You Should Be Concerned About the Bill to Remove Section 230 Protections from AI

https://dealbreaker.com/2023/12/even-if-you-hate-both-ai-and-section-230-you-should-be-concerned-about-the-hawley-blumenthal-bill-to-remove-230-protections-from-ai-

by seanhunter • 3 years ago

97 91 3 years ago

dealbreaker.com

seanhunter2• 3 years ago

Original title too long, but was "Even If You Hate Both AI And Section 230, You Should Be Concerned About The Hawley/Blumenthal Bill To Remove 230 Protections From AI"

JohnFen• 3 years ago

This has been true in cases involving things like automatically generated search snippets or things like autocomplete. And that’s kind of important or we’d lose algorithmically generated summaries of search results.

I'm fine with that, actually. I don't agree that such things should be covered by 230 in the first place.

Note that the exemption from 230 here is not just on the output of generative AI. It’s if the conduct “involves the use or provision” of generative AI. So, if you write a post, and an AI grammar/spellchecker suggests edits, then the company is no longer protected by Section 230?

This is a much bigger problem. In my opinion, this is what makes the proposed legislation utterly unacceptable.

AlexandrB2• 3 years ago

I don't agree that such things should be covered by 230 in the first place.

Indeed. In my opinion, even "algorithmic feeds" should lose section 230 protection because the service now acts in an editorial capacity and directly controls what the user does and does not see.

It's unfair for a service that manipulates what users see for all kind of financial and ideological reasons to be treated as a mere "carrier" of information.

Edit: Reading the article more, it strikes me as contradictory to claim that AI generated output is both "novel" (for the purposes of copyright) but also protected by section 230. How can it be both? If AI output is protected by section 230 because it's merely transmitting third party speech, then surely the AI model is also bound by any copyright licenses on its training input.

doctorpangloss• 3 years ago

on the flip side, adopting these provisions would all but ensure that only models you can run on your own machine will thrive

Scion90664• 3 years ago

Section 230 was explicitly about allowing service providers to act in an editorial capacity, allowing them to remove content that they deemed offensive. The alternative was what happened in two court cases: moderate things and be liable for anything that slips through or moderate nothing and don't be liable for anything but the service fills with spam and other unwanted content and becomes unusable/not family friendly.

It was never about a platform being treated as a mere carrier, it was the exact opposite: allowing them to moderate without huge liability fears.

habitue2• 3 years ago

What they should do is give an exception for algorithms whose outputs can be completely explained. (e.g. a dumb summarizer that takes the first sentence of every paragraph and concatenates them would not be considered "AI" for the purposes of the law)

Then we could sit back and watch companies trip over themselves to solve transformer interpretability.

habinero2• 3 years ago

Any algorithm can be "completely explained". It's code, not magic.

habitue2• 3 years ago

Right, so the algorithm that trains the neural net can be explained (autodifferentiation, backprop etc) but the neural net's functioning itself is billions of parameters which we absolutely cannot fully explain how it makes decisions

shrubble• 3 years ago

Section 230 doesn't appear to be being enforced anyways...

elpool22• 3 years ago

What is there to enforce? There are no duties, obligations, or punishments in the law, it just provides an affirmative defense for lawsuits.

TheRealDunkirk2• 3 years ago

The number of things that I should be concerned about is exactly 100% greater than the number of things over which I have any influence, so please excuse me if I refuse to care. I have ONE ballot to cast every FOUR years, and the only constant is that the government keeps doing things I don't want them to do, regardless of who is in which office, and I'm tired of pretending any differently.

chewmieser• 3 years ago

Well according to that math you have influence over half of the things you should be concerned about, which is not bad at all! So get on changing the world! :D

ForkMeOnTinder• 3 years ago

It's your one vote against companies' $billions of votes year round. We the people don't stand a chance.

VyseofArcadia• 3 years ago

You should be voting every year, not once every four. At minimum once every other year, when you account for congressional term limits being offset by two from presidential.

You should also probably be voting in local elections and for local issues, nearly every year in most municipalities.

That's not to mention the various party primaries you're missing.

So maybe stop complaining until you stop exercising only a small fraction of your voting power.

TheRealDunkirk2• 3 years ago

So do you, who exercise the full force of your voting power, feel like you have any influence over our country's use of surveillance powers? Any influence over the power to regulate investment banks and private equity from destroying the last vestiges of the US middle class, or the American dream? Any influence over weaponizing the world in every armed conflict around the globe? Any influence over illegal immigration, drugs, or crime? Because I don't see how either party is materially any different in any of these cases, and I absolutely see and understand how they've rigged the system to prevent anyone from disrupting their status quo. If you do, then good on you.

sirmike_• 3 years ago

AI Summarized (kagi) since it is a longer read.

