White House Could Force Cloud Companies To Disclose AI Customers (semafor.com) 44
The White House is considering requiring cloud computing firms to report some information about their customers to the U.S. government, Semafor reported Friday, citing people familiar with an upcoming executive order on AI. From the report: The provision would direct the Commerce Department to write rules forcing cloud companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to disclose when a customer purchases computing resources beyond a certain threshold. The order hasn't been finalized and specifics of it could still change. Similar "know-your-customer" policies already exist in the banking sector to prevent money laundering and other illegal activities, such as the law mandating firms to report cash transactions exceeding $10,000.
In this case, the rules are intended to create a system that would allow the U.S. government to identify potential AI threats ahead of time, particularly those coming from entities in foreign countries. If a company in the Middle East began building a powerful large language model using Amazon Web Services, for example, the reporting requirement would theoretically give American authorities an early warning about it. The policy proposal represents a potential step toward treating computing power -- or the technical capacity AI systems need to perform tasks -- like a national resource. Mining Bitcoin, developing video games, and running AI models like ChatGPT all require large amounts of compute.
In this case, the rules are intended to create a system that would allow the U.S. government to identify potential AI threats ahead of time, particularly those coming from entities in foreign countries. If a company in the Middle East began building a powerful large language model using Amazon Web Services, for example, the reporting requirement would theoretically give American authorities an early warning about it. The policy proposal represents a potential step toward treating computing power -- or the technical capacity AI systems need to perform tasks -- like a national resource. Mining Bitcoin, developing video games, and running AI models like ChatGPT all require large amounts of compute.
What A Fucking Lie (Score:2, Interesting)
They want to be sure we can't buy hardware powerful enough to compete with them. Or even have any of the capabilities. I wonder why? Money? Control?
Yes.
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Bullshit.
Anyone with actual capacity exceeding or even threatening theirs, is fucking bragging about it.
Top500, isn't classified.
NO (Score:3, Interesting)
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Imagine a world where everyone (who wants to) can build their own private greenhouse in their basement or whatever. Maybe they don't disclose that they're building a greenhouse to anyone and they think nobody will find out. But actually, they need a lot of electricity and other supplies for the plants....
Re: NO (Score:2)
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What are you blathering about, China has about 400 nuclear warheads deployed. Doesn't matter how they are delivered, it is not enough to wage a nuclear war with a power with thousands of warheads deployed.
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Do you have this in writing? Is it notarized? Did they take you on a tour and show them to you? Then how the fuck do you know? it's common knowledge?
This is how lies spread.
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U.S. Pentagon reports that, look it up.
If you doubt them, fine. Show us how your methodology is superior. In the meantime, you'll find that others use their figures as more authoritative source than you.
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You think it's ok to have "only" 400 of the biggest American cities nuked to ashes?
Gosh I'm so glad I live in city 401 so I'll survive long enough to see ww3 destroy civilization.
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Nope. Some nuclear warfare 101 for you:
when engaging another nuclear nation in warfare and to not have it be a total suicide of one's own nation, the strategic retaliation systems and missile defense systems of the opponent have to be struck. To so engage the USA requires thousands of warheads. China doesn't possess the amount of weapons needed, they could only "commit suicide by USA."
A nuclear war with China wouldn't "destroy civilization" since their stockpile so puny, that's Hollywood baloney. A nucl
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All you have to do is contaminate some parts of the country with nuclear radiation that will not go away, not for thousands of years. Which parts of the country? 1) breadbasket regions. 2) upstream of important rivers. Then you've destroyed the ability to grow food at scale and the supply of water to millions of people. With the
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false. You couldn't even take out the New York stock exchange that way, it has redundant centers elsewhere. Ditto for Chicago exchanges. False that nuclear radiation "would not go away for thousands of years". The most serious threat is cesium-137, a gamma emitter with a half-life of 30 years. Of lesser amount is strontium-90, an electron emitter with half-life of 28 years, and iodine-131 with a half-life of only 8 days.
