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I believe the US government will try to limit or restrict access to powerful self-hosted models in future for the reason that they can’t control how they are used. There will be a two-tiered system where government and the military will have access to unrestricted powerful models (perhaps the wealthy too) and everyone else gets a cut-down, restricted version.
Same with humanoid robots, but the risk there is higher because they operate in the physical world and could potentially be jailbroken.
Note that the OP law only imposes the Kill switch requirement on companies with >$500M income.
This strikes me as very naive at best. Like a super intelligent AI that was somehow intent on going rogue couldn’t figure out how to circumvent a kill switch?
“Cut power to data centers” is one form of a kill switch that would be difficult for an AI to circumvent, and I think there are a number of possible scenarios where AI can ‘go rogue’ and begin causing widespread harm, short of something like Skynet. Regardless, do you think there is a better approach (or that a law is not appropriate)?
I don't think a law is inappropriate, and cutting power to a data center is a fair example. But that isn't what this bill does. It requires companies to be able to stop inference, cut off user access and throttle compute allocation. Those are all things they already do to run their own services. Nothing in it touches the grid, and nothing in it reaches open weight models at all.
My concern is with what the government gets, not with what the companies have to build.
There is a provision requiring companies to be able to suspend an account or a user that the Secretary identifies as a risk, and that includes a risk of violating the company's own terms of service. Once an incident has happened somewhere, DHS can order it. The order takes effect immediately, asking them to reconsider does not pause it, they get five days to answer, and after that you are filing in the DC Circuit. What gets reported along the way is exempt from FOIA and from state open records law.
To be frank I worry about mankind and its lust for power more than I worry about the AI. History has not been kind to people who assumed emergency powers would stay narrow or get handed back.