"The fact that a former Anthropic employee, Jacob Coxon, is all over the airwaves claiming AI could “kill us all” suggests that the incumbents are losing the AI arms race and desperately need regulation to slow the growth of emerging competitors."
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| AF Branco |
"Does unregulated AI pose a threat to humanity? Absolutely! But only assuming humanity is defined as “the billionaire owners of AI companies intent on crushing their competition.” [Ed.: I don’t think that’s the definition.]
"You don’t need to be a super-smart AI machine to know that large corporations love government regulation. Compliance is a fixed cost for them, but often an insuperable barrier to new entrants. Regulations allow the incumbents to maintain their market dominance by blocking up-and-coming rivals.
"University of Chicago Economist George Stigler won a Nobel Prize in part for pointing this out 50 years ago. It wasn’t just a theory. Stigler’s argument has been demonstrated over and over again. In fact, it seems so obvious, I’m not sure he even deserved a prize. But people probably think the same thing about gravity, our heliocentric world, or selling books over the internet. Today, those seem obvious, too.
"As Stigler said, regulation is fantastic for oligopolists, and also great for the politicians they buy. It’s only a disaster for consumers. That is precisely why these unwarranted gifts to greedy companies are always preceded by florid scaremongering.
"From 1938 to 1978, existing airlines warned that allowing others to compete with them would cause planes to fall out of the sky. The industry would be under so much pressure to offer low prices, they would sacrifice safety to cost-cutting. In fact, since deregulation, not only is flying a lot cheaper, but fatal plane crashes have declined exponentially.
"Licensed taxi drivers predicted that ride-share companies like Uber would be a “sexual haven for predators.” Getting into an Uber would be like “swimming in a sea full of sharks—one day you are going to get bitten.” They lost, which is why today it’s possible to ride in a car that doesn’t reek of curry and body odor and to end up with a driver capable of finding Grand Central Station.
"At least those demands were direct: Don’t let anyone compete with us. But all regulation imposes costs that are going to be harder for startups to bear." . . . More.
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