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Behind Silicon Valley and the GOP’s campaign to ban state AI laws

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That's what you get when you run the government "like a business". Whoever pays, gets to play. The only exception are Christian churches who are also being listened to. Everybody else gets ignored.

2 days agoby vjvjvjvjghv

Starting to think software engineers and business executives are just about the worst thing to happen to this planet in a long time!

2 days agoby latentcall

It feels like these types of fundamental dynamics are the real underlying playing field here, and it needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Everyone keeps wondering what the Republicans' plan is for midterms, or in four years, for the obvious backlash when Trump's severe damage to our country becomes undeniable. As if we're merely going to have a "blue wave" that restores sanity [0], overcoming straightforward tactics like voter repression.

I think the actual goal is to destroy and sell off as much as possible of the government before then, turning what remains of democratic accountability into a noop - converting much of our society into foreign-owned "private property", making what core government functions remain effectively just hooks into unaccountable corporate services, and effectively cementing the corporate-authoritarian dystopia that we all thought we might have a chance of avoiding. We've been suffering the ratchet dynamic nibbling away at individual liberty for decades (alternating back and forth between corporate and government pushes), but I think "AI", cryptocurrencies, and filter bubbles have finally given these looters the gall to try kicking over the whole apple cart to divide amongst themselves.

[0] putting aside the whole Democrats talk a good game about chasing the corporate Road Runner but somehow never quite get him dynamic

2 days agoby mindslight

Let me get this right… The same people who said that woman’s health should be left to individual states are now saying that AI shouldn’t be left to individual states.

Weird priorities.

2 days agoby mixologist

So if people aren't responsible when AI does things, and AI and the people who make it can't be held accountable to the law, I can build an indiscriminate murder drone right and set it loose to start killing people without fear of consequence. As long as "it's AI" I'm covered

2 days agoby conartist6

Weren't they all about "states' rights" and "federal government overreach" during Biden's turn?

1 day agoby xg15

This seems like purely a good thing to me.

As established when Phil Zimmerman published PGP, software is speech and any restrictions on that speech must be enacted in a way consistent with the first ammendment.

State governments ignoring the constitution to prevent ai-related speech seems like a problem worth solving.

1 day agoby jwitthuhn

People, especially here on Hacker News, have been warned for the past two decades that merging the tech sector with the government would eventually have negative consequences for them but most laughed this off because they were sure this combination would forever share their ideology and only do bad things to their ideological foes. The reality is that the monster has its own agenda that doesn't match up with any political party but it is willing to align with them from time to time if it means more power for the monster. Should have smothered it when it first appeared instead of fattening it up. And no amount of emotion mashing on that down arrow will make any of this less true. Maybe knowing it can and will turn on its current partners at some point will be of some consolation.

1 day agoby Mountain_Skies

Does the federal government have the authority to enforce this?

2 days agoby beej71

The source of this article is a seriously anti-tech luddite.

"Silicon Valley" isn't aligned with the GOP on any issue but these guys just love it when a few VCs brains break because it gives them a chance to lump every engineer in with the maga chuds.

2 days agoby rcpt

This really should be regulated by the Federal Government level (FTC, NIST, etc) to ensure uniformity and some of California’s laws could be used as a model. Since AI represents a strategic economic and security frontier, putting a ban on states laws would allow the technology to innovate freely without having to navigate a patchwork of state laws. Finally, GOP actually favors limited government and deregulation so this doesn’t conflict with States rights concerns brought up in this thread.

One thing to note is that this may also be a way to block progressive policies before they end up in the Federal government. Putting a ten year ban would effectively do that.

2 days agoby firesteelrain