Microsoft and a16z put aside differences, join hands to petition against AI regulations | TechCrunch

Two of the biggest and most deeply connected forces in environmental technology – the big guys and the start-ups – have taken a break from counting their money to jointly ask the government to stop considering regulations that could affect the interests of their finances, or as they prefer to call them. , creativity.

“Our two companies may not agree on everything, but this is not about our differences,” writes this group of very different opinions and interests: Founding partners of a16z Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President/CEO Brad. Smith. A real joint venture, representing big business and big money.

But it’s the younger guys who are said to be looking forward to it. In other words, all the companies that would have been affected by the latest deregulation attempt: SB 1047.

Imagine being jailed for improper disclosure of a model! a16z general partner Anjney Midha called it a “reduced tax” on startups and a “clear grip of control” by only Big Tech companies, unlike Midha and his colleagues poor, who can give lawyers to follow.

Except that it was the disinformation spread by Andreessen Horowitz and other moneyed interests that would have been affected, as sponsors of multi-billion dollar businesses. In fact, small businesses and startups would have been affected only slightly because the proposed law specifically protected them.

It’s ironic that this version of “Little Tech” that Horowitz and Andreessen so often champion was distorted and undermined by the campaign they and others waged against SB 1047. (Bill expert , California State Senator Scott Wiener, about this whole thing recently on Disrupt.)

The bill had its problems, but its (broad) opposition overstated the costs of compliance and failed to support claims that it would be slow or burdensome to begin with.

It’s part of the established playbook that Big Tech — which Andreessen and Horowitz are closely associated with, despite their standing — is fighting at the federal level where it can win (like SB 1047), while they they are asking for government solutions that they know will never happen. , or will have no teeth due to partisan bickering and congressional indecisiveness on technical issues.

This recently posted joint statement about “strategic opportunism” is the last piece of the game: After torpedoing SB 1047, they can say they did so only with an eye to supporting government policy. Regardless, we’re still waiting for a federal privacy law that tech companies have pushed for a decade while fighting the national debt.

And what policies do do they support? “A variety of responsible market-based approaches.” In other words: take away our money, Uncle Sam.

Regulations should have a “science-based and standards-based approach that embraces regulatory frameworks that address the use and misuse of technology,” and should “address the risk of bad actors exploiting AI,” they write. Powerful VCs and Microsoft execs. What this means is that we shouldn’t have strong regulation but instead, give strong punishment when unregulated products are used by criminals for criminal purposes.

This method has worked well for that whole FTX situation, so I can see why they support it.

“The law should be implemented only if its benefits outweigh its costs,” they also wrote. It would take thousands of words to describe all the ways in which this idea, expressed in this context, is wonderful. But in fact, what they recommend is that the fox be brought to the chicken planning committee.

Administrators should “allow developers and startups the opportunity to choose the types of AI they can use wherever they build solutions and not tilt the playing field in favor of one platform,” they added together. What this means is that there is a certain design that requires permission to use one or another model. If not, this is a straw man.

Here’s a big one that I have to quote in full:

The right to learn: copyright law is designed to promote the development of science and the fine arts by granting protection to publishers and authors to encourage them to bring new works and knowledge to society, but not by destroying the public’s right to learn get out of these jobs. Copyright law should not be construed to suggest that machines should be prevented from using data – the basis of AI – to learn in the same way as humans. Unsecured knowledge and information, regardless of whether it is in protected content, should remain free and accessible.

To be clear, the clear statement here is that software, run by multi-billion dollar corporations, has a “right” to access any data because it should learn from it “in the same way as humans.”

First of all, no. These systems are not like people; they generate data that mimics human input from their training data. It is a sophisticated statistical software with a natural language interface. They have no more “rights” to any document or fact than Excel.

Second, this idea that “truths” – by which they mean “intellectual property” – is the only thing these systems are interested in and that some kind of truth-keeping cabal is working to stop them. it’s an engineered story we’ve seen before. Disrupt has raised the “truths belong to everyone” argument in its public response to accusations of plagiarism, and its CEO Aravind Srinivas lied to me on the Disrupt forum, as if Perplexity is charged over such small things as the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

While this is not the place to begin a full account of this straw man argument, let me point out that even the facts are still ongoing. they’re really free resources, the way they’re created – say, through original reporting and scientific research – involves real costs. That is why copyrights and copyrights exist: not to prevent intellectual property from being shared and used widely, but to encourage its creation by ensuring that it can be assigned real value.

Copyright law is far from perfect and is likely to be abused as it is applied. But it is not “preferred to suggest that machines should be restricted from using data.” It is being used to ensure that bad actors do not deviate from the quality systems we have built around intellectual property.

The question is clearly this: let the systems that the authors own, run and profit from using the valuable products of others without compensation. In fact, that part is “human-like,” because it’s the people who design, run, and use these systems, and those people don’t want to pay for anything they don’t own. need it, and they give it. ‘I want the regulations to change that.

There are many other recommendations in this small policy document, which has no doubt been given more detail in the versions they have sent directly to legislators and regulators through official advocacy channels.

Some ideas are undoubtedly good, if they also look at themselves: “to support digital education programs that help people understand how to use AI tools to create and access information.” That’s right! Of course, the writers are very invested in those tools. Support “Open Data Commons—repositories of accessible data that would be managed for the public good.” It’s great! “Review its procurement process to help startups sell technology to the government.” It’s so beautiful!

But these general, positive recommendations are the kind of thing you see every year from the industry: invest in public resources and speed up government processes. These fun but useless tips are just a vehicle for the more important ones I described above.

Ben Horowitz, Brad Smith, Marc Andreessen, and Satya Nadella want the government to relinquish control of this lucrative new development, and let the industry decide what regulations to fix, and cancel copyrights in a way that usually works as a general rule. an apology for the illegal or unethical practices that many suspect have aided the rapid rise of AI. These are strategies that are important to them, whether or not children acquire digital skills.