How about harmful tools with no practical uses to the general public? Mortars, tanks, ketamine, ICBM GPS units…

You’re taking an absolutist position, so I’d like to explore it.

Curious that you’ve put ketamine, a well known anesthetic used primary by the vets but recently also used in depression treatment [1], in that list of “harmful tools with no practical uses”.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine-assisted_psychotherap...

Vets and psychotherapists are not “the general public”.

Every item I listed has a clear and valuable purpose, but only in specific contexts.

Yeah I would consider pet owners and people with depression (so groups of people that benefit from this specific tool) a part of general public, both are fairly large groups.

And ketamine is employed by trained professionals appropriately in veterinary hospitals and psychotherapy contexts. The public does not need unregulated access to ketamine for this to happen.

Computers are employed by trained professionals appropriately in military contexts. The public does not need access to computers for this to happen.

There's no task I cannot complete without ketamine, except for the consumption of ketamine itself. Without a computer I cannot perform my job, nor basically perform any modern professional job.

This framing is terribly paternalistic. If a person is taking a drug, they themselves are who is possessing and using it. They aren't some mere passive subject for doctors to be acting on. Furthermore, they shouldn't be forced to convince some doctor-bureaucrat they have some specific medical condition, or even a "medical condition" at all, to be allowed the treatment they'd like to try.

Even so, I don't believe it deserves to be on that list. I consider responsible recreational drug use a clear and valuable purpose in its own right. It doesn't inherently lead to individual, much less societal harm and it allows individuals to experience and explore various states of human consciousness, an extension of the fundamental right to bodily autonomy.

If you're open for exploration, what are your thoughts on organisms rights to self defense? What level of self defense should they be able to have if another organism is trying to end their life?

There is a tension between the need to level the playing field and the need to minimize the harm potential.

For example, land mines, machine gun emplacements, and chemical weapons can be effective forms of home defense. An intruder would have access to the same equipment, but at least the playing field is level, right? However, an attacker would also be able to inflict astounding mass casualties in moments with this equipment.

On the other side, if the most effective self defense weapon available is a kitchen knife, the playing field is not very level, and a weak victim can be overpowered by an attacker or intruder. However, the ability to inflict mass casualty is greatly limited.

So, I don’t have a specific level to prescribe, but I would start the discussion by framing the decision as a balance between these two elements.

I appreciate the thought you've put into this, and I tend to agree. Ideally, a weaker person would be able to use a tool to provide self defense in the most limited way possible without causing harm or damage to anyone other than the attacker.

Unfortunately the tools we have currently aren't great at that.

> Ideally, a weaker person would be able to use a tool to provide self defense in the most limited way possible without causing harm or damage to anyone other than the attacker.

Landmines in the garden it is then. Hard to use offensively.

A shame if a child that accidentally threw a ball in your garden steps on them, or even just the overweight neighbours cat. Or a visitor stumbles on them duling a bbq. But such casualties are apparently a small price to pay for feeling safe.

Perfect use case for IoT mines and AI object/face recognition

Why would a hypothetical attacker wander through the garden anyway, instead of walking the normal path to the front door like a normal person? That face recognition will surely blow up the first pizza delivery person that has the misfortune of delivering to your house. I hope you tip well.

FWIW mortars and tanks are legal for the general public to own in US, although it does involve a bunch of forms and tax stamps if they're operable. It doesn't seem to be a problem in practice, though - at least, I've never heard of a legally owned tank or mortar being used for criminal or other harmful purposes.

Well, tanks and mortars might've moved the scales on Emu War in favour of australians

People are going to bog you down listing all the practical everyday uses for weapons-grade plutonium, but let's try a different tack. Stipulate for sake of argument that there is something dangerous with no beneficial civilian use, so you want to ban it. But there is public demand for the thing, or a lot of people just hate you banning things and will make every effort to thwart you.

Sellers split the item into parts so none of them individually is the completed item but anyone can buy them and stick them together. So you pass a law that says the "lower bit" is the part that's banned, and they can't sell that part. People start selling "80% lower bits" or whatever the nearest not-illegal thing is that can be converted into it. 3D print files for the part appear on the internet, or detailed instructions for how to manufacture one yourself.

What now? Ban 3D printers and CNC machines? Ban anonymous communications or encrypted communications with anyone outside the jurisdiction, so people can't distribute the parts files? Now you're banning things with beneficial public uses. But if anybody can easily reproduce the thing the thing then the ban is ineffective.

What's wrong with making manufacture and possession illegal?

How well did the war on booze go? How well is the war on drugs going?

And to be more specific, possession and home production are difficult to detect, so enforcement will be ineffective or highly invasive or both. Victimless crime laws erode citizens' respect for the law and government respect for citizens' privacy. That's what's wrong with them.

This is a case of people actively building and deciding to use a tool with plausible deniability built-in. How would you regulate people when they shirk any accountability? It is much more reasonable to require that people use a tool that shows its work.

> How would you regulate people when they shirk any accountability?

This happens with or without AI. It's not too hard to make an algorithm that discriminates against people without doing so explicitly. You can use certain bits of data as proxies for whatever characteristic you want to discriminate against (e.g. ZIP code, household income, marital status, etc).

Due to the myriad of ways to arrive at a discriminatory conclusion, it's easier to regulate results than tools.

One potential solution to your question is to make the laws carry strict liability (I'm assuming the EU has something along those lines). Plausible deniability no longer exists because intent doesn't matter. The company is liable if someone can demonstrate discrimination, regardless of whether it was intentional or accidental.

That ends up pushing towards something similar to what you want. It encourages a tool that can show its work to fend off lawsuits without being directly tied to the tool itself. The other alternative is extensive testing to make sure discrimination doesn't happen, but I think that will still be worrying to companies due to the inability to prove a negative.