to Walmart, exchange cash for goods, and walk out with a gun, but pretty simple by the standards of regulated goods. The basic knowledge test is very basic, so the pain points are just that sometimes background checks are incorrect, the waiting period can be inconvenient, and just the general annoyances of government bureaucracy.

A gun is not a good. It’s a right.

It’s not like we ask to wait for 2 weeks when you have something to say or when you want to pray to your god.

> It’s a right.

Not if you're a felon or have mental health issues.

Free speech is a right, too, but we regulate that.

It depends on the county. Some Sheriffs think it’s them who gives you your RIGHT to own a gun or a concealed weapon license. They don’t understand they are servants.

LA just settled the Fed lawsuit over their terrible practices:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-13/doj-la-s...

I have purchased a gun in California, and I thought the process was pretty reasonable. Maybe even too lax.

Safety laws are the wrong category, the equivalent regulations would be those that forbid the use of cars for drive-by shootings or as robbery getaway vehicles, and regulations against the use of food to provide crime energy.

Yes, it makes sense to be against bad regulations. We should try to do better than that.

Nice try Philipp Mainländer!

I simply don't trust the people who would decide who gets AI (or guns) to make good choices.

This is a common populist sentiment, but if you don’t trust anyone then nothing can be done. Is it just game over?

I didn't say I don't trust anyone. Don't put words in my mouth, it's a sign of bad faith.

Other countries have governments that have earned that level of trust. I believe the US could get there eventually, but it will take a very long time because it has a very long way to go.

Okay, sorry about that. But how do we start? Maybe there are AI safety organizations that deserve our support?

It’s not game over because AI doomers are wrong in their projections. LLMs are a transformative technology like the internet, but they’re also overhyped and the useful applications aren’t as broad as people think they are. They’re also not Skynet.

I’m also skeptical about some projections, particularly for robotics, but on the Internet at least, it does seem like AI is automating most things, more or less as predicted. We already have botnets and had one notorious AI botnet swarm, fortunately easily shut down without doing any real damage. I don’t think we’ve seen the last AI botnet.

AI-automated warfare is looking pretty scary too. I don’t think it will stay in Ukraine.

Time will tell. I think the problems will come from humans automating things that shouldn’t be automated, like the disaster of the Minab school targeting, not out-of-control superintelligence.

Viruses don't need to be intelligent at all and smart viruses (or AI internet worms) won't need to be superintelligent to be a real pain to deal with. DoS attacks due to scraping are bad enough already.

The situation is sort of like the Internet before broadband. There probably aren't enough AI-capable home machines to have big swarms of bots that run autonomously. If the swarm depends on an LLM API, it will be easier to cut it off once it's noticed.

I think it's an even chance that we will see a bot swarm in the wild (rather than coming from an AI lab) by the end of next year.

Right, but the internet survived the Melissa virus and other early widespread worm attacks. They caused widespread disruption and economic damage, but they weren’t the end of the world. And besides, at present people are using AI to find and patch software at a faster rate than they are using it to compromise software (more dollars are allocated to security these days).

IMHO the biggest problems will be with poorly written AI slop software, probably small business crapware produced with minimal investment (maybe entirely without an experienced developer) and legacy equipment that’s been abandoned by the manufacturer. This will lead to disruption but not catastrophe.

Certainly no “anyone” and who happens to be worse than no one.

This is a common populist argument

All concerns balance against competing concerns, and in this case freedom of computing and knowledge wins over safety. Especially since it’s trivial to copy and share open models.

Okay, you’re asserting that but I disagree. Why should anyone else be convinced? Why can’t we get the good uses without the harms? It doesn’t seem like an unavoidable tradeoff.

I agree that it isn't an unavoidable tradeoff in principle, but looking back at our (as in humanity) track record, it is 99% likely to be.

Populist doomers will tell you that nobody can be trusted, no global problems will ever be solved, nothing can be done, game over, don’t even try.

People did use global agreements and regulation to fix the ozone hole, though, so I think there’s a chance.

Well then do your best, people like me will keep sharing models just fine. (Not like I even do anything with them, but I’m a compulsive data hoarder.) It’s not like the copyright industry has been able to stop sharing either, and there’s serious money at stake there.

I predict that the AI scaremongering will fizzle out when the bubble bursts. There will still be die-hard believers but the public will lose interest.

You’re not releasing new models though.

I don’t see how a stock market crash will make AI-related concerns go away. There was a dot-com crash but the Internet just kept getting bigger and causing more problems. In many ways security has improved, but we worry more than ever about social media, etc.

I guess I don’t really see the internet as a disaster, sure it brings issues but so did factories and mass production, and so will AI.

I wouldn’t say the Internet is a disaster either, but there are disasters where people died due to factories exploding, letting off toxic gases (like in Bhopal), and so on. That’s why there are regulations to try to prevent industrial accidents.

For Internet-related disasters where people died, see [1].

I would bet that there will be AI-related disasters. Arguably the US bombing a school in Iran counts, though it seems to be due to organizational issues, too.

[1] https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6abd4e3226b48191a26a0fe6768c722f

Actually I think profits win over safety.

Gun owner enters the conversation. In high trust societies, armed people are very polite people. I don’t want the bad guys out there being the only ones with guns. Besides I like to shoot just like you like (whatever you like to do that is legal).

Replace “gun” with anything and you will see how your comment falls apart.

What’s next? A registry for food purchases? Your beer gut is starting to show.

If you mean high-trust societies like maybe Switzerland, I agree that it can work, but the US has lots of guns and doesn’t seem very polite, so how we’re doing it doesn’t seem to be working very well.

We do have lots of food safety regulation, which has more to do with selling food.

Unlike food, guns are your right.

That seems unfortunate. I think a lot of people would prefer the reverse.

Fortunately there is no right to AI.

Nothing that some other person has to give you can be a right.

A right is not something the government gives you. In the US, the Bill of Rights does not actually give you rights. You are born with rights. The Bill of Rights simply clarifies that the government CANNOT RESTRICT YOUR RIGHTS.

> In high trust societies, armed people are very polite people

Surely you could name three such societies?

Just go to ChatGPT and ask:

List 20 high trust societies

I'm asking you, and furthermore I'm not asking for a list of high trust societies, I'm asking for ones in which "armed people are very polite people".

Switzerland, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, Czech Republic, Finland, Norway, most Rural America.

Anyway, ChatGPT can answer your questions. Or just visit your local gun range. I highly recommend it.

> giving everyone unrestricted AI is likely to make it worse

Worse for whom?

The only effective defense against predatory corporate and government AI is personal protective AI.

Anything else is unilateral disarmament. It's the only way individuals can survive in the worse case scenario.

> gun nuts

Guns are different. They can't protect you against the government, contrary to gun nut claims.

I would say that there are very few people on earth that I trust less than Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk. Also my own government claims to have used Anthropic models to bomb a girls' school in Iran. If you combine US regulations with sociopathic private companies, you get into a worst case scenario for humanity imho. Again, I'm thankful to China or any other entity pushing open models, local models and even distribution of this technology.

Maybe there are other organizations that deserve our support?

I'm happy to support anyone pushing for open models, local models and publishing their innovations out in the open.

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