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FTC is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies over product risks

210 points · 160 comments · dgellow

Cipater · 1790861369 · focus · HN ↗
They just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.
And if the FTC chair is not agreeable, they will be threatened by said lobbyists and eventually be fired.
If this sounds far-fetched, it is exactly what happened to Gail Slater, then-head of the DOJ's antitrust division and her deputies in 2025 over HPE’s bid to acquire Juniper.
Wall Street Journal archive link: <a href="https://archive.ph/IMer9" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/IMer9
1. paimapi · 1790867192 · focus · HN ↗
  there's also regulatory capture where regulators get hired by these companies for six-to-seven figure jobs once they're out
  <a href="https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/us-government-regulators-may-be-favoring-their-future-private-sector-employers" rel="nofollow">https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/us-government-regulat...
  1. wins32767 · 1790870112 · focus · HN ↗
    That's not an inherently bad practice. I'd much rather there be two way flow between industry and government than have people who have never tried to run a business doing regulation or those who have never worked in government trying to comply with regulations. Strong ethics rules and culture is the way you manage the downside, not bans.
    salawat · 1790873111 · focus · HN ↗
    The hell do you work where ethics culture exists in business? I gotta be looking in the wrong places, because all I ever see is lip service granted to ethics until they threaten the bottom line, then suddenly they disappear.
    SpicyLemonZest · 1790874078 · focus · HN ↗
    The AI discourse is full of cases where companies and their employees respect ethical boundaries at a cost to their bottom line. There was a famous incident, Project Glasswing, where Anthropic announced that they needed to do a large, collaborative cybersecurity project before they could ethically sell their newest model.
    Of course, this story also points towards how people sometimes get confused. Most opportunities companies have to be unethical are complex, so if you're not already inclined to trust a company, it's easy to come up with reasons to distrust any claims of ethical behavior they make. Maybe they didn't want to do the unethical behavior in the first place, maybe they've made up self-serving ethical standards, maybe they're just being performatively ethical as a marketing strategy and they'll misbehave when nobody's looking.
    Such commentary tends to go viral, because it's easy to propose and impossible to refute in a short comment or video.
    Avicebron · 1790874545 · focus · HN ↗
    Well you see, you just frame your ethics that anything done in service to the bottom line is inherently good. Easy as, anyone complaining about rapacious behavior or a decrease in their quality of life is the real evil (tm)
    pixelatedindex · 1790896476 · focus · HN ↗
    > you just frame your ethics that anything done in service to the bottom line is inherently good
    I thought that was the whole point of that Dodge vs Ford case which enshrined shareholder supremacy? I’m not saying that’s the best way or poor way to run a business, but the blanket application of this precedent seems sketch to me. But that means we need an admin that does trust busting too, so good luck with all that.
    paimapi · 1790875365 · focus · HN ↗
    right, it worked really well for the 737 Max: <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/how-the-revolving-door-at-faa-spins-boeings-way/" rel="nofollow">https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/how-t... | <a href="https://www.pogo.org/commentaries/corrupted-oversight-the-faa-boeing-and-the-737-max" rel="nofollow">https://www.pogo.org/commentaries/corrupted-oversight-the-fa...
    and the 2008 financial crisis: <a href="https://sunlightfoundation.com/2008/11/24/the-revolving-door-robert-rubin-and-citigroup/" rel="nofollow">https://sunlightfoundation.com/2008/11/24/the-revolving-door...
    just to name two obscure examples that had some small impact on society
    wins32767 · 1790889926 · focus · HN ↗
    SOC2, a standard governed by the a CPA certification body, costs billions of dollars a year to collectively implement and doesn't meaningfully improve security. FDA auditors trying to regulate software development for clinical trial data capture makes clinical trial software cost ~30% more AND makes it lower quality. There are costs on both sides of the continuum. The costs for bad regulators are just diffuse.
    paimapi · 1790953556 · focus · HN ↗
    SOC2 is an industry self-governing standard and a really bad example? if you pass SOC2, do you pass a federal audit of HIPAA and PII compliance? there's industry self-regulation that's often pointless and a costly rubber-stamp (like SOC2) and then there's actual audits of systems with legal teeth
    if anything, your example serves to prove my point. for everything from baby formula regulatory standards to regulation of toxic pollutants being dumped untreated into water reserves, I'd much rather a robust, regulatory standard with teeth. for things in software, we're sorely lacking that which is why we have privacy breaches and gross misuse by large corporations on the regular not to mention dark patterns, behavioral manipulation, and outright gambling
    wins32767 · 1790960024 · focus · HN ↗
    I also want a robust regulatory standard with teeth. But I want it written and enforced by highly skilled people who have some actual experience with doing the thing that's regulated.
    And in many fields the pay gap between government and private industry is such that you won't get good people to work for the government if that means they can never again work for private industry.
    paimapi · 1790963151 · focus · HN ↗
    surely that can be solved by diverting money away from, say, military spending to regulatory bodies instead so these roles become both high-prestige and well-compensated (vs getting rid of regulatory bodies entire)

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