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Microsoft director: AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'

190 points · 52 comments · jonbaer

  1. bdcravens · · focus · HN ↗
    Presumably someone was paid when the content was created. So it's not really the labor that's being stolen, but the future value of the deliverable.

    I'm pretty sure any of the eras of slavery throughout human history is more of an actual theft of labor.

    1. andybak · · focus · HN ↗
      A huge chunk of the content that was scraped was most likely provided voluntarily rather than being waged labour.
      1. sandeepkd · · focus · HN ↗
        Either way, a change did happen, financial impact aside this change is definitely going to disrupt the ecosystem as a whole which is a much bigger unknown at this point.

        > A huge chunk of the content that was scraped was most likely provided voluntarily rather than being waged labour.

        People committing work get rewards in different ways, waged labour could be one, attributions, acknowledgements, future job opportunities and more. Stripping those from the rightful owners can hardly be justified in the name of progress.

        1. andybak · · focus · HN ↗
          I wasn't implying that it was okay to "steal" things because they were offered voluntarily. My position on this is kind of complex and nuanced but this particular reply was meant to state the opposite.
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