<story><title>Why YC went to DC</title><url>https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/why-yc-went-to-dc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>simonw</author><text>This new essay by Jack Clark, who was at OpenAI when they made the decision not to release GPT-2 for safety reasons five years ago, feels relevant: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;importai.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;import-ai-375-gpt-2-five-years-later&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;importai.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;import-ai-375-gpt-2-five-yea...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; [...] history shows that once we assign power to governments, they&amp;#x27;re loathe to subsequently give that power back to the people. Policy is a ratchet and things tend to accrete over time. That means whatever power we assign governments today represents the floor of their power in the future - so we should be extremely cautious in assigning them power because I guarantee we will not be able to take it back.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yqx</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m curious what history Jack Clark is referring to here.&lt;p&gt;If I think of the last thirty years of policy in most of Europe and the US I&amp;#x27;m thinking of a strong trend of deregulation and giving more powers to markets, removing international trade barriers and so on.&lt;p&gt;That seems to be a dynamic opposite to the one the quoted article is suggesting.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why YC went to DC</title><url>https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/why-yc-went-to-dc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>simonw</author><text>This new essay by Jack Clark, who was at OpenAI when they made the decision not to release GPT-2 for safety reasons five years ago, feels relevant: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;importai.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;import-ai-375-gpt-2-five-years-later&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;importai.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;import-ai-375-gpt-2-five-yea...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; [...] history shows that once we assign power to governments, they&amp;#x27;re loathe to subsequently give that power back to the people. Policy is a ratchet and things tend to accrete over time. That means whatever power we assign governments today represents the floor of their power in the future - so we should be extremely cautious in assigning them power because I guarantee we will not be able to take it back.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>no_wizard</author><text>I don’t disagree with this assessment but it’s also a narrow view[0] that allows the problem to persist in the first place.&lt;p&gt;Rather, I’d like to see what positive oversight would look like, but that has &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; been put forth by any of these organizations thus far. It all comes down to “trust us” which is also hard to stomach&lt;p&gt;[0]: most often but not exclusively held by Americans (of which i am one). We collectively fail to imagine government being a positive force and what that would look like.</text></comment>