The remarks from the Office of Science and Technology Policy director came during a conversation with the Consumer Technology Association one day after the release of the White House’s AI Action Plan.

When the Biden administration created a safety institute at the standards agency and then used it to run “x-risk evals, I think we kind of lost our way there,” he said. (“X-risk” is a shortened term for “existential risk” that’s associated with the idea that AI poses major threats to humanity.)

“To me, I think we need to go back to basics at NIST, and back to basics around what NIST exists for, and that is to promulgate best-in-class standards and do critical metrology or measurement science around AI models,” Kratsios said.

Kratsios’s comments about the body once known as the AI Safety Institute came a day after the White House released its anticipated AI Action Plan — which made dozens of recommendations to do things like deregulate and rid AI of “ideological bias” — as well as three executive orders that set parts of that plan into motion. The Thursday panel, moderated by CTA’s CEO and vice chair Gary Shapiro, was focused on those actions.

The discussion also followed the Trump administration’s move last month to rename the NIST-located safety institute to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, cutting “safety” from the name. That component was initially announced by the Biden administration in November 2023 at the UK AI Safety Summit and, over the next year, focused on working with industry, establishing testing agreements with companies, and conducting evaluations.

I get that he’s most likely just “following orders” from Thiel, and probably not coming up with any of this policy, but I still hate this guy so much. I have to give Thiel credit. Once again proving he sure knows how to craft a good public scapegoat for when things inevitably go horribly wrong.

  • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    30 天前

    Violence and historical conceptions of servitude aren’t the only way to violate rights. Rejection of externalities does not require violence or servitude; yet it is arguably a fundamental aspect of libertarianism.

    I don’t mean specific instructions, I am talking about philosophical perspectives too. Perfect freedom of association does not exist in a universe (reality) with externalities.

    No it’s not and it isn’t. Very easy to call it that now, when the oligarchs themselves “confirm” it, but 10 years ago oligarchs themselves just loved liberal democracies with left traits, because those made laws convenient for them. Your memory seems a bit short.

    I would disagree, be it in the American context or in other countries. In other countries, oligarchs don’t bother since libertarian polemics aren’t the best tool for the job. I lived in the US under Bush and Obama, I can’t say that US oligarchs from the time “just loved liberal democracies with left traits”.

    “It’s a war,” Schwarzman, [chairman and cofounder of the Blackstone Group], said of the struggle with the administration over increasing taxes on private-equity firms. “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

    Some other examples come to mind (no web searches, just going from memory).

    Yes, it doesn’t, but the closer the better usually. Nobody claims it does. Nobody relies upon that.

    While on a general level, I agree that “the closer the better”, individuals who associate with libertarianism almost universally reject personal responsibility by leveraging polemics about “free” association.

    Even casually opening the Cato website (did it as an experiment), reveals a clear disregard for reality and tons of open corporate propaganda. Demagoguery; undeniably pre-meditated dishonesty.