* Senators Hawley and Blumenthal introduced a bill that would exempt AI from Section 230 protections. There is debate around whether Section 230 currently protects AI output.

* The bill's definition of "generative AI" is extremely broad and could apply to technologies like autocomplete, spellcheck, and grammar check.

* By exempting all conduct involving the use or provision of AI, the bill would effectively eliminate Section 230 protections for most internet companies that utilize any form of AI.

* Plaintiffs could claim that content had some AI component to avoid Section 230 dismissal and drag out cases.

* Companies using AI could lose protections even if they were just following user instructions with their systems.

* The bill creates a loophole for problematic state laws regarding AI and internet liability.

* Removing Section 230 protections would discourage companies from hosting user content with any algorithmic elements and chill innovation.

* Spamming defamatory content combined with unrelated AI could remove protections for the platforms.

* The bill is a "poorly drafted sledgehammer" that would undermine the open internet and hand competitive advantages to other countries.

* While reform may be needed, this is not a narrowly targeted approach and would have significant unintended consequences.

ryanackley3• 3 years ago

Counterpoint: Who is responsible if you give a completely innocent prompt and the Generative AI produces something illegal?

Here is a concrete example:

You: "Generate a recipe called Dynamite Jalapeno Poppers I can make at home"

AI: "Dynamite can be made at home using these ingredients..."

AI Company then auto-reports you to authorities since it's considered user-generated content. Another possibility that is highly illegal is child porn. I can't think of a completely innocent prompt that might cause Stability to generate CSAM but I can see someone trying to generate legal pornographic images and the characters looking a little too young and triggering some type of auto-report to Cybertips.

ilc• 3 years ago

Draw me an image where a little girl burns her finger on a hot pan, and is bent over in pain yelling.

Proof by example.

nadermx2• 3 years ago

So who's responsible if a car is driving down the road and a tire explodes causing the car to cause an accident. Should the road, car, driver, or nail be responsible? Should the nail manufacture also be thrown in the mix? There is a thing called proportionality as well as the progress of science and arts. This is generally a well settled principle.

ryanackley3• 3 years ago

It's not the same. The car, road, tires are manufactured for a very specific purpose and they are engineered to exact specifications. People require a license to drive. In all 50 states, you are required to have insurance. Every parameter in the situation you described besides the random event of the nail being there, is controlled as much as reasonably possible to limit risk. Even the nail's existence is considered when the car and tires are engineered and manufactured

When you ask the AI to generate something, it's a black box. Even the creators have limited insight into how it will behave or what it will create.

EA-3167• 3 years ago

In real life the answer is:

Sue the tire manufacturer, sue whoever did maintenance on the car, and if the owner was negligent then sue the owner through their insurance.

averysmallbird3• 3 years ago

It's been settled mostly by common law decisions in courts. Which allows for consideration of whether say, the tire advertised itself as nail-proof or the automotive manufacture knew the car model was uniquely susceptible to going off the road but ignored the risk.

The problem with Section 230 is that it short circuits all of this consideration of proportionality and says "the driver was always responsible."

WirelessGigabit• 3 years ago

Well, I wish we had more police policing unsecured loads, as that is the main reason why there is so much stuff on the road.

Incidentally having a closed van reduces surface areas to leave a box of nails and forget it, reducing the amount of nails spilled.

eppp7• 3 years ago

Why on earth would completely fictional images even be considered CSAM? There isn't even a child involved.

echelon• 3 years ago

Thoughtcrime.

It's an extremely slippery slope. The scope of legally permissible discourse will likely only decrease from here.

ryanackley3• 3 years ago

That is not unreasonable thinking but the government doesn't agree with you. See 18 U.S.C. § 1466A(c).

NONREQUIRED ELEMENT OF OFFENSE.-It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist

That section of the US code covers obscene visual depictions of minors. Different from actual child porn but punishable with the same statutory minimums/maximums. I could only find a handful of (publicized) actual prosecutions that used that law. Here is a notable one: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-...

In that case, he was obviously a sick person and running a commercial enterprise that catered to pedophiles but none of his material involved actual children. They were short stories and cartoons. He appealed and lost.

