Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'
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Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
jacquesm · · focus · HN ↗
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.
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
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".
cowanon77 · · focus · HN ↗
If IP is real, then the AI companies have performed flagrant theft.
If IP is not real, then the algorithms and weights the AI companies have developed should also be free as they are just more information.
The status quo of "your knowledge has no protection, but our knowledge is sacred" is the worst of all possible worlds.
qarl · · focus · HN ↗
Allow me to suggest a third: these two options are black and white thinking and there is no objective answer to "intellectual property is real". Property is at best a social construct that is possibly supported by instinctual behavior.
Instead we should try to find the most practical solution that has the most benefit - which will probably be more complex than yes/no.
palmotea · · focus · HN ↗
Intellectual property is as real as private property (which is a lot more elaborate and weird than possession and territoriality, which is the most that has any natural basis). It's really foolish to claim one doesn't exist and should be abolished and the other this fundamental sacred thing that should be respected absolutely (as many do).
montagg · · focus · HN ↗
Intellectual property exists as a concept to foster the creation for more intellectual property. That is not the case for all private property, because I cannot copy your land or your car infinitely. That’s why IP to rights expire at some point, or have fair use that doesn’t harm the IP rights holder. Saying that they are equivalent is not foolish—I think that’s a bit extreme—but it doesn’t recognize that they have fundamental differences, and the laws around them have different intended outcomes.
I think AI training falls most likely in the fair use category: there is some societal benefit* that requires no actual harm to the IP holder, therefore it’s a good trade-off for society if we poke a hole in the social construct of property to get that benefit.
*Let’s put aside the question of whether AI is good for society or private ownership is good for society. Important questions but separate from the theory. IF IT IS GOOD, it follows the above. If it is not good, then of course it does not.
tenuousemphasis · · focus · HN ↗
palmotea · · focus · HN ↗
No. it won't blow anyone's mind. Not a single person.
> but people created music, literature, art long before intellectual property laws existed.
^^^ cherry-picked, incomplete reading of history.
joquarky · · focus · HN ↗
intended · · focus · HN ↗
qarl · · focus · HN ↗
ndiddy · · focus · HN ↗
The idea of IP as an economic tool to foster creation comes out of the UK and subsequently the US. In mainland Europe, IP comes out of the French Revolution and the idea that copyright is like a "moral right" that you intrinsically deserve for putting in the effort to create something. This viewpoint has de facto won out because as global commerce and global culture has become more and more widespread, everybody has standardized on the longest durations (the standard has long been "life + 50 years" in Europe) so one country doesn't have to worry about freeing up its works for "exploitation" by another country.
joquarky · · focus · HN ↗
Nope. "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts" is the foundational purpose. At least in the US.
ndiddy · · focus · HN ↗
palmotea · · focus · HN ↗
All property is fundamentally about exclusion and control to allow for private exploitation. That common bit of rhetoric about copying misses that point. The reason private property exists is not because land (for instance) can't be copied.
> Saying that they are equivalent is not foolish—I think that’s a bit extreme—but it doesn’t recognize that they have fundamental differences, and the laws around them have different intended outcomes.
You should note that you misread me: I didn't say they were identical in every respect, I said their "reality" is the same. They're both made up social constructs. One isn't more fundamental than the other.
bit-anarchist · · focus · HN ↗
Both things can be true at the same time. Land being economically scarce necessarily means that whatever use is thrusted onto it will produce private exclusion. Today, we give this relationship of private exclusion the name of "property" or "private property", but that doesn't mean you have to formally recognized private ownership in law to suffer its effects - socialists regimes stand as a testament to that. Thus...
> They're both made up social constructs. One isn't more fundamental than the other.
The first sentence is reductive, while the second is innacurate, if not outright wrong. Physical property is primarily predicated on real scarcity, while intellectual property is purely predicated on social control, which, when analyzed more closely, lays claims (even if partially) of ownership over other resources, including peoples' bodies and mind. It's fair to say that one is more fundamental than the other.