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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2252 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I expect "compliance layer" refers to that portion of the workforce/job duties which is not devoted to doing the actual thing, but to checking records and requesting reports so that it can be shown that you are "in compliance with (Company Policy X/Regulation Y/Client Moral Standard Z/what-have-you)" as regards doing the thing.

Essentially this, yeah. Box-ticking for the sake of bureaucracy isn't going to just be solved

(including @MachineElfPaladin as well)

Ah, got it!

Yes, this is absolutely a massive potential problem. We will mandate that a human is put in the loop to slow down AI work in the name of safetyism.

I think, however, that this can only go so far and I know it is self-defeating.

Crypto (specifically Bitcoin) showed that even with something as hyperregulated as literal currency, people will find a way around it. You can't outlaw math, which means you can't outlaw encryption and cryptography in the digital world. It was a matter of time before people figured out the precise mechanisms to turn this into permissionless money. Are there still issues with BitCoin? Of course. Is it going to replace the USD? No. But it's already broken contain - MicroStrategy, a publicly traded "old" tech firm - is now effectively a Crypto Hedge fund that uses real USD from public markets as fuel for fake internet money scheming.

I expect that several companies will willingly hire their armies of "AI compliance people" and then will be defeated - fast or slow, doesn't matter - by new companies (DAOs?) that say "fuck that" to compliance and, instead, rely on new technologies to just get shit done.

Will this result in a wild west and semi-to-totally unregulated economy? Yes. Will there be a lot of chaos in the interim? Yes. But I do believe it's not only the only choice, but inevitable. The only alternative is slow death by bureaucracy.

You can't outlaw math, which means you can't outlaw encryption and cryptography in the digital world.

Let me introduce you to the concept of locked bootloaders and secure boot.

That's a choice people make. There's always going to be some sort of radical, free linux distro that the technically capable can load onto third party hardware.

Again, if you're buying fully integrated hardware, firmware, software from a corporation that puts these kind of things in place - that's a choice. There will always be bad faith actors out there. We should do our best not to reward them for that behavior.

Strictly theoretically, yes. Practically, if your bank requires using an app to access the account online, and that app refuses to work on non-"secured" system, you're out of luck. If your government has "digital ID" system, which only works on "secured" platforms, and you have to use it for any interaction with anything government-related, which is everything in a modern welfare state - you're out of luck. Yes, you can choose not using any of it, leave the modern society and live in a hut on an isolated island and survive on moss and mushrooms. Nobody really is going to choose that, so that's not a real choice.

Of course, there will always be the black market. USSR had the black market (a huge one), North Korea has the black market (that's how they haven't starved yet). The Powers That Be are mostly fine with it, as long as it remains black and thus hard to access for somebody who is not already "outside" the system - criminals, spies, etc. I mean, they would fight them case by case, but they are not an existential threat. Controlling the wide population is existential, controlling 0.1% of freaks is merely police routine. And the governments are increasingly moving towards legitimizing and enabling population-level controls. We will soon see delegitimization of non-controllable software and hardware - first as "insecure" and "dangerous", then as a tool of criminals - i.e. finding an unlocked phone on somebody would be universally treated as a sign that person is a criminal. Then it will be officially banned.

I don't think you'd be surprised to hear me call this a slippery slope argument. There's a lot of implied necessary changes and conditionalities baked into your scenario.

finding an unlocked phone on somebody would be universally treated as a sign that person is a criminal.

This stretches credulity. And how does "phone" and "unlocked" get defined in a legal sense. If I assemble an old hobby kit radio, do I possess an unlocked phone in principle?

