Lots of people on Lemmy really dislike AI’s current implementations and use cases.
I’m trying to understand what people would want to be happening right now.
Destroy gen AI? Implement laws? Hoping all companies use it for altruistic purposes to help all of mankind?
Thanks for the discourse. Please keep it civil, but happy to be your punching bag.
Energy consumption limit. Every AI product has a consumption limit of X GJ. After that, the server just shuts off.
The limit should be high enough to not discourage research that would make generative AI more energy efficient, but it should be low enough that commercial users would be paying a heavy price for their waste of energy usage.
Additionally, data usage consent for generative AI should be opt-in. Not opt-out.
Out of curiosity, how would you define a product for that purpose? It’s pretty easy to tweak a few weights slightly.
You can make the limit per-company instead. With big fines if you make thousands of companies to get around the law.
Ah, so we’re just brainstorming.
It’s hard to nail down “no working around it” in a court of law. I’d recommend carbon taxes if you want to incentivise saving energy with policy. Cap and trade is also seen as a gold standard option.
Carbon taxes still allow you to waste as much energy as you want. It just makes it more expensive. The objective is to put a limit on how much they are allowed to waste.
I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know how to make a law without possible exploits, but i don’t think it would be hard for an actual lawyer to make a law with this spirit that is not easily avoided.
It really is hard; I can even think of laws passed this century that turned out to have loopholes. (And FWIW policy writing is a separate discipline)
Even the most basic laws can have surprising nuances in order to make them specific enough to enforce, as well. I recall a case of a person who tried shoplifting a coat that was chained to the mannequin, and got caught when it went taught. They got off because while they had left the store without paying, being permanently chained to something meant they weren’t technically in possession of the coat.
So per person carbon rationing, maybe? During WWII they did something similar with food; you had to pay both cash and ration tokens to buy groceries or visit a restaurant.
Rationing is fairly out of style because it’s inflexible, though. There’s going to be certain people that have a very legitimate reason to pollute more, and a soft incentive in the form of price allows them to do that if absolutely necessary.