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Hannes Smit's avatar

Love your article Hans, but have wondered if this challenge is not a digital equivalent of the conflict between the Right to Bear Arms and the Right for Safety and Security.

A tool can be used for ill or good; regulating those with good intent, may not have any influence or bearing on those who have ill intent.

What good a slingshot then?

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Hans van Dam's avatar

Love that. Let me be the first to say that I don't have the answers. I think nobody does. And since we don't know yet what the consequences might be – in good or bad hands – slowing down and getting some adults in the room is a good step forward. We don't know what we're dealing with yet and we have seen quite a few examples of what might happen if you let tech companies do their thing and break things – they might actually end up building something bigger than themselves and actually break things...

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Hannes Smit's avatar

Totally agree - first understand fully the opportunities (for good, but also for bad) which will help us determine which guard rails we need to enforce in our tools, to inhibit the bad, without preventing the good.

Critical to get on the same page urgently, before we outpace our ability to avoid bad things - it only takes one bad actor.

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