Thread

Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'

955 points · 841 comments · pluc

jacquesm · 1789726316 · focus · HN ↗
It's the robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up. Crimes this large are crimes against humanity. So many people whose life's work got appropriated without consideration, compensation or consent it is baffling.
It is said that at the heart of every great fortune there is a great crime, so it should be no surprise that the most valuable companies on the planet will most likely result from this crime. And given that justice can be bought by those with the most money you can forget about anything coming of this.
1. godwinson__4-8 · 1789731119 · focus · HN ↗
  Our "culture" has long been the province of corporations. In prior epochs it was still the product of patronage and power.
  At least with LLMs we can glimpse an escape route to that which generations of humans have strived for - a world in which the labor required of each human to lead a flourishing life approaches zero.
  Instead of fixating on a remedy that seeks to criminalize AI, maybe focus on the relatively rather achievable goal of redistributing LLM gains. Would that not be the most desirable justice? What is your alternative, and would you foreclose the future in the name of a past that never really existed in the first place?
  1. jaybeavers · 1789731375 · focus · HN ↗
    Flourishing life? Where is your data leading to the conclusion that AI models are leading to the world populace leading a ‘flourishing life’? Are taxes on revenue of companies like OpenAI somehow being collected and turned into a UBI and I just didn’t hear about it?
    godwinson__4-8 · 1789731554 · focus · HN ↗
    I said a glimpse. I didn't say it's here now or it would be easy.
    It is however, achievable. Certainly more so than engaging in the fantasy that we can criminalize LLMs out of existence. And it is likely more desirable than such an effort anyway.
    bayindirh · 1789731624 · focus · HN ↗
    Like trickle down economics?
    We all experience the substance which is trickling down.
    jaybeavers · 1789731978 · focus · HN ↗
    Or, perhaps, the companies forming the for profit LLMs could be made to pay a license fee for the copyrighted data they lifted from behind the paywall and then used to form a for profit entity with.
    Nothing about banning technology. How about enforcing DMCA and then applying a penalty for the knowing theft rather than negotiating a license?
    bdangubic · 1789732346 · focus · HN ↗
    This is solid but how many people you reckon would benefit if they paid every single penny for any copyrighted data? I am in my 50's with 30 years in the industry and I know maybe 2 people that might benefit from this... certainly not something general public would benefit from
    jaybeavers · 1789733228 · focus · HN ↗
    We’re likely looking at a new world where physical and mental work from humans holds much less value.
    So if the world still generates value ( think AI inventing new drugs, robots planting and harvesting fields of corn ), who is able to make income? The people who have the capital to purchase and run the systems.
    So our future world probably looks like a system where effort has little to no reward and capital (e.g. inheritance, passive income) has all the reward.
    So, we can have a world where you are born rich or you live in abject poverty, or we can figure out something else.
    bayindirh · 1789733714 · focus · HN ↗
    Why more and more stories from "Pump Six and Other Stories" are becoming real step by step?
    godwinson__4-8 · 1789734014 · focus · HN ↗
    You are missing the obvious answer.
    The state runs the system. Or really at a certain point, the state runs itself. In 100 years or so, the CEO becomes a barbaric relic of the past age, like our ancestors who beat each other over the head with clubs. Nevertheless, such a future will necessarily owe a debt to both.
    Wealth and states are often connected. In this case if the state is properly aligned (this is what the coming battles are to be about - as they always have been) to be egalitarian, then redistribution can occur unblocked by human enclaves of greed.
    brookst · 1789734712 · focus · HN ↗
    > We’re likely looking at a new world where physical and mental work from humans holds much less value.
    Or, perhaps, we're regressing to the mean after a century where this work was over-valued, because companies like Disney succeeded in regulatory capture and created artificial protections to maximize their own revenue.
    How much money did Bach earn from royalties (ok, there's a pun there, but I mean payment for reproduction of his work)? How much power did Melville have over who published Moby Dick, and where, and how it was used (hint: very little in the US, none at all overseas).
    We are seeing a weakening of control and revenue extraction from copyrighted works. But on the chart of history, the 1900's were a very anamolous spike in that area. And it saddens me that so much of HN is unhappy about more of a return to the commons.
    > So if the world still generates value ( think AI inventing new drugs, robots planting and harvesting fields of corn ), who is able to make income? The people who have the capital to purchase and run the systems.
