Comment by Gormo
2 hours ago
Wait, are you trying to argue that regulatory capture isn't real, or that the federal government is trustworthy enough to itself to give monopoly control over AI development to?
2 hours ago
Wait, are you trying to argue that regulatory capture isn't real, or that the federal government is trustworthy enough to itself to give monopoly control over AI development to?
Regulatory capture is a real phenomenon, but I highly doubt these incidents were faked in order to advance regulatory capture.
This type of elaborate conspiracy is improbable a priori, and it gets even less probable here, since it's such a silly strategy. For regulatory capture, you want to tell a story about how you're uniquely capable of delivering a safe product. Not a story about how "Woops we screwed up big time! But a less-regulated product from a smaller industry player saved the day!"
As OpenAI's chief scientist put it:
"Currently I believe that no lab has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer. I expect and hope for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established. And I believe that international coordination on future AI development needs to become a top priority for governments around the world."
https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/
Announcing that "we have no idea WTF we are doing" is not exactly the move, if you want regulators to grant you privileged status. Realistically, it is more likely to e.g. create a harsher liability regime for you and your competitors, which is now being discussed by US senators.
As for the federal government trustworthiness point, that's a whole 'nother discussion. I'm usually quite pro-capitalism, but even I have to admit that this AI race is essentially a case of capitalism run amok. I wouldn't give the feds monopoly control though, I would tell the feds to shut it down, or something along those lines at least. This is an interesting site: https://pauseai.info/
> I highly doubt these incidents were faked in order to advance regulatory capture
yeah? the incidents were faked in order to create hype
No need. Plenty of hype already.
"AI is the most rapidly adopted technology in history"
https://benjamintodd.substack.com/p/when-people-say-ai-isnt-...
It really seems like people will latch on to any theory, no matter how implausible, to reassure themselves that AI is nothing to worry about.
1 reply →
This is the reality but people would rather believe that all this is hype marketing to prop up the stock valuation.
> Regulatory capture is a real phenomenon, but I highly doubt these incidents were faked in order to advance regulatory capture.
I don't think anyone is arguing that they were faked.
> This type of elaborate conspiracy is improbable a priori,
What conspiracy? We're talking about specific people acting on their own motivations independently.
> For regulatory capture, you want to tell a story about how you're uniquely capable of delivering a safe product.
No, you don't. Demonstrating that the industry leaders are already capable of delivering a safe product is an argument against regulation.
For regulatory capture, you want to tell a story about how the product category as a whole is inherently dangerous, and needs to be regulated, but then show that you are uniquely willing and able to cooperate with the regulatory state, and happy to lend your own advice and support to the government in establishing the regulations.
The quote from OpenAI illustrates this approach perfectly.
> Announcing that "we have no idea WTF we are doing" is not exactly the move,
It's 100% exactly the move. "We've successfully created something we can only contain with your intervention" is exactly how this is done.
> Realistically, it is more likely to e.g. create a harsher liability regime for you and your competitors, which is now being discussed by US senators.
Regulatory intervention usually lessens the liability exposure for industry. It replaces open-ended common-law liability -- where tort claims can be levied for whatever actual harms result from a firm's actions -- with a rules-compliance regime, where adhering to regulatory checklists absolves the firm of liability for subsequent consequences.
"We followed all the rules; it's not our fault if the rules didn't cover this edge case" is a common refrain, and quite a bit of legislation that creates preemptive regulatory regimes actually explicitly blocks lawsuits against firms that acted in compliance with the rules.
> As for the federal government trustworthiness point, that's a whole 'nother discussion. I'm usually quite pro-capitalism, but even I have to admit that this AI race is essentially a case of capitalism run amok.
"Capitalism" is an increasingly meaningless abstraction. Everything reduces to human beings acting on a priori motivations within prevailing incentive structures. Large corporations and governments alike are just organizations operating in society, administered by particular people, informed by the same range of underlying motivations, and subject to the same dysfunctions and biases.
The thing we're actually debating here is pluralism vs. monopolism, and you appear to be arguing in favor of monopolism. And if you're proposing that a specific, real-world institution act as a central monopolist, evaluating the trustworthiness and competence of that specific institution, and the actual people who administer it, is not at all a "whole 'nother discussion", and is in fact a primary consideration in this one.
>Regulatory intervention usually lessens the liability exposure for industry. It replaces open-ended common-law liability -- where tort claims can be levied for whatever actual harms result from a firm's actions -- with a rules-compliance regime, where adhering to regulatory checklists absolves the firm of liability for subsequent consequences.
OK, so the fact that US senators are discussing harsher liability regimes therefore shows that your "regulatory capture" glove does not fit what is going on here.
>The thing we're actually debating here is pluralism vs. monopolism, and you appear to be arguing in favor of monopolism. And if you're proposing that a specific, real-world institution act as a central monopolist, evaluating the trustworthiness and competence of that specific institution, and the actual people who administer it, is not at all a "whole 'nother discussion", and is in fact a primary consideration in this one.
If you distrust the US government, you should be against any US company developing superintelligence. Heck, just a couple days ago, a bunch of users here on HN announced that we need to stop pretending the US is anything other than a police state. If the USG is untrustworthy, it can capriciously nationalize a US company on the verge of developing superintelligence.
So maybe the real solution is for non-US countries to stop providing key elements in the AI supply chain: https://pauseai.info/amsterdam-protest-2025-december
If you agree that AI is actually that powerful and has very legitimate concerns for safety, what are you even arguing about?
So there’s no lying by anyone here in fact it’s a good thing that OpenAI is making these things known to the public.
What do you really think is the way to solve the AI safety problem?
Ban AI?
Let the first big incident happen and then regulate?
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