So, no B.S. of "thousands of years" nor of ending USA.
Launching a st
Nunya bidness (Score:4, Informative)
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My friend, that went away with the "living and breathing document". If you have nothing to hide..... /S
Re:Nunya bidness (Score:4, Interesting)
So, when did we decide exactly that corporations are people again, or does that change based on the accusation...
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The corporation as a legal entity is designed to let people do bad things without personal liability, through several legal layers of indirection and responsibility. There's a reason why white collar crime is so hard to prosecute, and the punishments are often so weak. It's implied by the corporation concept.
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That's more true of certain legal structures like partnerships and sole traderships, and less true of corporations.
The corporation as a legal entity is designed to let people do bad things without personal liability, through several legal layers of indirection and responsibility. There's a reason why white collar crime is so hard to prosecute, and the punishments are often so weak. It's implied by the corporation concept.
Absolving personal liability can often make sense. Being a gun manufacturer is a perfect and reasonable example. What doesn't make sense, is abusing that with a nonsensical justification. Like "do bad things". I suppose the way we "punish" those is to not work for that company, and/or not buy their product.
Needless to say that'll be quite the challenge 30 years from now when the world has been reduced to 100 mega-corps because we allowed a planet to do "bad things" with anti-monopoly laws. The alcoholi
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It is very convenient to pretend that this does not take freedoms away from people. People run corporations, people's lives are connected to their corporations directly.
It's also very convenient to pretend corporations don't enable freedoms for certain people too. I can count on one finger the number of bankers arrested after 2008. Same shit happened during the Great Depression too.
We commoners refer to them as "golden parachutes" and they work like a real parachute. Damn near every time.
I have no doubt this will likely take freedoms away. From commoners.
Re:Nunya bidness (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing stops the world from demanding that AIs be registered and tracked. In fact, the world will be a much better place if this happens, as AIs that can mimic human beings and mimic images have clear military and criminal uses.
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What's special about open source models?
What I mean is, unlike closed source models, I am struggling to see how you'd enforce such things on them.
Re:Nunya bidness (Score:4, Insightful)
Just think of the harm that well-funded extremist groups or hostile govts could do to our societies if they have unfettered access to LLMs? Yeah, you could wait until the problem becomes apparent & you suspect foul play but by then it'll be too late. It's better if you can connect the dots sooner.
Just Great (Score:3)
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I see no reason to believe Amazon isn't watching for the same reason, and they're certainly not above poaching ideas and claiming to have invented them. Add to that the fact that the data center is going to be in _some_ government's jurisdiction, and there will always be someone wanting to know "what's he building in there?"
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If anything, this law would make the FBI's job of tracking down malicious actors in the US easier, a bit like if they know who's in possession of sizeable amounts of explosives or weaponry.
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So, if I'm developing some new technology that I'm trying to keep hush before unveiling it so that I can get a jump on my competitors, the U.S. government will know about it anyway? And if they know, then who else would know? This would just make foreign entities and possibly even U.S. entities to forgo U.S. cloud infrastructure and create their own.
If you're trying to develop a new tech this is the only thing that makes sense anyway. You wouldn't use a public cloud provider, all of which are owned by companies who both have rabid appetites for horizontal expansion and have been caught snooping customer data in the past to facilitate that, to develop a new technology or anything you wanted secret, not if you had any sense whatsoever.
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The parents example involved the US Government.
If you're a US company operating on US soil, they sustain that leverage anyway. Cloud or no cloud.
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This is an administrative law (Score:2)
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Congresscritters spend most of their time showing the constituency that most of their time is well spent shit-slinging insults at the "other" party to continue to market and sell the idea that Us vs. Them is still a necessary and required mentality of US politics when representing one country.
That idiotic shit is worth billions and makes them obscenely rich. Meanwhile, a starving country is trying to believe their marketing bullshit about 'fair and balanced'...
I'm with the government and I'm here to help (Score:1)
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:rolleyes:
Just FYI, that line is now so old it would actually work today, because we don't teach that history.