    On the bright side, I think you're wrong here. Or (as Claude likes to tell me), you're half-wrong. If this were true, it would already be the norm and only big companies could bring new products to market. Yet startups are a thing, and many succeed (more fail, but still.
    The trick in entrepreneurship and creative work has always been knowing what to ask the system to do. You might as well say that music is dead because the synthesizer and music software companies can produce as much as they want at zero cost. It turns out that owning the means of production only loosely correlates to producing things people want.
    > So, we can have a world where you are born rich or you live in abject poverty, or we can figure out something else.
    Already done. There are kids in Africa studying with AI tutors today, getting insight that they would likely never have had access to before. One-person shops are releasing board games and business services that they would never have had the capital to do before.
    Where you see centralization of capital and control, and the masses reduced to abject poverty... I see the complete collapse of barriers to entry and switching costs in many fields.
    But who am I? Some random guy. But I've heard very senior execs, at Microsoft and other companies, in absolute panic that the IP and systems they've spent billions of dollars to build over decades of work are suddenly subject to disruption by teenagers who are great at using AI. Seriously, panic.
    It's a complex subject, and sorry for writing a book, but your prompt apparently got me. None of us know for sure what will happen but I think yours is a needlessly pessimistic view, ironically informed by the exact abuses of th past century that you're worried might not continue.
    jaybeavers · 1789737767 · focus · HN ↗
    I spent a few years studying the ‘startup economy’ after a 20 year career at MSFT that left me with some meager capital, including a half dozen Angel investments and running an Angel investment fund LLC (SPAC as they would call it today).
    Never saw a startup succeed that didn’t come with substantial founder capital, across a couple hundred evaluations. Does it happen? Sure. Is it the model for new product generation that people with <$250k of personal liquid assets can bring a new product to market? Not really.
    ‘You got to have money to make money’ is a real thing.
    Yeah, I know I’m posting on YComb’s forums, but if you think the capital YComb itself gives to ‘good ideas’ is enough to succeed, that’s silly. It’s the follow on investment capital that brings a new concept to market, and that comes with odious strings for people underendowed with their own capital.
    E.g. startups are still a rich man’s game.
    bluefirebrand · 1789739362 · focus · HN ↗
    There's an analogy I've read before, couldn't tell you where, that goes something like:
    Startups are like a roulette wheel at a fancy casino. Most people can't even afford to get in the door. Middle class people can afford to maybe take one or two spins on it, if they go all in. Rich people can spin it as many times as they like
    As someone who grew up on the lower end of middle class this rings really true to me. I don't have access to the kind of capital to build a dream business. I could probably take one shot at it, if I put my house up as collateral for a loan to get me started
    It's too risky for me. But if I were a multi millionaire I don't think I'd think twice about giving it a shot
    watwut · 1789744130 · focus · HN ↗
    > There are kids in Africa studying with AI tutors today, getting insight that they would likely never have had access to before. One-person shops are releasing board games and business services that they would never have had the capital to do before.
    So like, there are kids in Africa getting new for of substandard bad education instead of old for of cheap education. Congrats.
    > Where you see centralization of capital and control, and the masses reduced to abject poverty... I see the complete collapse of barriers to entry and switching costs in many fields.
    Problem is that you are imagining the collapse of barriers that is simply not happening in economic data. Those barriers were weak 25 or so years ago and were going up last years.
    brookst · 1789767824 · focus · HN ↗
    > So like, there are kids in Africa getting new for of substandard bad education instead of old for of cheap education. Congrats.
    Yikes. I don't think you understand Africa at all. The question isn't "a crappy calculus tutor in a rural village or no calculus tutor". The question is "a good but imperfect tutor or nothing". It's VERY different.
    > Problem is that you are imagining the collapse of barriers that is simply not happening in economic data. Those barriers were weak 25 or so years ago and were going up last years.
    Economic data is a trailing indicator. It would be shocking to see modern frontier models reflected in the 2020-2025 data, right?
    But you're right it's a qualitative opinion. But FWIW execs at Fortune 500's are terrified, as the codebase itself is no longer a barrier. This is not a secret; it's being said in all-hands meetings.
    yoz-y · 1789733659 · focus · HN ↗
    It is achievable in theory yes. But it was also achievable without LLMs and yet, here we are.
    brookst · 1789733788 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean I'm producing more and better art and software each month than I used to do in a year. I feel like I'm flourishing because of AI. Tell me I'm wrong?
    jaybeavers · 1789738398 · focus · HN ↗
    You’re not wrong. Me too. I spend most of my waking hours using AI for new product development.
