> We must move past vague discussions of “AI” and instead isolate the specific types of systems that are creating problems.
This is absolutely correct and its surprising how rarely you see commenters in the media push to go into the specifics on this. AI is just matrix math and its what you connect that math to that matters, we should talk a little more about what we are willing to connect AI to and little less about how scary or capable the models appear.
You could say it's illegal to connect AI to something, with heavy penalties if you're caught doing it anyway.
You could say that the human who hooked up an AI that did something that's already illegal is liable for the AI's actions. You could say that setting up an AI to do something illegal results in, ooh, an automatic multiplier of 10x on whatever the penalty for its illegal actions are.
Realist. The cat is out of the bag on this - you can't make connecting an LLM to a command system illegal after hundreds of millions of people have already done so. You can however make it illegal to kill everyone with a nuke because your LLM did so. Not that it will make a difference after the nuke goes off.
You mean mo political willpower form the current US administration and Congress. I'm not sure what "endgame" is supposed to mean. There are future elections, including the US midterms just weeks away.
Yes, and there seems to be plenty of potential energy from the American public, given something like 8 in 10 support AI regulation even if it slows down innovation: <a href="https://archive.ph/PetJ5#selection-1329.0-1329.122" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/PetJ5#selection-1329.0-1329.122
Even if another political power takes control, the American population is the least of our concern for it being legal or illegal to connect an LLM to a command line or job system
I'm sorry the parent is right. There is no policital will power to do anything about this from either side. Criminality is being allowed on both sides of the spectrum. Institutionalists are on the side of criminality. It keeps them in power
I get the cynicism but this actually feels like a special moment in politics right now. There is a groundswell of bipartisan support for AI regulation [1] and a backlash against data centers which is a symptom of anger against the industry. It is enough for a Senate probe to be opened against OpenAI [2] and pushback against Trump's support for data centers on his own social media platform [3].
Im not much on communism because I think it can go horribly wrong in the other direction but this guy has a point about populism[0].
We keep falling for the same tricks, over and over again. There is no possibility in the current structure of government for this to be a win for the people. For anything to work, we need a structural change in the entire system.
Maybe you don't realize that conservatives hold all 3 branches of government right now? Liberals have no power to do anything, and that is not the same thing as being complicit or having no will power. Where liberals do have power - like in California - they have started enacting laws regarding AI. Your "both sides" argument simply holds no water.
IMHO I think this false. The are liberals complicit in the same things that are keeping the wheels of this train wreck going. When I say there is no will power on both sides, I mean it. There are plenty of people in power on the other side supporting authoritarian agendas. So with respect, I disagree that the only thing that keeps this going is one party in power.
You are talking about outliers, not the party. These are known as "DINOs", Democrats In Name Only. Their votes do not indicate that "both sides are the same". "No will power" means nobody wants it, but that isn't true when just a few vote that way and the Republicans have 50% of the Senate. Every time Democrats have had enough votes to overpower Republicans, they used to power toenact liberal policies.
So you can think it's false, but then you look like you are not paying attention.
As it is, I am not sure that in what concerns US administration, elections will solve anything, this assuming that they won't be tainted like in many non democratic countries with "elections".
We don’t even need to jump straight to legal penalties - why not just regulate that these companies can’t build partnerships with organizations in designated risky/regulated industries such as biotech, defense, etc?
Instead of what they are doing now, which appears to be actively courting as many of them as possible for vast sums of money.
Sorry, let me clarify. Regulations should have legal penalties for the corporations who violate them, yes.
What I meant was that we do not need to go from the Wild West straight to “anyone who, as an individual, connects a `bad thing` to an LLM will go to jail”
> We don’t even need to jump straight to legal penalties - why not just regulate that these companies can’t build partnerships with organizations in designated risky/regulated industries such as biotech, defense, etc?
This would be a good idea, but good luck, you'll need it because…
> Instead of what they are doing now, which appears to be actively courting as many of them as possible for vast sums of money.
… it's worse than that.
Anthropic may have wanted some defence sector money, but when they tried to say "no" to certain uses on the quite reasonable grounds ~"WTF are you nuts?" the US government tried to force them to supply it anyway.
