I think the argument for the regulatory capture framing is basically that you have these things going on: (1) big tech companies are spending extraordinary amounts of money, time, effort etc. on trying to capture the market of generative AI.
(2) big tech companies are arguing for regulations which on the face of them would be prohibitive to smaller players entering, because they would involve large fixed costs that would be trivial as a proportion of the available resources that these companies have, but would be prohibitive for smaller players.
Point (1) does not seem like something that an entity which is concerned about the fate of humanity would be doing.
I think the reality is obviously more complex, in that these big tech companies contain huge numbers of people who will have differing motivations at the conscious and subconscious level, so it’s pretty difficult to answer what the motivation of the company as a whole “really is”… but I think if there is anything that it makes sense to say a corporation is “motivated to do”, obviously earning profit is the most classic thing that corporations are “motivated to do”
Yes, I think the distinction between a company’s goals/intents/behaviors in aggregate versus the intents and behaviors of individual employees is important. I know and trust individual people working at most of the major labs. That doesn’t mean that I trust the lab as a whole will behave in complete harmony with the intent of those individual employees that I approve of.
I think the argument for the regulatory capture framing is basically that you have these things going on:
(1) big tech companies are spending extraordinary amounts of money, time, effort etc. on trying to capture the market of generative AI.
(2) big tech companies are arguing for regulations which on the face of them would be prohibitive to smaller players entering, because they would involve large fixed costs that would be trivial as a proportion of the available resources that these companies have, but would be prohibitive for smaller players.
Point (1) does not seem like something that an entity which is concerned about the fate of humanity would be doing.
I think the reality is obviously more complex, in that these big tech companies contain huge numbers of people who will have differing motivations at the conscious and subconscious level, so it’s pretty difficult to answer what the motivation of the company as a whole “really is”… but I think if there is anything that it makes sense to say a corporation is “motivated to do”, obviously earning profit is the most classic thing that corporations are “motivated to do”
Yes, I think the distinction between a company’s goals/intents/behaviors in aggregate versus the intents and behaviors of individual employees is important. I know and trust individual people working at most of the major labs. That doesn’t mean that I trust the lab as a whole will behave in complete harmony with the intent of those individual employees that I approve of.