    But can you bring it to market and turn it into a reliable revenue stream? And will this still be true in a few years when the duo or trio -opolies corner the AI market enough that the $200 subscriptions go away to be replaced by API pricing only?
    I’m already seeing my subscription use slow to a crawl during peak hours so I now code before 8 am or after 6 pm. And turning on ‘Opus Fast’ with API pricing is already financially impossible for me as a small business.
    Ironically, China may be the savior here, with open source models that may be good enough to ‘put the means of production in the hands of the working class’.
    I mean, is QWEN a 4d chess game to replace capitalism with communism? Who knew (outside of the CCP central committee)?
    hollerith · 1789738765 · focus · HN ↗
    >is QWEN a 4d chess game to replace capitalism with communism?
    No. The Chinese labs pay much less to train their models because they are distilling Western models. Western labs can't do it that way because they'd immediately be sued.
    jacquesm · 1789741230 · focus · HN ↗
    > The Chinese labs pay much less to train their models because they distill Western models.
    That's nonsense.
    hollerith · 1789748808 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm going to take your comment as a request for supporting information.
    It's documented in a report published this month by Anthropic. I haven't seen the report, but have seen this next summary written by someone who I trust to summarize accurately: <a href="https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-bad-guy-with-an-ai-named-claude?open=false#%C2%A7illicit-fraudulent-distillation" rel="nofollow">https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-bad-guy-with-an-ai-named-c...
    OpenAI reported similar behavior last year. The assertion that the other (two) leading US models are being distilled in a similar manner is an assumption on my part.
    k12sosse · 1789741452 · focus · HN ↗
    But does it suck?
    brookst · 1789767105 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm happy. You may think my art sucks, but five years ago I didn't have the resources to create it, whether or not it sucks.
  2. ndsipa_pomu · 1789731647 · focus · HN ↗
    Considering that we don't seem able to appropriately tax the biggest corporations, why do you think we'll suddenly be able to redistribute LLM gains?
    Far more likely is that wealth and power will become even more concentrated into the hands of the few and the rest of humanity will become effective slaves.
    bdangubic · 1789732441 · focus · HN ↗
    These doomsday theories sound solid in practice but in order for someone to accumulate a lot of wealth there have to be consumers to chip into this. If we are all slaves, where is that wealth going to come from?!
    2frrrr · 1789733208 · focus · HN ↗
    The Amazon warehouse worker is a modern day slave.
    Don’t believe me? Try it. I have.
    ndsipa_pomu · 1789736033 · focus · HN ↗
    Not necessarily as there are methods to redistribute wealth without the consumers having any choice.
    Recently, there was the example of the SpaceX IPO listed on Nasdaq (after they changed the rules to allow it). Lots of people have pensions/investments in tracker funds and those funds are essentially forced to buy SpaceX shares.
    Simple things like "quantitative easing" can result in higher inflation which essentially devalues people's money. The ultra wealthy will typically not have any meaningful percentage of their money in currency, but instead will be in various assets around the world which means that their wealth is not affected by the inflation.
    There's plenty of other schemes such as the "too big to fail" method of securing handouts from the government.
  3. jacquesm · 1789731971 · focus · HN ↗
    > At least with LLMs we can glimpse an escape route to that which generations of humans have strived for - a world in which the labor required of each human to lead a flourishing life approaches zero.
    Let me fix that for you: A world in the the value of the labor of each human approaches zero.
    godwinson__4-8 · 1789732446 · focus · HN ↗
    Right, and the consequence is going to be, what?
    Humans with zero economic value can still vote. They can still mass. They will still have needs. Really the script here writes itself. The historical precedents bound the problem rather well. As always, radical social change will not occur until a wide swath of the population is aligned. In this case, due to their broad economic devaluation.
    It would be easier if today's knowledge workers stopped deluding themselves into thinking that their standards of living will maintain. Your acknowledgement of the necessary predicate to change is, in that respect, progress in itself. There is little reason why we cannot accelerate the timing of broad consensus if more people so readily came to that conclusion - and resisted the temptation to then find the answer instead in nostalgia about the past.
    yoz-y · 1789733581 · focus · HN ↗
    We are not deluding ourselves that we will maintain our standard of living. If the boss’ dream of replacing all workers by AI that does their job poorly but cheaply will be realized. We will go to the gutter with the rest of the economically worthless people.
