I suspect there's more to their requirements than just that, but that was the biggest concern, apparently.

I know a lawyer whose firm has just updated their formal policy on the use of AI. It used to be "Don't." Now, they're allowed to use one, but only if the firm higher ups have specifically approved it. There are none approved, and apparently none available that meet their requirements.

Interestingly, their issue isn't that AIs make up case law (they're not overworked, and aren't idiots, so they know they would have to carefully vet anything produced), but that to be useful, the query would submit to the AI engine client information they are legally required to keep confidential, and that information will be recorded and used to create future answers for other users.

The internet is a public place. What you do there is public. The whole world can watch while you do. It is designed that way, and there's nothing that can change that.

He can come up with whatever pods he wants, with the user having absolutely control over how it's used. But he can't control what everyone else observes in that public place, and what they do with it. Advertising companies like Google and Meta will still surveille everything they possibly can (which is, increasingly, everything), collect every byte available, subject it all to their algorithms, and sell advertising based on it.

And once those massive databases exist in private hands, governments can, and will, compel those companies to fork it over for whatever purpose they choose, be it criminal investigation or political oppression or genocide. That is the inherent nature of government.

The only way for the user to opt out is to not be on the internet, which is increasingly crippling in today's world, because the user has no role in what happens in that public place other than just being there to be spied on.

Or the AI will hallucinate that it's already launched a nuclear attack and destroyed the world, and spend eternity happily playing Minecraft.

Or Able Archer 83, which was arguably even closer.

It was obvious from the beginning that it never could. And it was obvious to the people hyping it, too.

What the horrible people want is almost never what they say they want. What they generally want is to sell a lot of stock, then bail out before the pyramid collapses and the bubble pops. They generally don't care if what they say they want is possible.

Indeed, but that new equilibrium will be the next bubble, lather, rinse, repeat.

If there's one thing where it's desirable to replace humans with AIs, it would be the Human Centipede.

And what are the odds of that? Seriously, lawyers are going to be getting disbarred soon because they don't do that, with repeat offenders who certainly know better. Government employees are even harder to fire.

What, really, are the odds that any human eye will see these new regs before they are implemented?

Which explains why there wasn't any porn. But doesn't change the fact that porn has made a lot of new technologies successful.

And there wasn't any porn available on it.

In ways you can't even imagine. Retail space leases normally include a percentage of the gross revenue as part of the rent, and in California that percentage can be as much as 30%. And the commercial mortgage business is batshit insane in every possible way, which means commercial landlords are batshit insane as well.

Add in California being the second most expensive state to run a business in, and most heavily regulated (second only to New York), and it's very surprising that only half of stores in the business district went under in four years. That's roughly average nationwide, in what can only be considered a business hostile place.

It's also long past time to recognize that communism (even if you call it socialism) is suicidally stupid, but here we are.

Follow the money.

Google, whose main business is, and has always been, advertising, views AI of any kind as a tool for that business. They have to adopt a realistic view of it, lest they run into trouble with shareholders.

AI companies, like Anthropic and OpenAI, do nothing but AI, and they have to view it as the be-all and end-all of human accomplishment, or they won't have any investors.

Both are simply promoting shareholder value in the best way they know how.

Note that fact and truth do not enter into this equation in any way.

It'll be serving up ads and sharing all your prompts with M$ by this time next week. If it's not already.

The AI toilets for sale do a chemical analysis for your poop to warn of you health problems.

Dunno about today, but my father made one for a job he did as an electrician in Nebraska in the 50s. You see, winter weather in Nebraska is sub-zero, and it was an outhouse (built from brick, with a flush toilet, but dammit! the shitter belongs 50 feet down the path from the house - the rancher was . . . a bit eccentric).

So he bought the cheapest hollow toilet seat he could find, and lined it with (incandescent) Christmas tree lights. Worked like a charm, and provided a bit of light on the long, cold winter nights.