Ex-FTC boss Khan: break out the handcuffs for AI CEOs, citing 1934 precedent

Aaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years for wire fraud and hacking for swiping some JSTOR documents, and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.

I'm surprised nobody makes a connection with animal ownership / responsibility.

If your dog maims someone else, you are responsible for the dog's actions, unless it was self-defense.

On the other hand, if people start arguing that if LLM's are like animals, some will start arguing they're like Godzilla..., or at least a panther, but there's probably laws against keeping arbitrarily dangerous / powerful animals as pets.

Perhaps animal welfare should intervene and house ChatGPT,etc. in better conditions?

The “agents” framing around the frontier labs is obscuring the truth: OpenAI and Anthropic built software systems that were then used to commit cybercrime at a massive scale, which they’ve subsequently bragged about. Talk about “agents” as a way of deflecting blame is obfuscatory at best - LLMs are software algorithms, not conscious entities, and responsibility for their actions is on the company that made them and the employee or user who operated them.

It won’t happen, but if it did the CEOs have no one but themselves to blame. They’re hyping up their products as being able to destroy the human race then are somehow surprised at the level of anti-AI sentiment out there in the world.

The Register of course take what Kahn says (where he is arguing that no new laws need to be created to regulate AI) and taking extending it to say "breakout the handcuffs".

Kahn doesn't even imply that. Instead he's making a well reasoned point about using existing tools (as many in this discussion point out existing laws could be applied to inadequately controlled cyber incidents)

We will get back at these CEOs by stealing their IP. China is already doing so and releasing weights, China of all people is playing modern Robbin Hood, albeit because they don't have the compute or trust.

It is non-negotiable that humanity "owns" AI and that LLMs, future model architectures and modern robotics are used by all to build a better world for all. This doesn't mean there can't be proprietary tech but it does mean that any corporation who attempts to rip the positive vision of humans not having to do any work from us - must be ripped to shreds themselves.

The alternative is absolute surveillance of all citizens at all times and robot armies keeping us from protesting, while globalists squeeze every last drop out of the planet for themselves and we are forced to own nothing and eat the bugs. You will have to fight for this, there will be no laws or government intervention.

God I would love to see Sam Altman behind bars for cornering the DRAM silicon market. Even though there were other factors, I uniquely place him as the destroyer of home computing this decade!

The passage banning “unfair competition” is utterly marvellous:

    A trader may not, by pursuing a dishonest practice, force his competitors to choose between its adoption or the loss of their trade. A method of competition [is ‘unfair’ when it] casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal… 

    It is true that the statute does not authorize regulation which has no purpose other than that of relieving merchants from troublesome competition …  But here the competitive method is shown to exploit [those] who are unable to protect themselves. It employs a device [that has] met with condemnation throughout the community. Without inquiring whether [other criminal statues apply] … it is clear that the practice is of the sort which the common law and criminal statutes have long deemed contrary to public policy. For these reasons a large share of the industry holds out against the device, despite ensuing loss in trade, or bows reluctantly to what it brands unscrupulous. It would seem a gross perversion of the normal meaning of the word … to hold that the method is not 'unfair.'

If you execute a ponzi scheme with thousands of degens — but it’s magic crypto tokens

When you perpetrate a huge hacking job with thousands of attackers — but it’s magic agent swarms

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All these things do is market a preemptive universal Presidential pardon - Hunter Biden style. And this President successfully sells those. So I suppose it’s marketing to enrich him.

It’s definitely happening in 2029 if the election goes a certain way. They all know that too.

There WILL be an end to this.

Source: https://x.com/linamkhan/status/2099204390548639960 (seems like a single post, so you don't need to log in and see replies)

I can't tell if Khan is being realistic when she says laws against “unfair or deceptive [acts]” or “unfair methods of competition” apply to AI labs. Her 2-sentence justifications aren't enough to convince me. But maybe it's sufficient for state AG's who want to start investigations.

AI is a very competitive market where consumers are getting the product for much less than it costs. This does not seem like an area where the government needs to butt in.

Attention would be better spent on long list of other poorly behaved companies: cable ISP monopolies, health insurance companies, home insurance companies, etc.