AI regulation in America is not a missed opportunity but rather exactly what is being optimized for - money. This article explores why and the fundamental differences in how the EU and USA treat their citizens.
It is objectively one of the stupidest “strategies” ever… literally like saying “jump without looking” with the huge bias of one who did so and happen to land on a soft pillow and ignoring the thousands before and ofter who died trying the same stupid stunt
The problem is that Americans have been indoctrinated in celebrity worship: if Singer Z has a couple of great songs, he certainly knows how to raise kids, cure illnesses and fix the economy, right?!
It’s somewhat deeper than that: the ethos of “move fast/break things” came about during the explosion of tech startups in the last decade and a half or so, where being first to market was the pass/fail condition of getting any valuation whatsoever for your startup. It’s an approach that works for some domains (I would argue that those domains tend to be less technically interesting and rigorous, but I digress).
There were some organizations that pointedly too the opposite route, and operated much closer to “build it once and build it right” - to wit, the original iteration of WhatsApp (before it was subsumed and ruined by Meta) was built that way, and that’s specifically one of the reasons why it was so good for so long and gained such a massive userbase.
Anyways: applying “move fast/break things” and all of the idiotic, caustic “engineering leadership” koans that spring from that font of misprioritization and useless metrics is now and will continue to cause the art and serious practice of software engineering to get whittled away bit by bit. The only places where you CAN’T do that these days is in highly regulated contexts (aero/defense; biotech; medical; other similarly regulated fields), but even that is starting to crack.
“Move fast and break things” was cute when it wasn’t propping up the entire American economy.
It is objectively one of the stupidest “strategies” ever… literally like saying “jump without looking” with the huge bias of one who did so and happen to land on a soft pillow and ignoring the thousands before and ofter who died trying the same stupid stunt
The problem is that Americans have been indoctrinated in celebrity worship: if Singer Z has a couple of great songs, he certainly knows how to raise kids, cure illnesses and fix the economy, right?!
It’s somewhat deeper than that: the ethos of “move fast/break things” came about during the explosion of tech startups in the last decade and a half or so, where being first to market was the pass/fail condition of getting any valuation whatsoever for your startup. It’s an approach that works for some domains (I would argue that those domains tend to be less technically interesting and rigorous, but I digress).
There were some organizations that pointedly too the opposite route, and operated much closer to “build it once and build it right” - to wit, the original iteration of WhatsApp (before it was subsumed and ruined by Meta) was built that way, and that’s specifically one of the reasons why it was so good for so long and gained such a massive userbase.
Anyways: applying “move fast/break things” and all of the idiotic, caustic “engineering leadership” koans that spring from that font of misprioritization and useless metrics is now and will continue to cause the art and serious practice of software engineering to get whittled away bit by bit. The only places where you CAN’T do that these days is in highly regulated contexts (aero/defense; biotech; medical; other similarly regulated fields), but even that is starting to crack.
It worked to some degree for SpaceX because to make new rockets you have to and will blow some up. That philosophy doesn’t work well for other things.
“There are no poor people, just temporarily embarrassed millionaires"