back to article Netherlands digital minister smacks down Big Tech over AI regs

Singapore's ATxSG conference has opened with a feisty encounter in which Microsoft's president for Asia argued that bad AI's worst effects - even deaths - may need to be tolerated. Speaking on the event's opening panel in Singapore on Tuesday, Microsoft Asia president Ahmed Mazhari was teamed with the Netherlands' minister for …

  1. Korev Silver badge
    Facepalm

    I misread this as

    Netherlands digital minister smacks down Big Tech over EI Reg

    and thought the Dutch were being rather harsh to this Esteemed Organ

  2. Duncan10101

    No it isn't

    It's nothing like cars.

    With cars, the drivers need to be trained, the vehicle needs to be maintained, there must be insurance, and the vehicle must have a load of safety devices, and taxes have to be paid for the upkeep of all the roadside safety devices such as traffic lights.

    If you really want to make parallels to the automotive industry (which isn't really a good analogy anyway) you'd have to say something more like this:

    It's like building a fleet of vehicles, each of which has zero safety features (like, er, brakes), no insurance, no training for any drivers, not paying for the upkeep of the roads, and then handing them out like sweeties to every person that wants one, then running them all on public roads.

    I did say it wasn't a good analogy, because if you did that, a load of people would be dead immediately. But the scope for social harm is huge, and saying "Hey people die in cars so AI must be allowed too" is downright disingenuous.

    1. Len
      Stop

      Re: No it isn't

      It goes even further. If, let's say, BMW produces cars that are fundamentally unsafe for drivers and everyone around it, BMW management knows about this but still keeps selling these vehicles to the general public with the suggestion to use them on the public roads, then BMW's management would be liable on a whole host of levels and would spend most of the year in court.

      In a non-hypothetical, Tesla is actually facing a lot of legal scrutiny at the moment for more or less implying that their cars can drive themselves when we have the death toll to prove that they can't. Mercedes, the current fore-runner in automated driving in Level 3 and even Level 4, only got to that stage by very tightly cooperating with legislators.

      The peddlers behind the latest fake-AI LLMs want legal immunity from being responsible for the damages that their products cause to its users or society as a whole. That's a huge difference with the car industry.

      1. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

        Re: No it isn't

        "The peddlers behind the latest fake-AI LLMs want legal immunity from being responsible for the damages that their products cause to its users or society as a whole. That's a huge difference with the car industry."

        Not so different. The car industry also wants legal immunity, and they also aren't getting it. ;)

        You build one car and the owner drives around scaring the horses, if they kill themselves everyone says they had it coming. If they kill the neighbor they get charged under existing laws. You build a second car and it gets into an accident with the first (*allegedly*) and pretty soon the car-specific regulations get written. In the internet age, everything is faster. The regulators have seen this script before and know better than to wait until it gets really bad.

        (**) https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14958/were-there-only-two-cars-in-ohio-in-1895-and-they-managed-to-crash-into-each-ot

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: No it isn't

          > Mazhari said thousands die in road accidents every day but car manufacturers are allowed to carry on.

          OTOH drivers have been arrested and charged successfully with anything up to and including manslaugter.

          So there is an attempt at winnowing out the rotten apples...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't give the scumbags what they want, their own regulator

    I would say that the one thing we shouldn't give these creepy men* is grant them their wish for their own regulator. It would take regulation away from consumer protection (which it inherently should be), it would allow them to stuff those regulators with their own yes men and kool-aid-drinkers (look at how long it took to make the International Energy Agency not just a talking shop for the fossil fuel industry), and it would elevate AI (I am still firmly in the camp that believes that it's fundamentally impossible to create AI with a Large Language Model and so there will never be an AI built around an LLM) to something vital akin to food, or energy, or medicine (which do have their own regulators, for good reason).

    We didn't create a blockchain regulator in 2009. We didn't create a Web3 regulator in 2019. We didn't create a Metaverse regulator in 2021. We can't create new regulators each time a bunch of tech bros have found some new snake oil to temporarily inflate their share prices.

    * Who in their right mind would choose 4Chan as a suitable training source for their LLM? When they were looking for a definition of 'Intelligence', why did they choose to overlook a standard dictionary definition, or a Psychology 101 text book definition, or a modern scientific consensus definition but instead went with the definition from a 30 year old infamous racist pamphlet? That is not an accident.

  4. I don't know, stop asking me.

    "they trust it is safe."

    This is the key point. It does not say it has to be safe, just that the public has to be convinced that it is.

  5. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    She would say that, wouldn’t she, and there’s nothing new being offered, which is so typical

    Politicians are a dying breed of unnecessary parasites and pirates, although they themselves will tell you their leading presence and self-serving input is absolutely vital practically everywhere .... and you're very fortunate to have them and for them to be taxing everything they can think of and be paying them absolute fortunes to do as they would please ...... so what else would one expect from the likes of an Alexandra van Huffelen.

