ISL

Accountability is the biggest unaddressed challenge for AI implementation.

When one person is able to do too much too quickly, they can create more liability than they can accommodate if something fails.

It is essential that a human is responsible for the utilization of any AI output in the real world, but that is not enough. For our own sakes, we must find ways to minimize the tech-debt bankruptcy blast-radius of those who would utilize (knowingly or unknowingly) AI to create flawed systems upon which others rely.

An example: Jim vibe-codes an extremely popular micropayments app. He hires a few people and sees the company as the WhatsApp of money -- a few engineers and some agentic support staff. It pulls in a few million in VC money -- enough to draw in tens of millions of users. One day, a flaw in the infrastructure causes all of the users' unsalted banking information to be released.

Agentic AI allows that entire list of customers to be exploited rapidly, so the losses for society are in the tens of billions. Jim's company is immediately bankrupt, of course, but there are only a few million dollars to go around.

Today, most of Jim's incentives are to go ahead and build that app. The same is true for his few employees and a small VC contribution. There's not much capital at risk compared with the societal exposure.

How do we ensure that AI users are accountable not just for their actions, but for the size of the risk-exposure that they create?

Spaceflight requires relentless deliberate progress.

An exploding job-recruitment offer might not attract the kind of folks we want designing a system that absolutely must work after a decade in space.

I've worked with NASA and ESA employees/contractors who've made technical miracles happen in space. I don't think any of them would be drawn to this style of recruitment.

A central challenge for AI is understanding how accountability flows.

The language of this article is a great example, "... thanks to an AI agent that gave an employee inaccurate technical advice ...".

It should more-correctly read, " ... thanks to the people who made it possible for an AI agent to give an employee inaccurate technical advice ... ".

It is at our peril that we deem it acceptable to blame a black box for an error, especially at scale.

As noted above:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ38/pdf/PLAW-... : the Attorney General was to have produced the entirety of the Epstein files, with very narrowly-enumerated redactions, in December. She has not done so.

Furthermore, there are numerous allegations that the documents that have been released contain CSAM, which (referencing the PDF above) may fall afoul of 18 U.S.C. 2252–2252A.

In addition, one need only glance at the action in US courts to see egregious violations of the Constitution and valid court orders playing out daily.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26513988-trorder0128...

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

The US administration is, at present, regularly violating the law and ignoring court orders. Indeed, these very releases are patently in violation of multiple federal laws -- they're simultaneously insufficiently-responsive to meet the requirements of the law requiring the release of the files and fall afoul of CSAM laws by being incompletely redacted.

The challenge, as we're all experiencing together, is that the law is not inherently self-enforcing.

And your medical provider who will only allow you to see your online medical records after an SMS 2FA challenge?

Scientists use pairs of satellites to map the small variations in Earth's gravitational field. It is possible to see groundwater depletion and changes in distribution of glacial ice, among many things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRACE_and_GRACE-FO

The primary challenge in determining the mass of Earth is actually measuring the gravitational constant, G, itself. Everything else involved is known at much higher precision. The product of G and Earth's mass is known to two parts in a billion, but the uncertainty in G is ~22 parts per million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant

LISA is primarily sensitive to time-varying gravitational gradients on timescales of a fraction of a minute to a few hours and won't be terribly useful for determining the orbits of objects in our solar system. (but it is very, very cool).

In far fewer than five seconds, one team can suddenly have the upper hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O34BnFu8Kk

The effect is so powerful, it fools professionals and the camera-operator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fioVbt7eF8

Even when the technique is known, everyone remains susceptible (the victim team in the above video is the trickster here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNTfFg4XW0

It is likely that many airlines accommodate people who are being deported as regular passengers on outbound international flights.

For movement of humans at industrial scale, though, there are only a few operators with ICE contracts. Avelo, GlobalX, Eastern, Key Lime Air, and Omni come immediately to mind. For international flights, there's at least one Learjet operator that flies a bunch for them, too.