I think the more likely answer is that a lot of legislation is going to fall apart because of a technical illiteracy. Look at New York State's RAISE act (Recently passed):

  1. "SAFETY INCIDENT" MEANS AN INCIDENT OF THE FOLLOWING KINDS THAT OCCURS IN SUCH A WAY THAT IT PROVIDES DEMONSTRABLE EVIDENCE OF AN INCREASED RISK OF CRITICAL HARM: (A) A FRONTIER MODEL AUTONOMOUSLY ENGAGING IN BEHAVIOR OTHER THAN AT THE REQUEST OF A USER; (B) THEFT, MISAPPROPRIATION, MALICIOUS USE, INADVERTENT RELEASE, UNAU- THORIZED ACCESS, OR ESCAPE OF THE MODEL WEIGHTS OF A FRONTIER MODEL;

How can model weights "escape"? How is that different than inadvertent release and/or unauthorized access.

The entire "demonstrable evidence of an increased risk" is ambiguity on ambiguity. And this is being linked to model weights; giant matrices of very long numbers. How in the world can you create a direct causal line here?

I don't think you'd be surprised to hear me call this a slippery slope argument

There's nothing wrong with the slippery slope argument, if there's an actual slope, and it is very slippery.

This stretches credulity.

No it does not. It already exists: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/india-orders-mobile-phones-preloaded-with-government-app-ensure-cyber-safety-2025-12-01/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/china-implements-mandatory-face-scans-for-mobile-phone-users-report-says/ https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/354

And how does "phone" and "unlocked" get defined in a legal sense.

Let that not bother you, the government has enough money to hire a thousand of lawyers and let them outplay you in any rule-lawyering contest - given that they will actually be judging who won anyway. Mandating every phone having locked boot sequence that is signed by approved government key is enough to build it. And easy to check.

If I assemble an old hobby kit radio, do I possess an unlocked phone in principle?

We have already played this out with guns and drugs. If you assemble some weird shit that the government struggles to classify, you are a dangerous person who is presumed to do something evil, and now you have to spend enormous resources to prove otherwise and stay out of jail. And, since nobody but you does this weird shit, you have no allies and stand on your own against the government machine, and nobody even cares if you win or lose but a couple of principle freaks with Mastodon accounts. And if by some weird luck somebody cares and you manage to win in one case, and become popular, the government just puts the law in the next 2000-page mega-bill that bans specifically what you are doing. Because it's dangerous to children or something.

I think the more likely answer is that a lot of legislation is going to fall apart because of a technical illiteracy.

That's a big failure mode that geeks still persist on holding onto. We are so smarter with the technology that we will out-technology the government. It works on the small scale. On the large scale the government will just lock up the whole environment - and if there is a couple of rats and cockroaches under the floorboards, it's not a big threat. Yes, you can run around as an individual rat and collects some scraps and crumbles that fall off the table. But you will never get a seat at the table itself while being a rat. And that's the goal.

It does not matter that specific legislators get specific details wrong. It does matter that they have the power to control these details. And once it is established that they do, they will eventually lock down all the specific details in a way they want to. If they want 99.99% of people using government-controlled identity-linked devices to access the internet - that's what will happen, and the fact that you can solder together an unauthorized device and use it in your basement (until your ISP blocks you and notifies the police) is not a big win on your side.

Links to Chinese and Indian government crackdowns? Ok. I mean, there's a reason I don't live there and call both of those regimes authoritarian.

Let that not bother you, the government has enough money to hire a thousand of lawyers and let them outplay you in any rule-lawyering contest - given that they will actually be judging who won anyway.

So the system is already irrevocably rigged against me. But ...

But you will never get a seat at the table itself while being a rat. And that's the goal.

I should want to have a seat at the corruption table?

If they want 99.99% of people using government-controlled identity-linked devices to access the internet - that's what will happen

Why would "they" (I think you mean legislators) want this? If you're going to answer with "because they want total control!" Then you're just feeding into a straw man archetype.

I'm interested in preventing a censored future. And I also think there is a very real chance it could happen - look at England arresting people for tweets. But what you're presenting is an "you're already fucked!" blackpill doomer scenario that relies on a lot of circular argumentation and conspiracy thinking. There's a lot of logical leaps - they're gonna find a way to fuck you, bud! - without a lot of well thought out causal chains for how it would all actually happen. I find so little value in this.

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