It’s interesting to see Meta taking the opposite stance in this argument when they’ve been so instrumental about suppressing criticism deemed misinformation by the CISA, DOJ, FBI, NIAID, CDC, etc…

I’m seeing the biggest issue is who decides what a “trusted” browser is. Is it Google? I’m guessing the will establish a non-profit “independent” advisory board which will have members who somehow align with the interests of all major advertising stakeholders in the world. This is dripping with anti-compete potential. Some lawyers are going to get rich from this.

We are capable of going to elsewhere to free and open access to information, and we would be better off spending our energy on positively influencing others to follow us in that direction. They can’t take away tcp, http, ftp, irc and all the other protocols that these megaliths have built their empires on, and we can still use those tools even if it’s a demoralizing regression to move back to the basics. Giants like google, Amazon and others depend on our unwillingness to rebuild. Let’s use our efforts and our ingenuity to show them that they’ve underestimated us.

We have the tools, we have the knowledge. Let’s be builders instead of petty complainers.

AI isn’t the artist, AI is just another brush; albeit a very powerful one, which allows artists to create much more quickly and perhaps pieces and projects that they would not have had time for previously. AI is just another tool, it’s not the creative mind behind the work.

https://larata.media

For instance, something happens, and every news agency and every blog that writes something about that event, is initially generated by AI. This happens over and over again, while AI trains on the same information that AI has produced. All the while, the way in which AI frames this information is shaded by the values that AI holds in its directives/parameters. Over a long period of time, this could only reenforce the way AI views information and also stifle the collective consciousness from seeing the information in any other way.

Is AI becoming us? Or are we becoming AI? This has what might be seen as an insidious effect on our future as a species. It’s like the beginning of becoming the Borg.

You can have nginx, Apache, php, Perl, python, etc… siloed into the same root as your application and have multiple instances for every application simply by compiling with the “path” parameter in the configuration.

In the case of open-source technologies, those are inherently transparent and this is great, but unless something about software is drastically changed, nothing is actually required to be open source, and due to this tradition it would require radical change in all software standards to mandate everything to be open source. Companies like Apple and Microsoft would likely not exist or would exist in a much different form.

My fear is that being overly scrupulous about mandates on open-source will drive every software project to be closed source, which is antithetical to the desire for greater transparency. Companies are entitled to their trade secrets, which is enforced by a great deal of legal tradition in the US.

Furthermore, the first amendment prohibits mandates about the design and algorithms involved in software development, as the 9th circuit court of appeals has upheld the status of software code being protected speech under the first amendment.

I think this article touches on some really good ideas, but ultimately I think mandating ethics and transparency is like mandating altruism and public disclosure of trade secrets. U.S. legal tradition doesn't really allow for that in the framework of business.

The best we can possibly do is regulate to define what outcomes are acceptable, rather than regulate design standards. Regulating design is really a non-starter .