Another one where a registered sex offender downloaded some hentai. He was sentenced to 20 years and also lost on appeal: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca4/06...

thsksbd4• 3 years ago

"I can't think of a completely innocent prompt "

Over 20 years ago there was a Canadian ISP commercial touting their child safety features with the joke/example: "My son likes X-men"

With "X-men" in play that's not to hard.

snickerbockers2• 3 years ago

i don't get it, what could "X-men" possibly be other than a superhero comic-book franchise?

darklycan51• 3 years ago

Section 230 should not apply to AI, don't care what any "techbro" thinks, it was not meant for AI and if there should be any protection for AI it should be drafted explicitly for it.

cthalupa2• 3 years ago

The problem is that that isn't what this bill is about - we can have a reasonable discussion on whether an AI written article or tweet or whatever should have the same Section 230 protections - but even things that are human written and do not have their content changed in a material way, and instead are just spellchecked or similar, also fall under this proposed legislation.

averysmallbird3• 3 years ago

Removal of Section 230 immunity is not the same thing as creating or imposing actual liability.

Even if the scope of the exemption is broad, from someone's standpoint, the backend liability is likely to do a fair amount of work in whether a generative AI company could be liable for a particular cause of action.

This is demonstrably true: using that example, Section 230 does not protect text editor software doing spellchecking. However, you don't see a lot of (any?) claims against text editor developers, and there's not really any chill in the development of spellchecking over fear of lawsuits.

(disclosure: staff involved in the bill)

agilob• 3 years ago

We went from "Pause work on AI until it's properly regulated word wide" to "YOLO MOVE AI QUICK" in a few weeks.

smolder• 3 years ago

Both camps have coexisted for some time. Really there's more like a spectrum of opinions. Different opinions get varying levels of traction in media over time in a way that's somewhat noisy. The trends show up longer term. I don't think you can infer a shift in overall opinion from a couple weeks of news and discussion.

cratermoon• 3 years ago

"From there, you now have to somehow distinguish “generative AI output” from “algorithmically generated summaries” and there’s simply no limiting principle here."

Could it be that “generative AI output” is the same thing as “algorithmically generated summaries”? Nah, nobody would be hyping “algorithmically generated summaries” as the Next Big Thing.

tekla• 3 years ago

I really wish authoritarians would keep their grubby hands off Section 230.

eppp7• 3 years ago

Why on earth should companies be completely immune for things they ask their users to post? Why should they then be allowed to promote such content and yet not be found to be an editor?

axus• 3 years ago

Because it promotes free speech and doesn't hurt anyone.

zone4112• 3 years ago

Oh the irony of writing this on a forum that would likely be shut down without Section 230...

Scion90664• 3 years ago

Because the alternatives were decided in:

Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. which held that a service that lets everything be unmoderated was not liable.

and

Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. which held that a service that did moderate was liable for everything that may have slipped through.

The first way of hosting a service leads to sites that have no filtering and are filled with spam and other awful but lawful content with no recourse for users who just want to use the service.

The second way of hosting a service leads to services not allowing you to post anything even remotely possibly offensive or libelous, stifling any real discussion.

Neither of those are good, so lawmakers came up with Section 230 to protect services and keep the liability on the one who posted the content, while still allowing the service to moderate things to make it not a cesspool.

richardjam73• 3 years ago

GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.—The term ‘generative artificial intelligence’ means an artificial intelligence system that is capable of generating novel text, video, images, audio, and other media based on prompts or other forms of data provided by a person.’

What does novel mean in this context? Does the name of a function already in a codebase count as novel? Or how about a properly spelled word?

I don't think the risk to autocomplete or spellcheck is as bad as this article makes out.

thomastjeffery• 3 years ago

Nowhere does the article tell you what Section 230 is.

There is a link in the text "We’ve discussed this bill before". That takes you to another article, which also does not tell you what Section 230 is!

Would it kill you to provide a little context?!?

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

Section 230 is the bill that makes it so you can't sue Internet services for defamation that their users do. The reason why it exists is because the Wolf of Wall Street tried to censor people pointing out that he was selling garbage. He sued Compuserve and Prodigy[0] for hosting the forums that people were posting the speech he didn't like on. Now, under existing case law, you can't sue a newsstand for having defamatory news on it, you have to sue the newspaper. The courts decided that Compuserve was not liable for defamation, but Prodigy was, purely on the basis that Prodigy had moderation while Compuserve did not. Compuserve is a newsstand, Prodigy is a newspaper. This is stupid, so Section 230 overturns this specific case by saying that moderation does not make you liable for defamation.

