It seems likely to me that the actual consequence of the bill, if enacted, map more closely to the broad version than the narrow version for ease of implementation / cost of violation reasons, and that the various tweeters share this assumption.
Maybe that’s just a differently instantiated version of the bias you’re describing, but it feels to me like a relevant distinction: They’re not literally misreading the law. They’re trying to model the consequences of its implementation.
They are literally misreading the law if the tweet says the bill “bans AI from answering questions related to several licensed professions”, and it literally doesn’t do that.
But do you see how shifting from ‘just reading’ to ‘interpreting implementation consequences’ means that the tweet may be claiming an effective ban and not a ban by the letter of the law itself? I agree that this is sloppy but it’s not out of the norm for discussion of laws in the public eye (where the consequences are foregrounded rather than the details; e.g. the stuff from like 15 years ago about hallway width in abortion clinics, which was widely reported on as ‘banning abortion clinics’, because changing hallway width was prohibitively expensive).
[Genuinely not trying to convince; it looks like you may not have seen my point yet, rather than that you’ve seen it and disagree with it, but maybe I’m wrong about that!]
But do you see how shifting from ‘just reading’ to ‘interpreting implementation consequences’ means that the tweet may be claiming an effective ban and not a ban by the letter of the law itself?
I understand what you’re saying, but that amount of charity is inappropriate. If the OP wanted to say “effective ban”, they would have done that, and then the tweet wouldn’t have misled people. And in other contexts I am almost positive that rationalists would be able to immediately register this kind of conflation as antisocial; for instance, people made similar claims that SB 1047 would “ban open source”, and several of the people mentioned above thought that was just as mendacious.
It seems likely to me that the actual consequence of the bill, if enacted, map more closely to the broad version than the narrow version for ease of implementation / cost of violation reasons, and that the various tweeters share this assumption.
Maybe that’s just a differently instantiated version of the bias you’re describing, but it feels to me like a relevant distinction: They’re not literally misreading the law. They’re trying to model the consequences of its implementation.
They are literally misreading the law if the tweet says the bill “bans AI from answering questions related to several licensed professions”, and it literally doesn’t do that.
But do you see how shifting from ‘just reading’ to ‘interpreting implementation consequences’ means that the tweet may be claiming an effective ban and not a ban by the letter of the law itself? I agree that this is sloppy but it’s not out of the norm for discussion of laws in the public eye (where the consequences are foregrounded rather than the details; e.g. the stuff from like 15 years ago about hallway width in abortion clinics, which was widely reported on as ‘banning abortion clinics’, because changing hallway width was prohibitively expensive).
[Genuinely not trying to convince; it looks like you may not have seen my point yet, rather than that you’ve seen it and disagree with it, but maybe I’m wrong about that!]
I understand what you’re saying, but that amount of charity is inappropriate. If the OP wanted to say “effective ban”, they would have done that, and then the tweet wouldn’t have misled people. And in other contexts I am almost positive that rationalists would be able to immediately register this kind of conflation as antisocial; for instance, people made similar claims that SB 1047 would “ban open source”, and several of the people mentioned above thought that was just as mendacious.