While I don't disagree with you as you described the US situation, many places out there have societies and government regulations closer to the US than China and they have built successful railway networks, including high speed ones. Many countries in Europe, for example.
It might be useful to compare the US with those countries instead, and find out what differs in the US so it's holding it back.
> For me, LLMs are just another source of information with a different UI, analogous to newspapers, TV documentaries, Wikipedia, Google search, YT talks/documentaries, even the majority of informational non-fiction books, and research papers.
With all due respect (not trying to be offensive at all) but this is insane to me.
All those sources of information you cited have a million incentives to provide fairly correct and checked information. But probably more importantly, they have even more incentives to NOT provide false information. At a minimum, their careers, reputation, recurring work, brand, etc... is on the line.
An LLM has zero incentives to provide you with true information, beyond a couple of md files with instructions. If it gets it wrong, there is zero accountability, just an -oh, you're absolutely right- response and move on.
I agree there is a lot of human bias in the world, but surely we can't even put in the same order of magnitude both types of biases!
Gunpowder (weapons) and atomic tech (energy, material, weapons) are heavily regulated in most of the planet, as the risks of having free access to them for everyone (company/person) for their own selfish purpose without strong guardrails clearly outweighs the benefits.
The fact that something exists doesn't mean that having it readily available is the only option, particularly if it has potentially disastrous consequences at scale. We are choosing to make it available to everyone fully unregulated, and that is a choice that will prove either beneficial or detrimental to society at some point.
I don't think it is inevitable, I think it is a conscious choice made by a few that have their own and only their own interests in mind.
As a technologist, I am amazed at this tech and see some personal benefits. As a human, I am terrified of the potential net negative effects, and I am having trouble reconciling those two feelings.
The challenge is that enforcing a ban would presumably require strict incursions into personal freedoms organized at a scale where AI-based solutions would be particularly effective and thus tempting, paradoxically.
On the other hand, assuming the dangers are real, you lose by default if you do nothing.
One cannot (in most of the planet) go to the supermarket and buy an M16 and a box of hand grenades, or get a hold of a couple of kg of plutonium cause they want some free energy at home.
We also have rules in place of what one individual/company can and cannot do from the point of view of the greater good. I cannot go and kill my neighbour for my benefit (or purposefully destroy his life) without consequences. A myriad of things are not allowed, and I don't see people complaining about any incursion into personal freedoms.
The reason people have accepted these is that we have already proven that having access to those things could be catastrophic. We haven't proven hat yet with AI.
But I don't see much difference between those established and well accepted rules, and a rule that says: A company cannot release or use for its benefit a technology that will impact the need of humans at scale, because of the impact (again at scale) that it would have in society.
In other words, if you are a company and have the potential to release a product, or buy a product from a provider that would cause mass unemployment, should you be legally allowed to do so? I do not think so.
That’s a fair objection. Having ruminated on it some more, I’ll admit it might be tenable.
As for achieving an effective ban, occupational collapse might be the stronger motivator once workplace adoption broadens and accelerates, but risk of epistemic collapse might register sooner among the general public, already broadly suffering slop.
Like Bill Gates, I wonder why it’s not yet become a theme in mainstream politics.
I kinda like your analogy but I find it a bit misguided. I'll give another one that fits more my experience.
Consider a math/physics studying a course. Using an LLM is like having all the solutions to math/physics exercises in the course and reading them.
If the goal is to finish all the problems quickly then an LLM is great. If the goal is to properly learn math/physics, then doing the thinking yourself and use the LLM as last recourse or to double check your work is the way to go.
Back to the carpenter, I think there is a lot of value on not using power tools to learn more about making chairs and become better at it.
I am using many LLMs for coding everyday. I think they are great. I am more productive. I finish features quickly and make progress quickly and the dopamine release is fantastic. I started playing with agents and I am marvelled at what they can do. I can also tell that I am learning less and becoming a lot more complacent when working like this.
So I question myself what the goal should be (for me). Should my goal be producing more raw output or produce less output while enriching my knowledge and expertise?
Ah yes there is a distinction for students or someone learning principles.
If the goal is learning programming then some of that should be done with LLMs and some without. I think we are still figuring out how to use LLMs to optimize rate of learning, but my guess is the way they should be used is very different than how an expert should use them to be productive.
Again it comes back to the want though (learning vs doing vs getting done), so I think my main point stands.
