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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?
    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.

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