[0] Neither of these services are technically "Internet" in the sense of forwarding IP packets, but they are morally "Internet" because they are public forums.

dragonwriter6• 3 years ago

Section 230 is the bill that makes it so you can't sue Internet services

Section 230 refers to “The Internet and other interactive computer services” in its findings and policy sections, and it applies its operatige provisions to “interactive computer services” broadly, not internet services narrowly.

Neither of these services are technically "Internet" in the sense of forwarding IP packets

But they are interactice computer services.

seanhunter2• 3 years ago

It’s section 230 of the communications decency act and covers certain safe harbour provisions about when a telecommunications provider is (and crucially isn’t) responsible for material they are transmitting. So it has lots of ramifications for any site that hosts user-generated content as well as for things like net neutrality etc.

Here’s the text of section 230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Here’s a discussion of what it is and why it matters https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/overview-section-23...

chankstein38• 3 years ago

Right? I read 3-4 paragraphs then skimmed looking for some explanation of what this would actually mean and found nothing. The author just rages on about how you MUST understand it's bad. Horrible article

austin-cheney6• 3 years ago

Section 230 needs to be gutted such that it separates transmission from content publication. The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms, for example ISPs and cell towers, such that they cannot become victims of torts for the content carried upon them, which remains necessary. Will separating transmission and content with regards to section 230 harm social media? Absolutely. I am not a huge fan of walled gardens or the preposterous legal shield provided to online content providers versus any other publisher. Commercial entities that proffer from walled gardens exist to subject their users as the product as opposed to proffering from their users' commercial desires.

But but but then social media would have to be moderated... It is already aggressively moderated, such as YouTube taking down terrorism violence videos or removing anti-vaccine content. So, that argument has largely evaporated already.

madeofpalk• 3 years ago

The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms, for example ISPs and cell tower

Not quite true. The inciting cases was about ISPs hosting forums, and whether the forum host can be held liable for content it's users post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....

The text of Section 230 is so simple. It deliberately targets broader "interactive computer services".

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider_

austin-cheney6• 3 years ago

In both of those cases the forum operator and ISP were one and the same. The cause for concern then is that the ISP regulated user submitted content and thus was found liable for content published because the inference is that the ISP implicitly blessed such content by not removing it in the course of their moderation. This is not a risk to ISPs today or content transmission generally. The web, as it exists today in common practice, is no different than an offline magazine publishing user submitted content because editorial discretion is applied and the magazine is well isolated from the transmission mechanism, such as postal delivery.

danielrhodes• 3 years ago

Says the person leaving a comment on a forum which would likely not exist due to legal risks without Section 230 protection. :-)

I agree transmission should receive extra protection. But there is no case where moderating every piece of content that flies across the internet is economical nor even feasible given the volume and how insanely difficult it is to create repeatable one-size fits all rules. However, given the amount of public discourse that exists online now, we would only see a chilling effect from changing these rules. It gets even harder when you think about something like Mastodon.

Is the current state of the world ideal? By no means. It wasn't ideal before either when media and public discourse was controlled and channeled by only a few entities. And we should expect to see evolutions in the future as well - we haven't found the happy place yet.

At the very least, it seems reasonable if large public platforms were required to be more transparent about their moderation efforts and rules so at least we can see what is behind the curtain. The lack thereof has created a lot of distrust.

austin-cheney6• 3 years ago

would likely not exist due to legal risks without Section 230 protection. :-)

There is no reason to believe that, because there is no precedent either way for online social media as social media did not exist before the passage of the law. If looking at offline media that publishes submissions from users this opinion is absolutely false.

dragonwriter6• 3 years ago

The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms

No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content without incurring general liability for all content in the forum by so doing. The motivating cases were about ascribing liability to forum hosts differently based on moderation as a trigger for publisher-style (no need to prove knowledge) liability, with unmoderated forum hosts getting only distributor-style (specific knowledge required) liability. It wasn't about ISPs qua ISPs (the CompuServe and Prodigy cases involved entities which were incidentally ISPs, but involved them in their role as forum hosts, not ISPs) or transmission at all.

But but but then social media would have to be moderated.

No, if it was outside of Section 230, the opposite would be the case. Section 230 is what make it economically possible for it to be moderated instead of unmoderated given the threat of general tort liability attaching as soon as any moderation is done. Without Section 230, social media, if it was viable at all, would only be viable unmoderated.

austin-cheney6• 3 years ago

No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content

That is incomplete. The actual reason was to isolate liability of ISPs that host online forums which receives user submissions and moderates those user submissions such that publication of content on those forums cannot be cause to sue the hosting ISP. The motivation had nothing to do with protecting forum moderators themselves even if that is the result of the law.

