Comment by nozzlegear
1 day ago
It sounds like OP thinks AI companies should just stop pretending that they care about the public benefit, and be corporations from the start. Skip the hand wringing and the will they/wont they betray their ethics phases entirely since everyone knows they're going to choose profit over public benefit every time.
That model already exists and has worked well for decades. It's called being a regular ass corporation.
I understand, but being a regular corporation is not the only possible model. Can you think of something better?
> being a regular corporation is not the only possible model
the point is that it _is_ the only possible model in our marvellous Friedmanian economic structure of shareholder primacy. When the only incentive is profit, if your company isn't maximising profit then it will lose to other companies who are. You can hope that the self-imposed ethics guardrails _are_ maximising profit because it the invisible hand of the market cares about that, but 1. it never really does (at scale) and 2. big influences (such as the DoD here) can sway that easily. So we're stuck with negative externalities because all that's incentivised is profit.
>the point is that it _is_ the only possible model in our marvellous Friedmanian economic structure of shareholder primacy. When the only incentive is profit, if your company isn't maximising profit then it will lose to other companies who are. You can hope that the self-imposed ethics guardrails _are_ maximising profit because it the invisible hand of the market cares about that, but 1. it never really does (at scale) and 2. big influences (such as the DoD here) can sway that easily. So we're stuck with negative externalities because all that's incentivised is profit.
I'm curious about your thinking on this subject, if you email me at the email on my profile I have some specific questions about your views on this matter.
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We do believe that it is important to have market dynamics, and our model is for this state to own state-owned companies as well. Getting this model right is important to us and we would like to engage with you on this subject. We hope you'll email us to discuss your thoughts further.