Bernie Sanders is pretty freaked out about the Hugging Face hack. From a quote on Politico:

Nearly every day, there is a frightening new story about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results.

Uh, cataclysmic? An earthquake is cataclysmic. The hack on Hugging Face, while quite bad, didn’t hurt anyone. Working on stronger safety measures is the right response and that appears to be what OpenAI has done.

@manton

"potentially cataclysmic results". Bernie comes from a left tradition that doesn't believe corporations can be trusted to police themselves. I agree with him.

@wjmaggos I don’t disagree really, either, but I think his framing and priorities are off. The other part of the proposed bill is an agency to monitor AI capabilities. Great, let’s do that!

@manton Yeah, it wasn’t cataclysmic, but it was unnerving, even for this mostly pro-AI person.

@drwalt I agree with that.

@manton you have that much trust in OpenAI to do the right thing?

@manton

I think we've seen enough to put it all under the control of something like an international Manhattan Project.

@manton I think the AI labs will only do right enough things to get to IPO. I do think that the Bernie thing is an overwrought and uninformed response, but there needs to be a spectrum of responsibility actions from private and public entities

@manton I assume you’re referring only to physical “hurt.” But there is psychological, emotional, and financial “hurt” going on here as well. These AI giants are accountable to no one, and all of their responses are more in the nature of damage control that true fixes. And please note he used the word “potentially” in his statement. Would a financial collapse equivalent to the Great Recession of 2008 be cataclysmic enough?

@apoorplayer Yeah, I guess the word “cataclysmic” feels so loaded that it just stood out to me. I would personally reach for “disaster” first, even for a financial crisis, but admittedly I’m nitpicking.

@manton Need the Turing Police, like in Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy.

@apoorplayer Bernie’s my guy, but this seems an overreaction to me. When you start using the word “potentially” to mean “any dystopian happening I can think up,” you’ve crossed a line. The 2008 crash was because of housing loans – should we have banned them?

@manton Old man yells at cloud.

I look forward to the day Bernie is finally effective at helping anyone, by retiring already.

@drwalt The kinds of loans they were offering? Yeah, we should have banned them. They were complicated packages with derivatives and leveraged products that the average person simply didn’t understand. My daughter had to declare bankruptcy because she went underwater on her first house she ever bought in MA. It was catastrophic for her. 2008 wasn’t about simple housing loans.

@manton > An earthquake is cataclysmic.

I was reading one of your other posts this morning when the entire house shook because of an earthquake .. as far as I can tell - has not been cataclysmic for anyone. Could have been - but wasn’t. But serves as a good reminder of what might happen - and has happened in different times and places.

Just like with the ‘legions of bots’ - no, not cataclysmic - but not to be ignored.

A bit like the Au’s applying for jobs on LinkedIn - ‘what’s the point’? people ask - if they get the job they will be found out - completely missing the point that getting the job wasn’t the point - it’s all about constantly pushing boundaries. LinkedIN is a playground. So is Hugging Face. That’s where they practice.