The most recent SecureBio paper provides another policy option which I find more reasonable. AI developers would be held strictly liable for any catastrophes involving their AI systems, where catastrophes could be e.g. hundreds of lives lost or $100M+ in economic damages. They’d also be required to obtain insurance for that risk.
If the risks are genuinely high, then insurance will be expensive, and companies may choose to take precautions such as keeping models closed source in order to lower their insurance costs. On the other hand, if risks are demonstrably low, then insurance will be cheap even if companies choose to open source their models.
I mean, I’m sure it isn’t legal to openly sell a book on how to source material for and build a pipebomb, right?
It’s dependent on the intent of the book and its content among other things so I I’m half hesistantly biting the bullet here.
Simple bombs are trivial to make if you have a high school understanding of chemistry and physics, some basic manual skills, and a clue about how to handle yourself in shops and/or labs. You can get arbitrarily complicated in optimizing bombs, but it’s not even a tiny bit hard to make something explode in a very destructive way if you’re not very restricted in what you can deliver to your target.
Tons of people would need no instruction at all… but instructions are all over the place anyway.
The knowledge is not and never has been the gating factor. It’s really, really basic stuff. If you want to keep people from making bombs, you’re better off to deny them easy access to the materials. But, with a not-impossible amount of work, a knowledgeable and strongly motivated person can still make a bomb from stuff like aluminum, charcoal, sugar, salt, air, water… so it’s better yet to keep them from being motivated. The good news is that most people who are motivated to make bombs, and especially to use them as weapons, are also profoundly dysfunctional.
I think “the world stays basically as it is except there are no easily accessible dangerous books” is a fabricated option. You can have a world where you can publish a book about any topic that is not explicitly forbidden (in which case there will be books that are not forbidden that are worse than the forbidden ones), or a world in which it is forbidden to publish a book that is not explicitly permitted (and there is a pretty solid historical precedent that whatever organization has that power will abuse it).
“Require insurance” does sound like a solid middle ground, but in practice I expect that being insured will just cause the person publishing to be the target of lawsuits independent of whether they’re actually at fault for the alleged harm (because getting insured proves that the defendant knew there was a risk, and also means the defendant is actually capable of paying out whatever award the judicial system comes up with, even if said award is absurdly high).
How about the Anarchists Cookbook, which is available for $28 on Amazon (or $9 if you don’t care about having a physical book and are fine with the Kindle edition).
PSA: The Anarchist’s Cookbook is notorious for having bogus and/or dangerous recipes. For lots of things, not just bombs. Apparently that was intentional.
US Army TM 31-210 is free on the Web with a Google search, though.
The most recent SecureBio paper provides another policy option which I find more reasonable. AI developers would be held strictly liable for any catastrophes involving their AI systems, where catastrophes could be e.g. hundreds of lives lost or $100M+ in economic damages. They’d also be required to obtain insurance for that risk.
If the risks are genuinely high, then insurance will be expensive, and companies may choose to take precautions such as keeping models closed source in order to lower their insurance costs. On the other hand, if risks are demonstrably low, then insurance will be cheap even if companies choose to open source their models.
Would you support a similar liability structure for authors who choose to publish a book? If not, why not?
I mean, I’m sure it isn’t legal to openly sell a book on how to source material for and build a pipebomb, right? It’s dependent on the intent of the book and its content among other things so I I’m half hesistantly biting the bullet here.
Simple bombs are trivial to make if you have a high school understanding of chemistry and physics, some basic manual skills, and a clue about how to handle yourself in shops and/or labs. You can get arbitrarily complicated in optimizing bombs, but it’s not even a tiny bit hard to make something explode in a very destructive way if you’re not very restricted in what you can deliver to your target.
Tons of people would need no instruction at all… but instructions are all over the place anyway.
The knowledge is not and never has been the gating factor. It’s really, really basic stuff. If you want to keep people from making bombs, you’re better off to deny them easy access to the materials. But, with a not-impossible amount of work, a knowledgeable and strongly motivated person can still make a bomb from stuff like aluminum, charcoal, sugar, salt, air, water… so it’s better yet to keep them from being motivated. The good news is that most people who are motivated to make bombs, and especially to use them as weapons, are also profoundly dysfunctional.
It is legal, in the US at least. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Cookbook#Reception
Well, I’m happy to be a European citizen in that case, lol.
I really walked into that one.
Apparently, even being a European citizen doesn’t help.
I still think that we shouldn’t have books on sourcing and building pipe bombs laying around though.
I think “the world stays basically as it is except there are no easily accessible dangerous books” is a fabricated option. You can have a world where you can publish a book about any topic that is not explicitly forbidden (in which case there will be books that are not forbidden that are worse than the forbidden ones), or a world in which it is forbidden to publish a book that is not explicitly permitted (and there is a pretty solid historical precedent that whatever organization has that power will abuse it).
“Require insurance” does sound like a solid middle ground, but in practice I expect that being insured will just cause the person publishing to be the target of lawsuits independent of whether they’re actually at fault for the alleged harm (because getting insured proves that the defendant knew there was a risk, and also means the defendant is actually capable of paying out whatever award the judicial system comes up with, even if said award is absurdly high).
How about the Anarchists Cookbook, which is available for $28 on Amazon (or $9 if you don’t care about having a physical book and are fine with the Kindle edition).
ETA: and I’m too slow
PSA: The Anarchist’s Cookbook is notorious for having bogus and/or dangerous recipes. For lots of things, not just bombs. Apparently that was intentional.
US Army TM 31-210 is free on the Web with a Google search, though.