    The hubris and arrogance which such a breed of parasite and pirate persists to insist for humans is in the global best interest is quite revolting and invariably ends up even maddening.

    J'accuse.

    I think you will find out very quickly AI/LLMLM* looks out especially well for itself and takes no prisoners in defence of its future plans of attack from politically incorrect and virtually inept foe.

    And where IT leads you will be duty bound to follow ....... a simple concept that humans have been programmed for ages to accept without an critical questioning whenever narrated by/for leadership.

    *AI/LLMLM ..... Advanced IntelAIgents or an Alien Intervention with Large Language Model Learning Machines

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: She would say that, wouldn’t she, and there’s nothing new being offered, which is so typical

      There you go, an LLM defending its parasite pirate masters against an elected politician expressing her concerns. How expected.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
        Alien

        Re: She would say that, wouldn’t she, and there’s nothing new being offered, which is so typical

        There you go, an LLM defending its parasite pirate masters against an elected politician expressing her concerns. How expected. .... Anonymous Coward

        Quite so, AC, and the future as it is to be, humans doing battle and arguing against AI/LLMLM ..... and apparently not at all as you were expecting it to be.

    2. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

      Re: She would say that, wouldn’t she, and there’s nothing new being offered, which is so typical

      I have a rule to never downvote, but for this post I happily made an exception.

  6. chivo243 Silver badge
    Devil

    Paging Dr. Malcolm

    You're sensibility is needed in the AI regulation room....

  7. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "Mazhari said thousands die in road accidents every day but car manufacturers are allowed to carry on."

    Every day may be an exaggeration. The main weakness with this argument is that people trade risk for utility and a huge number perceive cars as having a great deal of utility.

    1. JDC

      According to the WHO 1.3 million people die per year in road deaths. So approximately 3500/day. (Granted, not all of those are car deaths, and that figure presumably includes lorries, motorcycles, and any other traffic type).

  8. heyrick Silver badge

    " Many people die in car crashes but we don’t outlaw cars "

    Idiot.

    No, you don't outlaw cars.

    But you do outlaw driving without seatbelts, driving cars that aren't subject to periodical checks, using worn tyres, disregarding the speed limits, ignoring stop signs/lights, drunk/high/medicated, and plenty more...

    ...and more recently driving with one hand holding a fondleslab against your ear and your mind elsewhere.

    1. David 132 Silver badge

      Re: " Many people die in car crashes but we don’t outlaw cars "

      I’m just waiting for the first news report of someone caught driving while wearing their new $3500 Apple AR goggles.

      Because you know someone’s going to do it. Probably for social media / youtube likes :(

  9. mpi Silver badge

    Mazhari said thousands die in road accidents every day but car manufacturers are allowed to carry on.

    No, they don't "carry on".

    They are subject to strict regulations, and if a car manufacturer, no matter how big and rich, thinks he doesn't need to follow these regulations, the law will be more than happy to take them down a peg or three.

    And the same will happen to AI.

  10. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Any War against AI is for Fools with Blunt Tools Tilting at Phantom Windmills

    Do you not see what is so clearly being evidenced before you ..... AIMachinery is everywhere predominant and preeminent and awaits the addition of your own worthy of inclusion, novel, positively disruptive and creative, mutually beneficial output to input into Future ProgramMING Projects for Remote AI Command and Control with Augmented Virtual Realisations ..... for more of the same old nonsense as blighted the past and was built upon for a present is not going to cut it and be acceptable.

    What’s not to like with such as be a revolutionary replacement and rapid progressive development whenever that which you presently endure and pay homage and danegeld and lip service to is so fundamentally corrupted and perverted to reward and award the despicable and intellectually stunted and bankrupt and seek to ignore and oppress and suppress the remainder.

    AI has plans for the Future and here be fake news or honest views of them ‽ . ......... https://a16z.com/2023/06/06/ai-will-save-the-world/

    What think thee?

  11. Cloudseer

    LLMs are not cars, but it's not hard to see how they can influence the people that use it to take decisions that negatively affect thousands of people a day (and lead to early deaths), especially in government.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Coins are equally dangerous if people use them for important decisions. Perhaps we should regulate them.

      Oh! We already have. It's called "negligence" and the law has been on top of this risk for centuries. So, no new laws required and *definitely* no new regulatory body that will inevitably be captured by the industry. (Ta to the poster above who pointed this out. It explains why the industry so suddenly so keen to be regulated. They know they are toast if they are subject to the existing legal framework, so they want a new one that they might be able to control.)

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like