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Comment by quamserena

These discussions always focus around enforcement and never on alignment. The moat for this stuff historically has never been strict enforcement; it has been that the people who have the know-how on how to do it have nothing to gain by doing it, since they are well-educated and benefit from the current socioeconomic order (they have no motive to change it; rather, they want to climb it).

This is shifting. First, economic stratification is getting worse, and as economic mobility declines people start looking for alternatives. (See all of Gen Z cheering for Luigi Mangione). Second, AI will enable people who are less educated to build these kinds of weapons.

For example, you can use a Kalman filter to greatly improve the data you get from an IMU and GPS via sensor fusion. Before, this required a specialist skillset; now you can get a "good enough" implementation by prompting Claude.

I really wish the debate around this stuff wasn't framed in terms of preventative enforcement because it naturally leads towards more enforcement (when your only tool is a hammer...). The root of the issue is that the government does not trust its citizenry to follow the law without Big Brother watching. That in and of itself is a symptom of a larger grave political crisis in America: the decay of the state's political legitimacy.

parent quamserena 7 months ago

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