Juliate

That's more of a choice, than "how things are". That is, that's a matter of rules.

As in, a monopoly can exist if a society tolerates it.

Oh, so in your view, productivity improvements are not meant to benefit the workers?

And, the stability of a hardware instrument or effect is considerably higher than that of a computer with 10s of software pieces (and licensing engines) interacting.

And in live music, this is rather critical; some musicians get it instantly, some need a single gig (even in a rehearsal) with their computer setup going dark or blocked or whatever to get it.

Running an if/else written condition is not making a decision, it's following a rule.

Of course, we should assume that, and we should assume people to honestly disclose their own use.

But what is infuriating and disloyal, even, is the suspicion that this raises on everyone's expression, the distrust toward everyone's capacity to think and to write, and to speak, because "it could be an AI that built/made/assembled all you've done".

And this is the result of releasing such tools widely: people that still do independent work are now requested to bear the effort to prove that they did it "all by themselves". "Proof of work" becomes a thing, for instance, that artists have to spend more time on (as well as the many other "visibility" taxes social media brought upon them), rather than doing the work.

In other words, tools that are supposed to help do the work, only add more administrative paper work to everyone.

GenAI taints everything it touches, not only because they all have been trained with stolen and illegal stuff, but because a lot of people are not able to distinguish anymore the difference between genuine and GenAI stuff, and the price is paid by those who can (and I say that having tested and used it).

Why should it be to the people to prove that their own work is not AI, and not the other way around?

EDIT: I mean, the effort has not to come from people that do the work by themselves. A new technology is not beneficial if it imposes more effort than before to do the same work.

I'm not sure how to articulate it but I think this misses the point: accountability is key here.

Thinking, writing, making, has not the same merits and value, whether it is done by a human, or by a machine.

You (as a human) may fail, or succeed, but more importantly, you are accountable for what you do and say. And because of that, what you do or say can be assigned trust, and value. That you can't assign at the same level, to something that is essentially coming out of a factory pipe (and reducing, as some do, a human, or animal, brain thinking to a mechanical factory is... well... quite the ethical red flag).

You may consider that a machine or an algorithm has some margin for errors that is negligible. But whatever it fails or succeeds, it has no accountability.

You could say that AI displaces accountability, but to who exactly? to whom benefit? for what purpose?

Remember U2 Songs of Innocence album offe^forcibly downloaded on every iTunes library?

This is the same kind here: there should be a simple opt-in button saying "Yes I want it / No I don't want it".

Not because it's a feature, but because it consumes comparatively so much disk space, memory and computing power.

And?

Why shouldn't this (small) cost be mutualised? Why should everything be tuned and customised and priced to every single individual characteristics?

There's also operational cost to handling tons of different situations of people in every practical way of life.

EDIT: my point is that practicality is a clumsy way of disguising the fact that there is a objective, political choice behind it.

> ...se that AI can easily become uncontrollable in the near future

Some virus and bacteria also easily become uncontrollable under the right conditions: that's why there are P3 and P4 bio-safety labs.

That's not the point. The point is, regulation is required, and is coming.

The people in charge of these machines (that built them, release them in the wild or give them access to the general public or resources), these people are and will be held responsible.

I agree also that HN shouldn't be a forum for political discussions, but I think that the political nature of technology, and the political nature of the decisions/choices made by the companies driving technology, should not be avoided/silenced.

I do remember of slightly better times, but the governments were also of a quite different substance.

It's funny and maybe it's my European-bias, because I'd label myself rather a progressive (coming from a very, very conservative background). But I don't perceive the HN vibe to be progressive at all, neither conservative. It's of a different kind.

Everyone can have many explanations that make sense in their perspective. That doesn't make those explanations right per se.

Crediting someone's gesture of being only an inappropriate, forgivable mistake, or misinterpreted gesture is skipping conveniently his discourse (and actions) towards far-right groups, and the impact his discourse has on these groups (if only in Europe, where I can witness it). It didn't happen in a vacuum.

Someone with such wealth, power and extent cannot have the excuse of the doubt: they are waaaay over-equipped to know better.

Hmmm, it's a genuine, not provocative, question: as an outsider from the US, I genuinely can't say what the USA (as a state, as a government) have done in the past few years, that is unequivocally worth of praise?

It's a promotion platform for a specific way of conducting business, and for the liberation of these businesses from democratic oversight (if not the other way around). And in that perspective, that's politics.