this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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What a stupid alarmist take. The safest way for technology to operate is when people can see how it works, allowing experts who don't just have a financial interest in it succeeding to scrutinize it openly. And it's not like this is some magical technology that only massive corporations have access to in the first place, it's built on top of open research.
Home Depot sells all the ingredients you need to make a substantial bomb, should we ban fertilizer and pressure cookers for non-industrial use?
Many countries only sell fertilizers with a concentration of Ammonium-Nitrate below explosive levels.
How about bleach and ammonia? I can buy those ingredients at any convenience store near me and throw together some mustard gas right? Point is if we banned everything that has any potential to do harm we wouldn't even be left with rocks and sticks. Regulate, sure, but taking technology out of the hands of regular people and handing it to a select few corporations is a recipe for inequality and disaster.
You wouldnt make mustard gas. You'd make chlor gas,which is also very nasty but still quite a mile from mustard gas. The extent to which risky chemicals have been banned, reduced in concentration or made subject to extensive monitoring of sales and use is quite substantial.
But here is a huge difference to AI tools. Anyone could create these tools him or herself. It is information. Unlike information on how to build a nuke it is more easy to use this information for negative purposes, but the extend is much smaller. A deepfake itself cannot kill people. A selfmade pipebomb can. Meanwhile the cat is out of the hat for ML already. The tools are there and many people have copies of the code and it can be replicated countless times, whereas the clandestine bomb-builder needs to procure another batch of chemicals and hardware.
That's chlorine gas, you dunce.