And that's before we get "what do you mean by partnership?": people on Hacker News have been critical of the e.g. anti-bioweapons type guardrails on models ("censored", "lobotomised", etc.) since at least GPT-4*, so while "billion dollar mega-project headline" is obviously bad, there's an important sense in which "partnership" goes all the way down to one racial supremacist in a shed asking an LLM for help making ricin.
Here's someone three years ago replying to me to say "There’s no way to build out a wet lab with a chatbot for weapons production. It’s just not feasible. Your example is a fantasy.", and yet here we are in late 2026 with news about AI labs investing in bio wet labs and getting their LLMs to do research: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38331225">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38331225
Good thing it's not a weapons lab, eh? (Would anyone even tell us if they made an agent do weapons?)
* or even GPT-2, if you count all the people mocking them for trying to practice safety while failure was still not a disaster.
jimmyjazz14 · · focus · HN ↗
This is absolutely correct and its surprising how rarely you see commenters in the media push to go into the specifics on this. AI is just matrix math and its what you connect that math to that matters, we should talk a little more about what we are willing to connect AI to and little less about how scary or capable the models appear.
throwitaway222 · · focus · HN ↗
egypturnash · · focus · HN ↗
You could say that the human who hooked up an AI that did something that's already illegal is liable for the AI's actions. You could say that setting up an AI to do something illegal results in, ooh, an automatic multiplier of 10x on whatever the penalty for its illegal actions are.
throwitaway222 · · focus · HN ↗
egypturnash · · focus · HN ↗
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phoghed · · focus · HN ↗
What’s this even supposed to mean? Not enough gravitas in the user name? Would you change your opinion if it was “serious-business”
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<a href="https://egypt.urnash.com/" rel="nofollow">https://egypt.urnash.com/
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[1]: <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-see-ai-regulation-urgent-rank-safeguards-ahead-innovation" rel="nofollow">https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-see-ai...
[2]: <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/09/10/openai-hugging-face-senate-investigation-hawley" rel="nofollow">https://www.axios.com/2026/09/10/openai-hugging-face-senate-...
[3]: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/us/politics/trump-truth-social-ai-data-centers.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/us/politics/trump-truth-s...
trinsic2 · · focus · HN ↗
We keep falling for the same tricks, over and over again. There is no possibility in the current structure of government for this to be a win for the people. For anything to work, we need a structural change in the entire system.
[0] Video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2XxgKM2CM0&pp=ygULbm9uIGNvbXBldGU%3D" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2XxgKM2CM0&pp=ygULbm9uIGNvb...
leptons · · focus · HN ↗
trinsic2 · · focus · HN ↗
leptons · · focus · HN ↗
So you can think it's false, but then you look like you are not paying attention.
pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
fcarraldo · · focus · HN ↗
Instead of what they are doing now, which appears to be actively courting as many of them as possible for vast sums of money.
jagged-chisel · · focus · HN ↗
fcarraldo · · focus · HN ↗
What I meant was that we do not need to go from the Wild West straight to “anyone who, as an individual, connects a `bad thing` to an LLM will go to jail”
classified · · focus · HN ↗
ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
This would be a good idea, but good luck, you'll need it because…
> Instead of what they are doing now, which appears to be actively courting as many of them as possible for vast sums of money.
… it's worse than that.
Anthropic may have wanted some defence sector money, but when they tried to say "no" to certain uses on the quite reasonable grounds ~"WTF are you nuts?" the US government tried to force them to supply it anyway.
And that's before we get "what do you mean by partnership?": people on Hacker News have been critical of the e.g. anti-bioweapons type guardrails on models ("censored", "lobotomised", etc.) since at least GPT-4*, so while "billion dollar mega-project headline" is obviously bad, there's an important sense in which "partnership" goes all the way down to one racial supremacist in a shed asking an LLM for help making ricin.
Here's someone three years ago replying to me to say "There’s no way to build out a wet lab with a chatbot for weapons production. It’s just not feasible. Your example is a fantasy.", and yet here we are in late 2026 with news about AI labs investing in bio wet labs and getting their LLMs to do research: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38331225">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38331225
Good thing it's not a weapons lab, eh? (Would anyone even tell us if they made an agent do weapons?)
* or even GPT-2, if you count all the people mocking them for trying to practice safety while failure was still not a disaster.
latentsea · · focus · HN ↗
You wouldn't download a car.