Comment by rco8786
2 days ago
Yes, this. It's unfortunate that anthropic dropped this and it's also exactly how the system is supposed to work. Companies don't regulate themselves, the government regulates the companies.
Now, you may notice that the government is also choosing not to regulate these companies...which is another matter altogether.
It's so much worse than that. The government actively encourages a lack of business ethics. Heck, it started the term with a crypto rug pull. Money continues to funnel upward to all the worst players, and watchdogs are being targeted and destroyed. Even if you get new people in power, you're going to find the upper echelons completely full of outlandishly wealthy, morally bankrupt individuals that are very politically active. And now they have access to all of our communications and an AI to sift through it looking for dissent (or to spark its own). I guess this is the end game of "move fast and break things." The situation was never good, but it continues to get worse at an alarming rate.
> Heck, it started the term with a crypto rug pull
If you ask me... that wasn't a rug pull, at least not in the intent - it more was a way for foreign actors to funnel money directly to Trump and his family without any trace.
Cryptocurrency is the most traceable money in the world. Cryptocurrency is for implusible deniability, not untraceability.
There is plenty of precedent that companies are expected to regulate themselves. If you are in the US and perform an engineering role without a license or without working under someone with a license, it’s because of an “industrial exemption.” The premise is that companies have enough standards and processes in place to mitigate that risk.
However, there is also plenty of evidence that this setup may no longer work. It seems like the norm has shifted, where companies no longer think it’s their duty to manage risk, only to chase $$$. When coupled with anti-government rhetoric, it effectively socializes the risk to the public but not the profits.
The entire system you just described is government regulation.
> without a license
A government issued license.
> it’s because of an “industrial exemption.”
A government allowed exemption.
Etc.
Agree with your second paragraph.
Your point isn’t wrong if you take an extreme libertarian view of things, but it’s not quite how it’s usually interpreted colloquially.
“When the people who make the rules say there are no rules, that means they’re making rules” is an oddly circular take for most people.
Am exemption from PE stamping (misguided as it maybe) does not mean unregulated. There are still regulations on designs and builds.
True to an extent, but those regulations tend to downstream of bad things happening.
The exemption means “self-regulation” which is what the OP was speaking to. There are industrial standards, for example, but that’s not a governing body. You can create a design that goes against a standard and there’s nothing to stop you from releasing it to the public. The same can’t be said for those who require licenses and stamped designs. There’s also no explicit individual ethics codes in exempted industries. In contrast, a stamped design is saying the design adheres to good standards.
Apropos to HN, somebody could write safety critical software with emergency braking delays because of nuisance alarms and put it on the street without any licensed engineer taking responsibility for it. The governance only comes after an accident and an NTHSB investigation.
> anthropic dropped this and it's also exactly how the system is supposed to work. Companies don't regulate themselves, the government regulates the companies.
In this case, it's exactly how it's NOT supposed to work because there's no government regulation concerning the issue. It would be bad looks to have regulation that mandates LESS safety thus the issue was forced on commercial grounds.
I called it yesterday, there was never any doubt in my mind how this would end, and it did in less than 24 hours:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47144609
> because there's no government regulation concerning the issue
Yea, see the next sentence in my post :-/