New York Senate Bill S7263 is under consideration, and it seeks to prohibit LLMs from dispensing advice on a broad range of topics.

The logic is: “since you need a license to practice medicine, psychiatry, engineering, law, and other disciplines, and since LLMs don’t have a license, they must be prohibited from dispensing any advice on these topics.”

Some key points:

• This is, like a lot of American law, another trial lawyer enrichment act.  The enforcement mechanism is civil, which means that anyone can sue the chatbot operators.  The government isn’t going to step in and ban ChatGPT.  It’s going to allow everyone to sue ChatGPT.
• Operators cannot get out of liability by putting disclaimers on the output.
• Liability exists for anyone who offers a model or chat interface.
• If it passes, operators will have only 90 days to put safeguards in place.

Some thoughts…

First, yes, in a perfect world, everyone would have affordable access to all kinds of professionals.  But we don’t live in a perfect world.  People turn to AI to ask all kinds of questions.  It’s absurd to say “no, this information requires you to pay $300 an hour and we are outlawing any other means of getting it.”

Second, this is analogous to removing textbooks about psychiatry or medicine from libraries.  I could go to the library and read a book on diseases and convince myself that I have kuru (despite the fact that I don’t practice funerary cannibalism).  Should these books be removed from libraries?

Third, I’m sure the various professions are feeling the heat from AI.  Isn’t this really just about protecting their paychecks?

There will be all sorts of free speech challenges and such if this passes.  I’m thinking that the AI juggernauts will be lobbying hard against it as well.

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.