Extremely optimistic take IMHO that anyone will be allowed to own a powerful box of artificial intelligence

vinay_ys an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Right now, almost all the incentives are to build very large models that run across many machines in huge datacenters. There is very little incentive to build models that can run well on a small machine under your desk.

So it is less about whether people will be “allowed” to own AI, and more about whether there will be anything useful to own in the first place.

The incentive for local models is mostly to make them good orchestrators or user agents. They may give you some privacy and control, but they will still depend on much larger models running in datacenters for anything difficult.

I remember all the excitement around OpenMoko and other open-source “BlackBerry killer” projects. BlackBerry did get killed, but not by any of those individual-first projects.

For AI regulation, I think we should focus on normal commercial rules: consumer protection, privacy, antitrust, liability, and so on. In other words, focus on where money changes hands and where companies have power over users.

Military and offensive use is different. There, regulation is not much of a defense. The real defense is having enough capability and strength of your own.

Restricting AI because it can give dangerous knowledge to ordinary people is like restricting the printing press because it can be used to spread radical ideas.

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jMyles 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there a first amendment implication? Second? Both?

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tokioyoyo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Does it matter in 2026?

	▲	jMyles 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In constitutional / jurisdictional / legal terms, perhaps not. In forming consensus about the philosophical underpinnings of the rights we have with respect to the emerging internet? I think so.

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wang_li 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

13th.

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reinitctxoffset 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It'll be like DNS or dynamic linking or torrents of media or watching TLS on your own box: only people motivated to be free from corporate surveillance will be. By default a megacorp will get everything you see online or ask online, they will run code on your computer underneath you without telling you, they'll collaborate with arbitrarily totalitarian governments, we already know what they do by default.

But we also know how hopeless it is against motivated people who are willing to learn about computers. The Equation Group, eh, if they want you they're gonna get you. But some mid-level guy at a FAANG? He can't do shit to people who set up their own rig.

And AI is massively assymetrical in its ability to speed run a corpo-durable rig, we have long since passed the point where open weights and commodity equipment are enough to bootstrap arbitrary capability. They missed their chance to keep it in the bottle.

It's another turn of the crank on Late Soviet America asking for your papers comrade, but in the bitter end if they really want to oppress your ass they'll have to send a thug with a gun like those ICE guys terrorizing all the Latino guys.

So remember, they came for this other guy, and I said nothing...

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gilrain 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> … like those ICE guys terrorizing all the Latino guys.

… and the white guys they don’t like, like nurses with empathy. Don’t you dare think you’re safe because of your color. Unless you’re a monster or willing to become one, they want you oppressed.

	▲	reinitctxoffset an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Most people are neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally bad. This sounds like a tautology but it's worth printing some type signatures even if they could be inferred. If you look at any truly large scale Holocaust, whether in Rwanda in 92 or the Third Reich, you find that a few people will sacrifice themselves to defend others, a few will be monsters at the first opportunity, and most will be steered by whether the leaders are the first or second kind of people.