Ex-FTC boss Khan: break out the handcuffs for AI CEOs, citing 1934 precedent (theregister.com)

>and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.

For good reason. Courts have so far ruled AI training is fair use, and it doesn't look likely to be overturned by the supreme court. Theres also the matter of some labs pirating books to get training data, which is illegal (they lost in civil court), but it's unclear whether that can be criminally prosecuted.

It's not at all relevant to this thread, but no he wasn't. At their worst, prosecutors were threatening to push for 7 years; the guideline sentence for Swartz's offense, were he to take it to trial and lose, would likely have been under the level allowing for straight probation (go to a sentencing calculator and plug the values in); writing after his death, his own lawyer stated that had he gone to trial and lost he was unlikely to face a custodial sentence at all.

We get this "35 year" number from adding up all the counts he faced, taking their maximum sentence. That's just not how sentencing works. Like charges group, and you're sentenced according to the most severe charge.

People cite these numbers in part because DOJ posts them in their press releases. DOJ is in these instances lying. When we amplify those lies, we're doing their work for them.

Michel Foucault enters the chat.

So you are for shutting down xcancel?

Because that's not what IP law is for. IP law was always corporate rent-seeking. None of those arguments about fairly compensating people for their creations or preserving the profit motive were ever being made in good faith. The point was always to force you to pay for something that would be free under natural laws. And I do mean you specifically, because the act of copying information freely was always going to be preserved for them.

Aaron Swartz was not charged for violating IP either.

The obligatory:

“The rain falls upon the just

And also on the unjust fellas

But mostly it falls upon the just

Cause the unjust have

the just’s umbrellas.”

Meanwhile, in China they got the best video models cause they don't care much about IP. The irony that China, by being a threat, is preventing the west from lurching toward totalitarian is really interesting.

Lina Khan is a woman. Not that it is particularly relevant here, but just letting you know.

Kahn is a woman.

I honestly don’t know what anyone expected given all the labs started building self-driving malware at about the same time.

I remember lots of people talking about running agents in VMs or on whole dedicated machines, yet barely anyone talking about how they were using mundane OS access controls.

If the nuclear power or life sciences people were putting out press releases saying "our product may kill us all", they'd be dragged into endless Congressional inquiries.

> level of anti-AI sentiment out there in the world.

I'd caution about projecting Western Ai attitudes onto the rest of the world. Some countries are very excited and optimistic about the future it brings, cultures and circumstances give rise to differences in opinions.

One of many results showing a similar pattern, largely bifurcated along "the west" vs "the rest", or "modern economies" vs "third world" ("common terms" used even though I'm not a fan of them)

https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report/publi...

She is a former FTC Chair so she knows what she's talking about, although her approach to enforcement was more expansive than others. The FTC would investigate, likely along the lines she summarizes, build a case in writing, and refer it to the Justice Dept, which would actually prosecute the case. Not going to happen under this administration, but Khan is saying it's entirely possible that such an enforcement action could be brought to bear, now or later. Personally I hope she gets her job back at some point and does it herself.

> 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.

As I read it, her whole point is that those laws apply to everyone, including AI Labs.

She isn't saying AI Labs are in violation of those laws (though she is implying they should be scrutinized for possibly being so), she's just saying that if they do violate those laws... well, those laws are already on the books and AI Labs aren't special unicorns for which existing laws somehow don't apply.

^ further evidence that the problem with democracy isn't democracy, it's that we lack politicians willing to enforce it

> For these reasons a large share of the industry holds out against the device

This is where I stop agreeing, there are some, not large parts any more; not because they were forced to adopt it, but because it has finally become useful and an ROI. This is most evident in pull request reviews and root-cause analysis, both tasks they accel at without the generated code some people bemoan. If you aren't using it for this, you are doing a disservice to yourself and the quality of your code. Because more of industry feels this way, I do not believe the 'unfair' part (compelled to use it or lose your trade) will hold up, we want to use it because it makes us better at our trade

You're suggesting that Lina Khan is trying to give Trump an opportunity to pardon AI company people?

The most extreme Dems are not winning primaries, just like MAGA. Most people do not want the extremes of either side, both political parties are shrinking because they are so out of touch. 2029 is a long way away, I hope to see the White House restored to its former glory over today's perspective on what Ai regulation should be, by a long shot, one is tangible, the other is based in theoretical fears.

Context, I volunteer in my local Indivisible, the tone is changing because the anti-ai people are now also finding certain uses of Ai really nice and now acceptable. It's no longer ban Ai and data centers, it's craft reasonable legislation. Expect to see more after the midterms, we'll be working with the Washington State legislature to craft laws we hope are a model for other states / countries, as WA has done in other areas like voting rights and civil liberties.

It's kind of crazy how nothing happened with that. That was blatant.

Bear with me here: we could do all of them.

You can get these companies under control. You just have to, y'know, try.

Why wouldn't the government have incentive to intervene to end a market inefficiency like the one you described?

That's basically the Amazon argument. But it too needs to be addressed

That is only one aspect of Ai. There are a whole bunch of people who are addicted to the Ai companions. Reminds me of Big Sugar, who sponsored junk science and lobbied politicians, making salt and fat the bad guts, knowing sugar is likely worse... managing to still largely fly under the radar unlike Big Tobacco/Oil.

My hope is that we start treating Big Ai like Big Social, but before they and their dark patterns have become ubiquitous