"Artificial intelligence is a tool for stealing intellectual property from the person who created it."
Tom Sancton, author
I refer readers back to the post by Tom Sancton a final time.
We all use intellectual property created by others. And we aren't paying for it.
Sancton is the victim of a blatant ripoff of his book The Bettencourt Affair. His Guest Post on January 2 reported that Amazon has for sale a 50-page "Summary of Tom Sancton's The Bettencourt Affair" alongside Sancton's book.
Buy the real 419-page book for $14.19 or the summary for $3.99. The summary used Artificial Intelligence programs to "read" Sancton's book and summarize it, being careful not to lift any passages word-for-word. It could be done quickly and cheaply, using AI. We see the risk to content creators. It commodifies their work. It destroys the business model that allows writers and other content creators to make a living.
It is theft. Clever theft, and therefore legal, for now at least.
AI is a great disrupter because in many situations it is useful and free and easy and adequate. Most people will not feel bad about buying the Summary book if they see them side by side at Amazon because buying that "Cliff Notes" version won't feel like receiving stolen property. A book shopper has no way to know what arrangements the Summary publisher made with Sancton, the source. (Answer, none. It was just uploaded, converted by AI, and sold as what it is, a competing product using Sancton's material.)
I expect quick adoption of AI programs onto home computers. People will install and use AI tools because there will be places where it seems so benign. A person who robs a bank knows they are stealing. Shoplifters, too. But a person who uses information scraped out of the internet by a search engine crawler or by an AI tool likely won’t get that triggering feeling of guilt. They are using the information, but not stealing it, not exactly. They will be receiving stolen property, or at least property converted and used without permission -- and not realize it.
I use Wikipedia from time to time to get casual information. When did Sgt. Pepper get released? (1967) Did William Howard Taft carry Oregon in 1908? (Yes.) Using Wiki is quick and easy and free. I send Wiki $50 a couple times every year in gratitude, and that goes to Wiki. What I am not doing, though, is rewarding the original research that became the basis for the Wiki article. That information got read, synthesized, and summarized by the people (not AI, not yet) who wrote the Wiki article and they did not compensate the people whose information they used. There was no mechanism for that.
There needs to be one. If reliable information is free or can be scraped up and re-used effortlessly, then we will stop getting reliable information. We will get propaganda, infomercials, and advertising instead. Gresham's Law of money has an analogue in news and information. Bad money drives out good money. Bad, sloppy information, and mis-information will circulate because there will be a business model for it; people have something to sell you and it can be produced very inexpensively. Well-curated information will struggle to exist. It is expensive, and won't compete well against a stolen version of itself.
I recognize that people hate toll roads. I hate them. I don't like paywalls on websites, either. But we are at a brief moment when Artificial Intelligence tools are still new enough that perhaps Congress can overcome resistance from tech companies, aggregators, and businesses built around information theft. I suspect that a sustainable future will involve a system of fees for use of material and it will be bundled with payments from AI companies and search engines. I expect it to be cumbersome and a nuisance. I expect to end up paying for some things I now get for free. I suspect there will be public resistance. People don't like to pay for things they got accustomed to getting for free.
I welcome a micropayment system. There will either be a marketplace for information, or there will be mass piracy. We are better off with a marketplace.
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8 comments:
Computers and smart phones are now being manufactured with chips that include the matrix multiplication hardware necessary for neural network AI. This technology is soon going to be everywhere.
Peter is correct that a payment mechanism for producing good information is necessary. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it will happen. I have not yet even heard of credible proposals for how something like that could work.
There is the vague proposal of something called “micropayments“, but nothing specific enough to even start to be implemented.
This may be a bit off-topic, but it would seem remiss for a political blog not to acknowledge that today is the third anniversary of an attempted coup in the United States. It’s a day that will live in infamy, unless Americans are crazy enough to put the ringleader back in the White House and Republicans get to rewrite history – a distinct possibility.
Trump is campaigning on promises of pardon (for himself and other insurrectionists) and retribution (for his political opponents and those holding him accountable). He’s notorious for his boldfaced lies, sexual assaults, fraud, theft, hateful rhetoric and coup attempt. Republicans apparently find that irresistible. They failed in their effort to overturn the election three years ago, but their attempts to undermine our democracy continue to this day.
Thomas Jefferson said, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” What a shame, after all these years, if Americans prove to be too stupid for democracy.
Democracy is work! Yes, you need to be educated to vote intelligently and understand our system of government. Equally true is the need to understand an emerging technology AI. Left to our resources most of us chose the path of least resistance. Here’s a stupid example but a case in point to bring it home. The handheld calculator, now an app on your phone, gives a result but if you entered the numbers in error some with limited experience with mathematics assume the answer is correct because it came from the machine. Michael Cohn used Bard to cite president cases that did not exist. He did not have a paralegal to research the output from Bard. Both examples show the real danger of AI is us and how we will “use it”.
Agreeing heartily with what you wrote, Mike. With one very small exception. Stupidity is a far cry from willing, even eager Ignorance, which, imho, is where the vast majority of Trumpers and Trumperettes are firmly ensconced. Even if they are aware of the dangers their idol poses to the Republic, they are so afraid of change and comfortable in that cocoon of Ignorance , they will continue to support him, no matter how many convictions accrue. I'm starting to think he is actually going to escape any real consequences for his criminality. And I am definitely not looking forward to the next couple of years in this Country.
To Ed –
In our relatively brief history, the U.S. has been through a lot of dramatic changes without discarding its founding principles. I realize it’s impolitic to say so, but IMHO it would be really stupid to trade our freedom for Trump regardless of the imagined provocation.
Off Topic: Saw Tim Alberta on Firing Line with Margaret Hoover on PBS today. Alberta was talking about evangelicals and Trump. The interview is worth a look.
To Mike;
Truth, especially in times as turbulent as these, is often Impolitic, which perhaps makes it even more critical to be said, out loud, and often. And I agree that it would be exceedingly stupid to trade whatever is left for somebody like Drumpf.
There are people who think it’s hyperbole to view another Trump term as an existential threat to our democracy. I can imagine the people in the Weimar Republic telling themselves the same thing, perhaps until Kristallnacht.
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