I am OK with some of these, provided they are applied liberally — for instance, new editions of the iPhone require regulatory consent, but that hasn’t thwarted progress much. That may or may not be the case for #3 through #6, I don’t know how strict a standard is intended or who exactly is to make the call. Perhaps I do not understand #2, but it strikes me as a proposal for a complete surveillance society, at least as far as computers are concerned — I am opposed! And furthermore it will drive a lot of activity underground, and in the meantime the proposal itself will hurt the EA brand. I hope the country rises up against such ideas, or perhaps more likely that they die stillborn. (And to think they are based on fears that have never even been modeled. And I guess I can’t bring in a computer from Mexico to use?) I am not sure what “restrict API access” means in practice (to whom? to everyone who might be a Chinese spy? and does Luke favor banning all open source? do we really want to drive all that underground?), but probably I am opposed to it. I am opposed to placing liability for a General Purpose Technology on the technology supplier (#11), and I hope to write more on this soon.
Finally, is Luke a closet accelerationist? The status quo does plenty to boost AI progress, often through the military and government R&D and public universities, but there is no talk of eliminating those programs. Why so many regulations but the government subsidies get off scot-free!? How about, while we are at it, banning additional Canadians from coming to the United States? (Canadians are renowned for their AI contributions.) After all, the security of our nation and indeed the world is at stake. Canada is a very nice country, and since 1949 it even contains Newfoundland, so this seems like less of an imposition than monitoring all our computer activity, right? It might be easier yet to shut down all high-skilled immigration. Any takers for that one?
Tyler Cowen commented on these proposals: