Tennessee is about to make building chatbots a Class A felony (old.reddit.com)

by mindcrime 12 comments 33 points
Read article View on HN

12 comments

[−] sieste 29d ago
Wow.

> The bill makes it a Class A felony (15-25 years imprisonment) to “knowingly train artificial intelligence” to do ANY of the following:

• Provide emotional support, including through open-ended conversations with a user

• Develop an emotional relationship with, or otherwise act as a companion to, an individual

• Simulate a human being, including in appearance, voice, or other mannerisms

• Act as a sentient human or mirror interactions that a human user might have with another human user, such that an individual would feel that the individual could develop a friendship or other relationship with the artificial intelligence

[−] nomel 29d ago
So, with how poorly that's defined, and with that "ANY" there, most video games/characters.
[−] miloignis 29d ago
As I posted at top level, they've already backed off, but even the linked version had a carve out for video games:

  (B) Does not include:
  ...
  (ii) A bot that is a feature of a video game and is limited to
  replies related to the video game that cannot discuss topics
  related to mental health, self-harm, or sexually explicit content, or
  maintain a dialogue on other topics unrelated to the video game
[−] yencabulator 28d ago
It's really hard to prevent a general-purpose LLM from doing those. Especially the last one; any topic unrelated to the game is forbidden, not just the ones you slapped a second LLM on top to monitor for.
[−] yencabulator 28d ago

> Simulate a human being, including in appearance, voice, or other mannerisms

This covers all text-to-speech ever? Like, Alexa or Siri.

[−] miloignis 29d ago
As some of the reddit comments point out, they've already backed off: https://www.wjhl.com/news/tennessee-backs-off-sweeping-artif...
[−] carefree-bob 29d ago
We need to stop getting worked up about crazy legislation being proposed. That's a circus even at the Federal level as legislators propose all kinds of loony stuff to appeal to their base knowing full well it never has a chance to become law. It is extremely cheap to propose legislation, a very different matter to actually pass legislation that is signed into law.

But when you write an article about legislation that is merely proposed at the state level, then that's really rage-baiting.

And when you title this as "about to make" instead of "loony rep proposed something he knows will never stand a chance of passing his own chamber", then it's being downright dishonest.

[−] jonah 29d ago
[−] xiphias2 29d ago
It's against xAI Colossus datacenter in Memphis
[−] gerikson 29d ago
Finally someone taking AGI x-risk seriously.

cf. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5CfBDiQNg9upfipWk/only-law-c...

[−] stratos123 27d ago
Is this a joke? This bill does not particularly sound like it's written by a person who even knows x-risks are a thing; it seems to be trying to fight parasocial attachments to LLMs.

And even if it was otherwise, it'd be nearly useless since it's a law of one particular state. From the very post you linked: "If an ASI ban is to accomplish anything at all, it has to be effective everywhere. [...] Driving an AI company out of just your own city will not protect your family from death. It won't even protect your city from job losses, earlier in the timeline."

[−] cozzyd 29d ago
Since Oracle is moving to Nashville, I support this decision.