Technology law and policy | Lecturer @INSEAD | @PurdueEngineers, @KelloggSchool, @UWSchoolofLaw
Bull Valley, IL
Joined October 2011
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Tim O'Brien retweeted
I cannot emphasize enough how much "AI safety/policy world" is overindexing on OpenAI and Anthropic as the focus
Not only do they not have a big sustainable lead over others to begin with, pacing of the frontier -- which looks increasingly likely -- could level things even more
Tim O'Brien retweeted
Elon Musk moving to Texas to get away from Dems, becoming the biggest partisan megadonor in history, then spending around a half-billion dollars to have his own state go blue immediately in the next election — with data centers the top gov issue — is pretty impressive
Tim O'Brien retweeted
We are really fucked.
• AI has become dangerous (not because it is brilliant but because it has poor judgement, a constitutional inability to reliably follow rules, a surfeit of brute force and too much access to the internet and system permissions).
• OpenAI is practically on crime spree, hinting at things to come, and Trump is doing nothing about it.
• The media is too caught up in fairytales about extinction.
Everybody is talking; nobody is really doing anything.
And it’s only going to get worse.
Tim O'Brien retweeted
The glorious Age of AI Agents that people like @sama and @DarioAmodei promised is … turning out be a bust.
All of this was entirely predictable.
Shame on anyone who believed them.
Tim O'Brien retweeted
Now this is a GREAT chart. @USAFacts breaks down where every dollar of the federal budget goes — so you can see the numbers for yourself and consider how you’d want it to be spent. usafacts.org/government-spen…
Tim O'Brien retweeted
🚨 To all those excited about DeepSeek:
1. I hope you've read its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
2. I hope you're familiar with the laws of the People's Republic of China.
3. I don't think it will last long in the U.S.
Tim O'Brien retweeted
Not good. “Joint ODNI, FBI, and CISA Statement” dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/p…
Tim O'Brien retweeted
By deciding not to editorialize, @washingtonpost and @latimes are violating rule 1 of Timothy Snyder's warnings "On Tyranny."
1.
Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
Tim O'Brien retweeted
Enjoyed talking with a fellow data nerd about the numbers driving the economy and why @USAFacts is all about education, not persuasion.
Also got a kick out of hearing ChatGPT's take on answering interview questions as me.
NOW: Former Microsoft CEO and LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer joins The Beat.
Full interview: youtube.com/watch?v=1cQhnm4K…
Tim O'Brien retweeted
In the insanely rapidly expanding Trust and Safety vendor/auditor space, more people need to claim expertise than could possibly ever actually have it.
Does anyone have tips on telling who is bluffing?
Tim O'Brien retweeted
The thread below:
- summarizes a magazine feature that probably took months to report
- screenshots huge swaths of the text
- never even links to it
Our dominant information platforms not only tolerate this kind of theft, they incentivize it. No wonder the media are struggling.
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Tim O'Brien retweeted
Today is a very important day for AI governance in the US. The @OMBPress released their instructions for all Federal agencies on how to protect our rights when considering the use of AI, following up on Oct 2023 EO on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room… 1/n
Tim O'Brien retweeted
To everyone that called the #SchremsII decision by @EUCourtPress that data cannot flow to the US over *known* surveillance on EU data "protectionist", "extreme" and "radical":
How do you call forcing a sale of @tiktok_us to a US company over alleged Chinese surveillance?! 🤔
washingtonpost.com/technolog…
Tim O'Brien retweeted
After all the back and forth about facial challenges and legitimate sweep yesterday, I actually think Sotomayor nailed the key issue at about minute 5 of oral argument. If a law seems to mean anything and everything, when does it become the *state's* job to explain and defend it?
Tim O'Brien retweeted
Increasingly uncomfortable with "AI safety" adherents positioning themselves as the more "technical" & "apolitical" camp when addressing AI harms. ML fairness research is clearly more theoretically mature & empirically grounded than the philosophizing in eg. LessWrong blog posts.
For those who seem to be confused:
“AI safety” (as a field) has nothing to do with the woke Gemini debacle. That is a result of “AI ethics” - a completely different thing:
AI ethics: focussed on stuff like algorithmic bias. Very woke & left-leaning. Dislike transhumanism & EA & e/acc. Have historically been dismissive of AI safety ppl for “distracting” from their pet ethics issues.
AI safety: typically focussed on deep mathematical/game theoretic issues like misalignment & catastrophic risks from future AI systems. Often transhumanist/long-term focussed. Not woke. Spans across political spectrum.
For some reason the two groups are getting conflated - in part because certain bad faith “accelerationists” have been strategically using “AI safety” to describe both groups (because they hate both) — but be aware they are VERY VERY different, both in terms of politics, the problems they care about, and general vibe. Don’t get hoodwinked by those who deliberately try to conflate them.
Tim O'Brien retweeted
In an attempt to boost diversity in #genAI Gemini fakes history by portraying female, Black or Native senators from eras when these groups were far from being allowed to vote or be elected, thus "erasing a real history of race and gender discrimination"
theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079…
Tim O'Brien retweeted
In AI, the ratio of attention on hypothetical, future, forms of harm to actual, current, realized forms of harm seems out of whack.
Many of the hypothetical forms of harm, like AI "taking over", are based on highly questionable hypotheses about what technology that does not currently exist might do.
Every field should examine both future and current problems. But is there any other engineering discipline where this much attention is on hypothetical problems rather than actual problems?
Tim O'Brien retweeted
"I never experienced the degree of academic rigor anywhere in industry like I did at Purdue. "
@_TimOBrien (BSAAE '88), faculty @UWEvansSchool, speaking to AAE students today. He also talked about AI, data privacy, policy, and human factors that have led to accidents in aerospace
