I would hardly call this dropping a hammer, though. I mean, the article itself says that OpenAI was lobbying for stuff like this.

For one, I don’t think it’s addressing any of the most troublesome problems. No mention of environmental impact. No mention of societal impact, or economic one. Nobody is addressing the horrible misuse of LLMs in, say education or biases that are built into the LLMs.

For two, what are the consequences? Sam Altman can go around saying whatever the hell he wants, mislead the government, the public, even their own users. No consequences. They can use bait and switch, no problems. The worst thing they can get is a few million dollars of fines. That’s for the long time been just the cost of doing business.

It’s a fig leaf law that doesn’t look at any of the worst problems we have but the worst offenders can use it to say “no wait we’re regulated”.