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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • The criticism from large AI companies to this bill sounds a lot like the pushbacks from auto manufacturers from adding safety features like seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones. Just because someone else used a model for nefarious purposes doesn’t absolve the model creator from their responsibility to minimize that potential. We already do this for a lot of other industries like cars, guns, and tobacco - minimize the potential of harm despite individual actions causing the harm and not the company directly.

    I have been following Andrew Ng for a long time and I admire his technical expertise. But his political philosophy around ML and AI has always focused on self regulation, which we have seen fail in countless industries.

    The bill specifically mentions that creators of open source models that have been altered and fine tuned will not be held liable for damages from the altered models. It also only applies to models that cost more than $100M to train. So if you have that much money for training models, it’s very reasonable to expect that you spend some portion of it to ensure that the models do not cause very large damages to society.

    So companies hosting their own models, like openAI and Anthropic, should definitely be responsible for adding safety guardrails around the use of their models for nefarious purposes - at least those causing loss of life. The bill mentions that it would only apply to very large damages (such as, exceeding $500M), so one person finding out a loophole isn’t going to trigger the bill. But if the companies fail to close these loopholes despite millions of people (or a few people millions of times) exploiting them, then that’s definitely on the company.

    As a developer of AI models and applications, I support the bill and I’m glad to see lawmakers willing to get ahead of technology instead of waiting for something bad to happen and then trying to catch up like for social media.





    1. The most common response I get from Indians to why Modi is that “there’s no one else to vote for”. The other major political party, Congress, has focused primarily on maintaining power within the Gandhi dynasty, with Rahul Gandhi being its current public face. Rahul Gandhi by his own admission, is not even interested in a leadership role in Congress so he’s seen as a very weak candidate. So it’s not like Trump vs Clinton/Biden but Trump vs a bunch of low profile non-viable candidates.
    2. The majority middle class in India is primarily Hindu and has benefited from Modi government policies in the last decade with improved economy, digitization, and ease of setting up and doing business. Modi has also gotten large foreign companies to set up their factories in India, providing employment and contributing to local economy. So despite the minority classes and religions losing their rights in India, it’s fairly easy for Modi to win the popular vote.
    3. Modi and the BJP have a phenomenal PR machinery the likes of which I haven’t seen before. Every billboard seems to be promoting Modi and his policies. Every ad break has a Modi ad. There are multiple full page ads in national newspapers for the Modi government. There is almost a complete absence of any other political party in the ad media. You have to go really out of your way, mainly to American and British media, to get a more balanced version of events (like the murder of a Canadian separatist by the Indian government, imprisonment of journalists, preventing Amnesty International from operating in India, etc.). This combined with Modi’s active suppression of dissenting journalists means that all people hear about in India is how great Modi is and the amazing policies he’s implemented. If people are not even aware of why not to vote for Modi, there’s little reason not to.
    4. I would also add that Modi’s comparison with Trump stops at his Hindu nationalist policies and suppression of minorities. Modi is disciplined and smart. There’s not a hint of philandering. He’s by no means a buffoon. His base isn’t limited to hardcore fanatics voting on single issues. He’s not an elitist sitting in an ivroy tower unfamiliar with the struggles and lives of the commons. In fact, it’s only the minorities, academics, and people on the extreme left that are most likely to not vote for him.




  • I reached out to Roku support regarding this. The rep told me “why are you complaining. You are the only one.” He then disconnected the chat. I’ve reached out to my state’s AG to report this. No action so far but waiting. If there are enough complaints, that might help move the needle.

    What Roku is doing should be completely illegal - bricking the product after purchasing it for full price if you don’t agree to waiving your rights.




  • The GitHub copilot example seems to indicate it’s a pricing problem. In fact this situation might indicate that users are finding it so useful that they are using it more than MS expected when they set up their monthly subscriptions. Over time, models are going to be optimized and costs will reduce.

    Expecting AI to take over all human intensive tasks is not realistic but eventually it’s going to become part of a lot of repetitive tasks. Though I hope that we see more open source base models instead of the current situation with 3-4 major companies providing the base models behind most of the AI applications.


  • Switching to a Linux can be overwhelming. A few distros have made great strides to make most of the OS work right after installing it. But even if there’s only 1% issues due to hardware, drivers, gaming, etc., troubleshooting those issues would often require using terminal and are not accessible to everyone. There’s no customer support to reach out to, and online forums can be difficult to navigate for someone not familiar with coding.