Regulate and Standardize AI? Nope.

Nate Silver’s latest is A supermajority wants to slow AI down, noting the general convulsion of fear provoked by the AI Guys’ it’ll-kill-us-all palpitations. From which:

And then there’s a weird faction of AI denialists — people ostensibly on the left — who are convinced that AI is all a scam and therefore there isn’t much need for regulation.

In parallel, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force, the people who standardize protocols so the Internet can work) is seeing a steady flow of proposals along the lines of “something Agent something Validation something Enablement something”.

Money · I’m a leftist (but not that weird) and I think regulation and standardization of LLM-land are a waste of effort at this point in history. Because money. You don't have to believe all GenAI is crap to think that the financial premises are, well, crap.

First, the only sector today where there are large numbers of people willing to pay substantial sums for access to AI services is software. Software people are roughly 1% of the global workforce, which isn't enough to move the financial needle.

For the other 99%, are they (or their employers) willing to pay enough for AI goods and services to turn a profit on the global multi-trillion-dollar investment surge? I could be wrong but I don't think so.

That leaves the possibility that employers can discard tens of millions of knowledge workers, thus boosting profits enough to validate the global investment premise. I don't think it's weird to find that scenario dubious.

Finally, I don't see how we can have a rational discussion of regulation or standardization under the huge global investment overhang. The miasma of greed and fear obscures hard facts of actual utility and ROI. Which you can’t regulate or standardize without. My advice is: Let’s wait for that bubble to pop.

Money’s the biggest issue, but there are other bad problems with regulation and standardization

Moving target · For standardization in particular: The technology (and business landscape) are changing really fast and all the time. I’ve personally had multiple conversations where I say “X is a dumb thing about LLMs.” The response is usually “X is so six-weeks-ago. Everything is perfect now.” Please, please, don’t make anyone sit on a committee trying to specify anything about technology that’s so obviously immature.

The law · And for regulation: There’s the money issue, and then there’s that moving target issue. But I think current law remains a useful tool as-is.

If you launch an LLM-backed agent and it causes me serious business or personal damage, I think I can hire a lawyer and sue your ass. Because lots of people are, notably including most of the world’s largest publishers.

If it causes large numbers of people personal or financial harm, you’ve probably violated existing law and might find yourself facing a criminal conviction. We already have a solid precedent that saying “the AI did it” is not a valid defense. Yeah, obviously, a legal assault on huge, rich, and fashionable entities like OpenAI and Anthropic is an uphill struggle. But if Nate Silver is right and the anti-AI rage is bipartisan, the BigAI castles may be built on sand.

My answer · As a senior and fairly visible software person, I repeatedly get questions like "should we be scared?" and "will I lose my job?" My answer is always the same: Wait for the bubble to pop, then we'll find out.