michael_nielsen

"Self-regulation is not going to work. Do you think that voluntary taxation works? It doesn’t." - Yoshua Bengiohttps://twitter.com/maria_axente/status/1114141060308045824 …

That's an interesting comparison mostly because it's so wrong. Even excluding the many historical examples of self-assessment tax mechanisms, the US income tax was completely reliant on self-reporting & taxpayer honesty early on, and the IRS is so gutted now it might as well be.

I believe he is referring to the idea of voluntary corporate tax - which is a bit of a fanciful metaphor but I think makes a reasonable point.

What are corporate charitable donations but a self-assessed voluntary tax? Or donations by rich people in general (who are of course the beneficiaries of corporations)? There have always been many motivations besides merely avoiding jail...

I see the points you're making, but feel like we're talking about the margins of something: Yoshua's point is that corporations aren't going to be great at being responsible with AI and government regs can force responsibility. I think we both agree with that point?

It's not a marginal thing, though. That was the entire US income tax. Not a small thing. It was all self-reported. It worked. And US business leaders used to pride themselves on public-spiritedness and often proposed regulations restricting business or served on commissions.