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. TeMPOraL · 1789734845 · focus · HN ↗
  > It's the robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up.
  Except, of course, no one has actually been robbed, the culture has not been stolen - it's still there - nor are the people involved selling it back in any form. This rhetoric sounds impressive, but really looks more like "piracy is theft" line from early 2000s, similarly flawed in basic premise.
  Whether the end result threatens the form in which culture is created, at least beyond just threatening the business models of the gatekeepers, is a separate discussion, but you can't draw the heart-string-pulling "life's work got appropriated" arguments there so easily.
  And let's not forget what we got back for this: reified intelligence on a chip almost too cheap to meter, available to everyone across the world - not just rich West, inference is so dirt cheap that whole world uses it. It exploded in popularity organically, because of how many real problems of real people, including individuals and non-profits, it addresses.
  There's plenty to hate about how AI is transforming the world, but one thing it's not, is "robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up".
  1. tripzilch · 1789735540 · focus · HN ↗
    What do you mean, it's already robbing me of the ability to discuss techniques with a number of my peers since they decided the mediocre output of LLMs is good enough instead of understanding what they are doing.
    In addition, a great number of people have decided to stop publishing their code publicly, and discuss techniques except in spaces they can be sure it's a one-on-one with a human being.
    Some things already got lost.
    IAmBroom · 1789736191 · focus · HN ↗
    You're discussing your peers' behaviors, not AI.
    It's the same as saying "People don't kill people; guns do." Maybe guns(AI) should be regulated, but the primary problem is murderers(lazy peers), not weapons(AI).
    malfist · 1789736561 · focus · HN ↗
    Just like with guns, AI is a crime of scope.
    I can be a murderer with a knife, sure, but how many people can I kill? How many people can I kill if I have a class three license an a full auto gun?
    I can pirate a news article here or there, sure, but how many news articles can I pirate? How many news articles can I pirate with AI?
    TeMPOraL · 1789736998 · focus · HN ↗
    > How many news articles can I pirate with AI?
    Not much more than with a bash/curl loop. Which, on one hand, AI can write for you, but on the other hand, AI will make you no longer need to pirate those articles in the first place.
    Also it's not end-user piracy being discussed - it's the act of training AI itself that's accused here to be "robbery of our culture".
    ndsipa_pomu · 1789739267 · focus · HN ↗
    Yet countries that have strong regulation of firearms have significantly less murders (and accidental shootings) than countries that don't regulate them.
    That does suggest that along with murderers, the easy accessibility of firearms is a problem (assuming that the ratio of murderers in different populations is approximately the same).
    FromTheFirstIn · 1789740388 · focus · HN ↗
    If this is your stance on guns, I’m not surprised by your calloused take on AI

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