    There are many of them today, their needs are not met (but could be, the production output is largely there, but captured) and their political views don’t matter because the votes are captured by populists. I’m sure the powers that are will find a way to go around educated people voting.
    2frrrr · 1789733800 · focus · HN ↗
    Correct.
    Humans are animals. We have rules to keep humans in check but that’s it.
    The wealthy do not care nor need to care. They will justify it as ‘you lot were too weak to organise and stop us’ and there is an element of truth to that.
    godwinson__4-8 · 1789734321 · focus · HN ↗
    I still see a lot of denialism.
    It is easy to ignore the misallocation of output and the private greed when generally people are still doing fairly well.
    As the denials give way, the politics will change. You may be right such moments will be hijacked and hope extinguished. That's why we should all aim to think about these problems in the most robust way, so we can all contribute to the coming efforts.
    Cynicism about the future is easy, but should be resisted. Perhaps ironically, I find hope in your acknowledgement of your own imminent devaluation.
    jaybeavers · 1789735238 · focus · HN ↗
    “I find hope in your acknowledgment of your own imminent devaluation.”
    Gave me a chuckle. I think this is my personal ‘best sentence of the year’.
    Great way to summarize how we will likely look back on 2026.
    qarl · 1789740284 · focus · HN ↗
    Well... it's true, right?
    People can't help themselves when they don't believe they're being exploited.
    AlexeyBrin · 1789734461 · focus · HN ↗
    You assume there will still be free elections and democracy. There is also the possibility that the form of government will change into something else.
    echelon · 1789733385 · focus · HN ↗
    The value will tend towards infinity [1] because we can keep building more data centers. This will allow us to apply tokens to solving every problem we can conceive.
    The cost will tend towards zero because competition is intense and there appear to be zero moats and ample improvements from every direction.
    If these systems have low costs, that means they will be usable by the broad population and that their utility will be widely accessible.
    Industrialization led to iPhone, PlayStation, Spotify, and Waymo.
    AI will lead to personal chefs, contractors, assistants, drivers, tutors, climbing partners, ...
    AI will lead to people making their own PlayStation games, their own music and streaming services (I already have), their own custom smartphones (a future personal project - vibe hardware). And your robot will drive you cross country on vacation while you sleep in the car.
    [1] Not actually infinity because earth [2] has finite resources, but the S-curve will look like it for awhile.
    [2] Until the robots leave earth, anyway
    TeMPOraL · 1789737637 · focus · HN ↗
    > but the S-curve will look like it for awhile.
    Yeah, S-curve should be classified as fallacy, because it rarely is. Economic and technological growth is a stack of S-curves, where one very specific facet may hit limits and taper off, only for equivalent, complementary or alternative facet to take off in its place. Added up, there's no sign of the exponent stopping any time soon, not until hitting real limits, or (probably more likely) some general catastrophy that shuts down human civilization.
    idbnstra · 1789739042 · focus · HN ↗
    [2] this is why we need georgism, i.e. shifting taxes to finite resources like land, minerals, etc.
    jplusequalt · 1789740818 · focus · HN ↗
    >AI will lead to personal chefs, contractors, assistants, drivers, tutors, climbing partners, ...
    You need to show how having X more data centers is somehow going to translate into affordable, highly advanced robots in the immediate future.
    There are hard problems about robotics we don't yet know how to solve. Not to mention, who the fuck is going to buy them if AI takes their jobs?
    echelon · 1789746811 · focus · HN ↗
    You think people are going to stop watching celebrities and influencers just because there are AIs and robots?
    Do you think people will stop dating, trying to impress mates, buying luxury, etc.? Neither candlelight dinner to a robot no a Dior manufactured by robots have the same allure. There's a huge industry around this.
    Sports aren't going to go away. Huge industry.
    People aren't going to stop making art. I know a ton of artists who have embraced AI that are doing even bolder work using the tools. (I was a filmmaker pre-AI, and I know a lot of people in this field.)
    People aren't going to stop traveling. And consuming. And eating human food and consuming human experiences.
