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A point that Yann LeCun has been making for a while is that it's meaningless to regulate AI, but we want to regulate applications. For instance, you don't want autonomous vehicles to hit people, whether they use AI or not. In practice, most applications of AI are already regulated.

Exactly! What gets lost in these discussions is the fact that LLMs are models of language. That's it. They produce text which is completely inert, until someone decides to run that code, bake that recipe, or fire at that target. Consider how trivial it would be to write a program that would destroy every computer on the world. Any competent developer could write this in a hour. An LLM in 5 minutes. The trick is actually getting the code onto every computer in the world and running it! Until someone grants it agency and runs it IRL, the artifact has zero impact. The models can produce whatever scary text they want. But if a human acts on it, connects that with their email or their drone weapon, it's the human who bears total responsibility. We desperately need some legislation to enforce this; otherwise I see a future where almost any accountability can be avoided by AI-washing the problem.

“Commenters in the media” is fair - but Newport is also a compsci professor. He genuinely seems to understand what he’s talking about when you read his content or watch his videos.

But you can't stop someone from connecting AI to something at this point, so your point is moot.

Most of the commenters in the media are very much hoping the conversation doesn’t get to that level.