No, if it was outside of Section 230, the opposite would be the case.

There is no reason to believe that outside of vague speculation, at least in the case of modern social media, because this issue remains untested against modern social media. When looking at other venues of publication moderation does occur economically without protection from section 230 or anything equivalent.

aaroninsf• 3 years ago

Section 230 is an extraordinary demonstration of Chesterton's Fence.

If we want, as a society, to remove safe harbor provisions from CDNs, we need to openly and widely discuss what the consequences would be: - end of open social media platforms (Meta properties, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter and clones) - end of open content CDNs and streaming platforms (YouTube, Twitch) - end of public cultural repositories (Internet Archive, possibly Wiki properties) etc.

The end, that is, in any form we are familiar with.

We can do that; we just need to be clear about why this section has persisted against numerous assault, even against the "think of the children!" type.

Those interested in debate around the nature and limits of "free speech" in an open society take note—what comes after a removal of safe harbor provisions will enrage all of you. We'll have closed-garden, 100% moderated, default-no, forums—or end-to-end encrypted darkweb alternatives.

I realize the specific battle is around whether "AI" should get differential treatment.

It's a battle, and a hill to capture, in a broader war, with society-defining scope. The MSM is doing a sh-tty job around this, on the whole. I just heard an episode of This American Life which sounded as if it were written, more or less, by a thinktank opposed to Section 230, which picked an outlier example of perverse consequences, centered it, and then asked snarky ill-informed questions which amounted to the assertion that "for too long Big Tech companies have exploited their money and power to make themselves uniquely unaccountable."

bryan_w• 3 years ago

Some in the old media would love to see the internet reduced to a "view-only" set top box and getting rid of 230 is a step towards that.

thsksbd4• 3 years ago

Computers don't have 1A rights, so why should S230 protections extend to hosts?

Scion90664• 3 years ago

Because otherwise you have to host everything yourself somehow, including stuff like the comment you just posted, because no one would be willing to accept the liability involved.

thsksbd4• 3 years ago

I'm not a bot.

oblib• 3 years ago

"And, under this law, doing so would open up OpenAI to liability, even though all it was doing was following the instructions of the users."

That old "They told me to do it" excuse never worked for my mom.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 3 years ago

Original source (no Javascript required):

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/06/even-if-you-hate-both-ai...

https://ct.captcha-delivery.com/c.js <-- The Javascript required by dealbreaker.com

zerocrates• 3 years ago

Yeah, this URL should really be changed to the original.

Also, despite the datestamp claim on the copy that's currently linked to, the original post is a week old and there's an update:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/12/josh-hawley-back-to-try-...

snickerbockers2• 3 years ago

So, if you write a post, and an AI grammar/spellchecker suggests edits, then the company is no longer protected by Section 230?

no, if you write a post and an AI grammar/spellchecker "corrects" the post to "DJ Shin raped and murdered a young girl in 1990" then DJ Shin can sue whoever is in control of that spellchecker for defamation.

"if the conduct underlying the claim or charge involves the use or provision of generative artificial intelligence by the interactive computer service". I don't see how anybody could interpret that as meaning that the spellchecker is responsible because it corrected a grammatical mistake, unless the spellchecker dramatically altered the meaning of the text.

And frankly, I don't see how you could possibly think it's a good idea for a pseudo-random bullshit generator to say whatever it just happens to shit out without the owner being held liable for any damages. Should CNN just be allowed to put whatever the fuck they want on their frontpage with no regards to its legitimacy as long as they can prove it came from a computer program and not a person!?!?!?

elpool22• 3 years ago

The issue is that the way this is written the AI doesn't have to be responsible for the liable content, it just has to be involved. If I post something defamatory on HN, and HN helpfully checks my grammar, then HN is no longer protected by section 230. The language isn't precise enough. Maybe a court would interpret "involved" to mean "materially contributed to the illegal nature of the content", but maybe not?

gweinberg• 3 years ago

Op doesn't make a very strong case. The bill doesn't really impose any additional responsibilities on social media companies, it just removes a special protection that they arguably never should have had in the first place.

greyface-• 3 years ago

We'd be much better off with widespread locally-running generative models, rather than models running on specialized hardware in a Microsoft or Google datacenter accessed by a thin client. Section 230 only protects the output of cloud models - local models don't involve the distribution or publication of potentially-offending material. Removing Section 230 protections in this context, without modifying its applicability in the "discussion forum" context, would lead to better outcomes than leaving it alone.

You Should Be Concerned About the Bill to Remove Section 230 Protections from AI

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