But you could ask, what is so terrifying about exerting democratic control over people's free speech, over the political opinions they're allowed to express?
The answer is, because it infringes on freedom. As long as these AI features aren't harming anyone -- if your only complaint is you find their presence annoying, in a product you have a free choice in using or not using -- then there's no democratic justification for passing laws against them. Democratic rights take precedence.
If you can show it's harming privacy, then regulate the privacy. That's legitimate. But I assume you're talking about AI training, not feature usage.
Trying to regulate whether an end-user feature is available just because you don't "like" AI creep is no different from trying to regulate that user interfaces ought to use flat design rather than 3D effects like buttons with shadows. It would be an illegitimate use of government power.
When I buy a book, I don't want the government deciding in advance which paragraphs should be included, and which paragraphs people "shouldn't have to listen to". So I don't want it doing that with software either. It's the same thing.
You don't have to buy that book in the first place. The same way you don't have to use a piece of software.
You're trying to make it sound like a corporation's right to force AI on us is equivalent to an individual's right to speech, which is idiotic in its face. But I'd also point out that speech is regulated in the US, so you're still not making the point you think you're making.
And as far as I'm concerned, as long as Google and Apple have a monopoly on smartphone software, they should be regulated into the ground. Consumers have no alternatives, especially if they have a job.
Code and software are very much forms of speech in a legal sense.
And free speech is regulated in cases of harm, like violent threats or libel. But there's no harm here in any legal sense. People are just unhappy with the product UX -- that there are buttons and areas dedicated to AI features.
Companies should absolutely have the freedom to build the products they want as long as there's no actual harm. If you merely don't like a UX, use a competing product. If you don't like the UX of any product, then tough. Products aren't usually perfectly what you want, and that's OK.
You're completely ignoring the most important point I raised, which is that I can't use a competing product. I can't stop using Microsoft, Google, Meta, or Apple products and still be a part of my industry or US society.
You're not being forced to use the AI features. If you don't want to use them, don't use them. There's zero antitrust or anticompetitive issue here.
Your argument that Google and Apple should be "regulated into the ground" isn't an argument. It's a vengeful emotion or part of a vague ideology or something.
If I want blenders to be sold in bright orange, but the three brands at my local store are all black or silver, I really don't think it's right for the government should pass a law requiring stores to carry blenders in bright orange. But that's what you're asking for, for the government to determine which features software products have.
> You're not being forced to use the AI features. If you don't want to use them, don't use them
You can't turn them off in many products, and Microsoft's and Google's roadmaps both say that they're going to disable turning them off, starting with using existing telemetry for AI training.
> Your argument that Google and Apple should be "regulated into the ground" isn't an argument. It's a vengeful emotion or part of a vague ideology or something.
You're just continuing to ignore that all of this is based on their market dominance. There are literally two options for smartphone operating systems. For something that's vital to modern life, that's unacceptable and gives users no choice.
If a company gets to enjoy a near-monopoly status, it has to be regulated to prevent abuse of its power. There's a huge amount of precedent for this in industries like telecom.
> If I want blenders to be sold in bright orange, but the three brands at my local store are all black or silver, I really don't think it's right for the government should pass a law requiring stores to carry blenders in bright orange
Do you really not see the difference between "color of blender" and "unable to turn off LLMs on a device that didn't have any on it when I bought it"?
> Do you really not see the difference between "color of blender" and "unable to turn off LLMs on a device that didn't have any on it when I bought it"?
Do you really not see that there is no difference?
Either the government starts dictating product design or it doesn't.
I don't want a world where the government decides which features software makers include or turn on or off by default. Whether there are 20 companies competing in a space or mainly 2.
Don't you see where that leads? Suddenly it's dictating encryption and inserting backdoors. Suddenly it starts allowing Truth Social to build new features and removing features on Twitter.
This is a bigger issue than you seem to be acknowledging. The freedom to create the software you want, provided it's not causing actual harm, is as important to preserve as the freedom to write the books or blog posts you want.
If this had something to do with antitrust then the fact that there are only two major phone platforms would be relevant. But the fact that both platforms are implementing LLM features is not anticompetitive. To the contrary, it's competitive even if you personally don't like it. It's literally no different from them both supporting 1,000 other features in common.
> But you could ask, what is so terrifying about exerting democratic control over people's free speech, over the political opinions they're allowed to express?
"Newsflash", the entire point of constitutions that enumerate rights is that fundamental rights and freedoms may not be abridged even by majority decision.
If a Supreme Court strikes down a majority-passed law limiting free speech guaranteed by the Constitution, that's democracy at work.
It takes more than majority vote to add a new amendment.
Go ahead and try, but I don't think you'll find that an amendment to restrict people's freedoms is going to be very popular. Because it will be seen as anti-democratic.
I'm not following you. I didn't say 60%? And 60% is a supermajority, not a majority. Which is a huge distinction. And US constitutional amendments require much stricter thresholds than that -- two thirds of Congress and three quarters of states. That's a gigantic bar.
Yes voters try to restrict their own freedoms all the time. We have constitutions with rights to block them from doing that in fundamental ways. That's what protection from tyranny of the majority is all about. Just because you have a majority doesn't mean you're allowed to take away rights. That's a fundamental principle of democracy. Democracy isn't just majority rule -- it's the protection of rights as well.
