It's not going to happen unless legislated. That's the whole point. Currently there is no legislation forcing it to happen, but in the future there might be. That might be a good idea, even if the various companies involved don't want to do it.
Really, its standard corporate spin when accepting a settlement, “We’re super happy to work with regulators to make things better.” When, of course, if the company had any interest in making things better the regulator would never have needed to get involved in the first place.
Obviously, its deceptive, but its not bizarre, its just making PR lemonade out of PR lemons.
What exactly do you agree with? This is clearly just a shakedown and they're making very little effort to disguise it. Are you a shareholder of the corporations that will benefit from this arrangement?
>[If only the FTC was bigger and expressed more power, all of our problems would be solved]
I am skeptical. The big players are happy without Section 230 reforms (business as usual), and they’re happier with it (regulatory capture they can afford).
> Likely because you haven't read any of the links to cases or explanations in the thread about the history of the issue.
I have, so that's not compelling. I'm interpreting the statement in the proper context, at a practical level. We're a little far removed from the statement, so look at it again:
That argument is akin to saying "let's strip the regulations because ___ wasn't so bad before."
That's correct in context. Of course you have to start with some new (Ajit's plan isn't just remove Title II) and some pre-existing conditions. The consequences he posits are unrealistic because technical capability is different (but he won't address that). There's not much to say when opposition spokesholes starts taking a purposefully phrased metaphor literally as a premise. SMH
> People keep saying that regulation is unclear, when let's be honest, it's perfectly clear. Just not what a lot of people wanted to hear.
I honestly don't know how you can say that with a straight face if you have ever looked into this for more than 5 minutes.
The regulation is not clear and they refuse to clarify when asked on many important topics. Compare that to other security related issues, where regulators are very proactive about clearly defining what is what, publishing explainers, etc. etc.
Lawmakers rarely specify the how. That is left up to the interpretation of companies, regulators, and courts. When sensible, this is a hedge against technological change, but obviously it can be and is abused to create atmospheres of fear for the risk averse.
> Can you not do this and also seek to identify hedge funds, private capital, REITs, and other entities which may be more difficult to regulate at a later time? Maybe this first piece of legislation is the quick win?
You can, and I specifically pointed out that I generally agree with what is being proposed, and certainly hope that it isn’t an attempt at diversion by throwing out the usual scapegoat.
They have no choice. There's no regulation around this so companies are forced to be transparent and convince their users they're legit.
We're just not used to companies being transparent because contracts around regulated industry are enforced by the force of law (threats of fine, imprisonment or violence).
We could have many more companies being transparent if only we didn't give them a way to use the force of law to convince users they're covered (think Bank of America and FDIC for instance. I'd rather Bank of America had to prove to me their investments are sound etc)
> Asking for regulation soon after your company has gained a substantial (but probably transient) lead in a market sets off people's villain detectors
This doesn't make any sense to me.
a) OpenAI just barely has a product. I mean it's pretty amazing but so very clearly just emerging. Regulation increases the barrier to market entry for other players, but OpenAI entire continued research, that is just about to maybe bear fruit, depends on upcoming regulations not fucking them over.
b) Right now, the lynchpin (and how this industry could realistically be regulated) seems to be a compute. For a lot of compute, you need a lot of money.
So here is what we are assuming: An evils genius OpenAI, that is masterfully steering American regulation to create a scenario in which, on the one hand, the most scary competitors (those with the big credit lines) will be effectively kept from entering the market, while on the other hand warding off any AI policies that run a high risk of impacting their own business more than anything else.
You claim people have seen such things before. I am not sure what you are referring to, but to me the above sounds exceedingly wild and improbable.
> Sam will be okay, he can handle some haters.
Sure. I really don't care about Sam. I just wish people tried to be a little kinder, for everyone.
> Am I the only one this seems completely reasonable to?
No. I'm not actually a big pro-regulation kind of guy. But there is a knee-jerk reaction favoring tech-ish companies getting regulatory compliance letters that I don't share. Most of the time, it just seems like the agency in question doing its statutorily-sanctioned job. It's not like sympathetic cases where a company falls into a Kafka-esque quagmire of obscure regulations that only tangentially apply to what they're doing. When I see cases like this, or AirBnB, or Uber, they fall directly within the scope of the relevant agency, and the action being taken is justified on the same basis that justifies the agency itself.
Lobbyists are pushing for it. Big investment firms like Vanguard and Blackrock that have a lot to lose if the commercial real estate market collapses are pushing companies to mandate RTO policies if they want to keep getting investments. Makes sense.
> If we're going to go through the rigmarole of passing new regulations in order to solve some problem, the problem should be of sufficient magnitude to justify the associated costs
Agreed.
> Evidence or reason hasn't been provided that this is even a problem
Strongly disagree. I realize there's lots of noise right now, but the signal is starting to shake out in the news.
> let alone a problem of any meaningful magnitude deserving of regulation
This is the interesting part I'm hoping is actually debated. But somehow I don't think it's ever really going to be discussed by the SEC, the same way I feel like 2008 was just a bunch of slaps on the wrist (what happened in 2008 was much, much, much worse than what happened recently with GME to my knowledge and I am not saying they are equivalent).
> you probably mean, though, that its not the rulemaking entity with regard to competition, since that’s mostly the FTC.
I actually wasn't aware that they issued rules at all and now that I know that they do I kind of wish they would stop.
Sometimes we separate government functions for a reason.
> Some of our antitrust laws were written in the so-called “age of robber barons”, but antitrust law (even purely statute law) hasn’t been static since.
It's not that Congress hasn't passed a law since then, but I believe they're being accused of violating[0] the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
Or doesn't understand new regulatory threats from Right-To-Repair, which already has at least one state that is moving to legalize full R2R (MA).
I agree with the rest though, that this can just be a new revenue stream for them.
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