    There are going to be all new kinds of businesses and opportunities that spring up. OpenAI and Anthropic are not going to be the only two employees. They won't be staffed by only agents.
    jplusequalt · 1789747023 · focus · HN ↗
    The economy cannot just transition over night, or even within a few years, to quickly absorb a labor shock the size you're describing.
    Also, you have not addressed how we're going suddenly to develop the robots required for your future.
    scott_weber · 1789771747 · focus · HN ↗
    > the value will tend towards infinity
    It may be the case that the potential output of a worker engaging in the productive process goes arbitrarily high. But the that won't matter, if they're not permitted to. Given a choice between involving a human worker who will demand compensation, and a fully general robot, which will the owner class choose?
    The vast majority of human intelligence is already squandered: millions of potential geniuses in impoverished places, suppressed by lack of opportunity to flourish. It's not about the quality or quantity of intelligence. It's about who controls it.
    The fruits of the industrial revolution didn't end up in the hands of the worker by divine grace, or by some natural law. They were won by the hard struggles of the labour movements, by leveraging their indispensibility to the process of production.
    If we want the utopia you imagine to be accessible to ordinary people, workers must cease being so eager to build their replacements, and be prepared to collectively struggle for their share. But if we are lulled to complacency by the notion that this will be a passive process, that struggle will not be necessary, then prospects are grim.
  4. frtt · 1789732128 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  5. globalnode · 1789732762 · focus · HN ↗
    In the 50's there were predictions that in 10 years no-one will have to work again because of the advances made in automation, like the washing machine for example. Any predictions of less work this time around are a complete joke.
    godwinson__4-8 · 1789733359 · focus · HN ↗
    For thousands of years humans have dreamed of reaching the stars.
    Imagine if the astronaut taking Earthrise had looked down upon his planet with such scorn. Human aspirations frequently exceed our capacity for timely predictions. It doesn't make the aspiration any less worthwhile.
    On a cosmic scale human life is a "complete joke". It is a feature of humanity (which we should cherish) that we nevertheless pursue our lives with interest anyway.
    You work less than your counterparts centuries ago... on what understanding of history do you imagine your life would be better in the past? Is your life with a washing machine worse? Is the perfect the enemy of the good? What part of "glimpse" is escaping you?
    globalnode · 1789884490 · focus · HN ↗
    Nice hopeful commentary there, I do appreciate it but...
    > You work less than your counterparts centuries ago...
    do I?
    I'm not against the tech, I love the tech, I'm just not buying the marketing this time around.
    smackeyacky · 1789733361 · focus · HN ↗
    When was the last time you saw a Chinese laundry?
    phpnode · 1789735055 · focus · HN ↗
    That's the point, those jobs went away, the need for a job didn't. No one seems to know what long term opportunities are going to be created by AI, we only know that it is going to erode existing opportunities.
    Mistletoe · 1789733562 · focus · HN ↗
    Now the mother and father both have to get jobs, in the future mother, father, and child will get jobs to support the trillionaires.
  6. chrisjj · 1789732831 · focus · HN ↗
    > At least with LLMs we can glimpse an escape route to that which generations of humans have strived for - a world in which the labor required of each human to lead a flourishing life approaches zero.
    Fantasy lets us glimpse anything.
  7. steele · 1789732874 · focus · HN ↗
    US has been procrastinating reparations for slavery. LLM redistribution can't happen until the capitalism machines recursively solve "sins of our fathers".
  8. Tangurena2 · 1789732903 · focus · HN ↗
    > a world in which the labor required of each human to lead a flourishing life approaches zero.
    The AI bubble is pricing AI stocks so high that the only possible way for them to meet investors expectations is for AI to charge so much that every human & corporation has no money left.
    conmod278 · 1789740825 · focus · HN ↗
    Money will be created to justify the valuation.
  9. [deleted] · 1789733402 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  10. whywhywhywhy · 1789733765 · focus · HN ↗
    >a world in which the labor required of each human to lead a flourishing life approaches zero.
    Just doesn't add up to a world where this benefits, if the thing takes no effort why would someone else pay for it?
    Feel this with the big influx of people selling vibe coded software, if you could vibe code it why would I ever pay you for it instead of just making my own clone.
  11. Trasmatta · 1789733904 · focus · HN ↗
    Is this "escape route" in the room with us now?
  12. 2ahsg1 · 1789734296 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]

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