I know someone who used to be a genius and apparently it was uncommon but not unheard of for someone to puncture a battery resulting in a violent fire that had to be put out by dumping a fuckload of sand onto it.

So this isn’t that far off from working at a Genius Bar normally.

That’s another good example. The Trump/Putin kissing mural is a great example of something that ends up being homophobic rather than partisan.

So you think it should be illegal?

If you used it to slander your neighbor, it would not be legal.

You’re entirely ignoring my point, I’m not trying to pass the video off as real therefore it’s not slander.

You keep referring to this as revenge porn which to me is a case where someone spreads nudes around as a way to punish their current or former partner. You could use AI to generate material to use as revenge porn, but I bet most AI nudes are not that.

Think about a political comic showing a pro-corporate politician performing a sex act with Jeff bezos. Clearly that would be protected speech. If you generate the same image with generative AI though then suddenly it’s illegal even if you clearly label it as being a parody. That’s the concern. Moreover, the slander/libel angle doesn’t make sense if you include a warning that the image is generated, as you are not making a false statement.

To sum up why I think this bill is kinda weird and likely to be ineffective, it’s perfectly legal for me to generate and distribute a fake ai video of my neighbor shooting a puppy as long as I don’t present it as a real video. If I generate the same video but my neighbor’s dick is hanging out, straight to jail. It’s not consistent.

That’s arguably a better rule than the more traditional flat-fee penalties, as it curbs the impulse to treat violations as cost-of-business. A firm that makes $1B/year isn’t going to blink at a handful of $1000 judgements.

No argument there but it reinforces my point that this law is written for Taylor swift and not a random high schooler.

You’d be liable for producing an animated short staring “Definitely Not Mickey Mouse” under the same reasoning.

Except that there are fair use exceptions specifically to prevent copyright law from running afoul of the first amendment. You can see the parody exception used in many episodes of south park for example and even specifically used to depict Mickey Mouse. Either this bill allows for those types of uses in which case it’s toothless anyway or it’s much more restrictive to speech than existing copyright law.

Not convinced on this one

It seems like the bill is being pitched as protecting women who have fake nudes passed around their school but the text of the bill seems more aimed at the Taylor swift case.

1 The bill only applies where there is an “intent to distribute”

2 The bill talks about damages being calculated based on the profit of the defendant

The bill also states that you can’t label the image as AI generated or rely on the context of publication to avoid running afoul of this law. That seems at odds with the 1st amendment.

Are corporations more likely to be slumlords? Pretty much everyone I’ve ever known who owns a rental property has been a complete asshole, but I’ve only known a few.

Owning part of a larger building is actually much more complicated than simply owning a house. I’m not sure everyone would actually want that even if they could buy the unit they live in at a low price.

Generally it’s not destroying undeveloped land, but fixing up dilapidated houses so that they are livable.

Having a progressive tax based on number of homes owned may work, but you would need to rewrite quite a bit of real estate law to make it actually effective. Obviously corporations would not be allowed to own houses to avoid people owning through shell companies, but you would also have to draw a line so corporations could own larger apartment complexes and mixed use buildings. You also do want builders to be able to temporarily own houses for the purpose of building and selling them as well as corporate flippers.

Frankly, I think it’s too complicated to expect on a national level.

I feel like banning corporations from owning housing isn’t the panacea people expect it to be. It’s pretty impractical when you start talking about larger buildings and mixed use housing, and I’m not convinced it’s really a big driver of the problem.

I think a steep land value tax is a more workable solution. It incentivizes anyone who holds non-productive property (vacant homes in this case) to either make better use of the land or sell it. This also has the benefit of impacting individuals who own second homes or have mostly empty airbnbs.

Property taxes are insufficient for this purpose because they are generally based on the value of the home rather than just the land, so not only are they easier to game, but it disincentivizes improving the property.

My first thought was that a couple cops are going to get hurt in traffic accidents and then their union is going to point to the increased injury rate as a reason for further militarization

Yeah people really do like to pretend putting pocket change into savings will somehow add up to a 7 figure nest egg.

For context: $400 per year for 35 years (making some assumptions about your age) with 8% average market return (probably optimistic tbh) and you wind up with a whopping $84k to retire on

So yeah, shits fucked

I think that people don’t really understand what it means when they claim they have no plans to retire. My in-laws are always saying things like “I’ll work until I die” while they take out debt to go on vacations but they recently brought up that we should make sure to get an extra bedroom for them if/when we buy a house. The disconnect is infuriating.