Rubyfan mentioned nuclear technology, which like cryptography, has a broad scope and military applications so isn’t something that was just left to the market to decide the best fit.
I don’t think I’ve left the scope of this discussion.
I was more talking about the consumer radiation side. Radium water to drink, women licking and painting radium watch dials. Toy physics kits for kids with uranium in it. Uranium glass also isn't great.
I mean the radium fad just by itself was pretty crazy, people used radium suppositories and radium makeup.
Ah I see. Thats definitely a case of regulations written in blood. I do think it strengthens the argument that we shouldn’t wait for wide spread adoption to cause problems, but rather study the issue and limit exposure until safety is at last vaguely known.
With AI, I don’t think there will be a lot of needed regulation until it gets to AI controlling physical machines like self driving cars. But in that respect, we already began regulating before problems appeared.
It’s a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle once out.
AI is already hurting people. We need regulation to hold it and its benefactors accountable. The federal government is preempting states from doing so.
I don't think you realize the level of damage it generally takes to get bipartisan support for creation of an oversight body.
It was popularized that an estimated 8,000 infant deaths attributed to swill milk occured every year in NYC in the 1850s (take with a grain of salt).
Even more recently much of the banking regulation only occured after severe market issues that broadly impacted the economy.
On a related note: "Layoffs" are going to be a hard practical harm point to rally around. Unless we fundamentally change the nature of our economy (Which doesn't tend to happen until the previous system collapses.), effeciency is king. Tha market isn't rational, but effeciency is a competitive advantage that compounds over time. So you have a prisoners dilemma here. If you want to restrict a technology that boosts efficiency, you either have to close your market and then put up rules that constrain efficiency or you bleed your prosperity.
They ALL happened AFTER people got hurt. That's how we do things here. We always have.
It's kind of messed up, but the alternative is a bunch of rules on things that wouldn't be a real problem.