These days, the aforementioned carriers fly 20-30 flights/day. Here are Saturday's flights (apologies for the sign-in wall, but lalabote keeps their account somewhat locked down): https://bsky.app/profile/lalabote.bsky.social/post/3mai6lach...

Key Lime Air operates daily airline flights as Denver Air Connection in addition to their charter work for ICE and others.

Whoops -- was away from HN for a few days.

Here is JJ's account -- he is a prolific flight-tracker: https://bsky.app/profile/jjindc.bsky.social

Here is an Avelo flight moving through California right now: https://bsky.app/profile/jjindc.bsky.social/post/3malkyew432...

Here is an Avelo flight on the ground in Seattle on Saturday: https://bsky.app/profile/jjindc.bsky.social/post/3magxcnri32...

Avelo flies a number of flights each week for ICE.

Avelo assists ICE daily with deporting people from the United States:

https://bsky.app/profile/jjindc.bsky.social/search?q=avelo

That is known to the public.

Who decides what behaviors we should be nudged toward? Is it us, or someone else?

To me, one of the greatest dangers of the present moment is that we can't tell whether the LLMs are being asked to give subtly biased answers (or product-placement) on some questions. One cannot readily tell from the output.

For as long as Backblaze has been doing this and at this level of quality, I have no doubt that these reports are good for business.

(As an anecdotal example -- I first heard about Backblaze from these reports many years ago and have relied on them to an extent in selecting new drives. I'm now a Backblaze customer.)

Thank you, rsync, from a community member.

If not now, soon, the bottleneck will be responsibility. Where errors in code have real-world impacts, "the agentic system wrote a bug" won't cut it for those with damages.

As these tools make it possible for a single person to do more, it will become increasingly likely that society will be exposed to greater risks than that single person's (or small company's) assets can cover.

These tools already accelerate development enough that those people who direct the tools can no longer state with credibility that they've personally reviewed the code/behavior with reasonable coverage.

It'll take over-extensions of the capability of these tools, of course, before society really notices, but it remains my belief that until the tools themselves can be held liable for the quality of their output, responsibility will become the ultimate bottleneck for their development.

ITAR will be quite a surprise to some when it suddenly makes an appearance.

Reproducible and empirical fact is anathema to any administration that wants the "truth" to be the talking-point of the day.

As a scientist (physics, not polar ice), scientists alone are too few to advocate for science alone -- we literally cannot do it.

If you want scientific research as you know it to persist in the United States, please take a moment to help support for science in Congress go viral in your community.

Empirical science is non-partisan. It is good and helpful to know what's true.

If your friends are devout readers of the bible, point 'em toward Philippians 4:8. While I'm not religious, that passage has resonated for me my entire life.

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

If that sounds cool, check out the LISA mission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...

Edit: and the already-flown Pathfinder : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder

Very cool.

One can readily argue that Graham has earned recognition and acclaim specifically for his essays. They're part of what drew early founders to YC.

Whoa. Didn't expect to see the inside of Barton Hall this morning :).

Thank you to everyone involved in the Gaia mission and to everyone whose contributions (including taxpayers) who made it possible. Gaia's data will shape our understanding of the universe for generations to come.

Yep. Any timer will do.

If you find yourself programming an eInk display and a microchip in order to improve your procrastination, it is time to stop working on the project, get a physical timer, and work on the thing.

If you feel inclined to shop around for a timer before getting to work, I'll save you the search. These work great. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TLC9SFZ (but any timer will do).

Go do the thing. You're worth it.

The judges may or may not have the same take on that matter as the legislature.

Hopefully it won't be at all. Seems pretty relevant to the tech-industry if entire departments of competent tech-industry folks are getting laid off by the federal government.

While it might be political, it is also economic and directly relevant to the hacker/startup ecosystem.

"But we came to the government to fix things. And we’re not done with this work yet."

Thank you, 18F.