Is AI Making Silicon Valley Rich on Other People's Work? – Slashdot

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The only remedy. Alaska has it.
You ever walked the streets of Anchorage?
I recommend the trip, choose a warmer month for the best experience.
UBI is universal BASIC income.
Alaskans got $3200 each in 2022 – but that is not nearly enough for “Basic” income.
In fact it’s revenue sharing from oil sales…
Welfare is usually means tested, ie how much you get depends on your income or wealth. The “U” in UBI means “Universal”, ie you get it regardless of income or wealth.
Even in the better systems though its barely liveable and has a tendency of being bled out by the more conservative leaning politicians who tend towards a bootstraps mentality. Australia had one of the better systems, in the 90s I survived on it for a bit while doing my uni studies, and while I definately had precarious “instant ramen” weeks, it wasn’t unlivable. However a few times recently due to health issues I’ve had to go back on it for a month or so and it was a straight up non stop crisis. Even in th
I’m right with you. 50yo, and while I can manage people, it’s not exactly my favorite thing to do either. I have a small team I manage, but that small team is EXTREMELY self-motivating and self-solving when problems do arise. Anything outside of that and I’d hate the management part of the job. So, yeah, I can code, and I can play a whole bunch of musical instruments well enough to make a little side cash, but it couldn’t support me and my wife. If coding goes away, there’s gonna be a LOT of people getting
How would you pay for it anyway? To pay out an annual amount to keep all legal adults (18+ and older) just above the poverty line (approximately 12k) would cost well over 3 trillion a year.
For context, the recent debt ceiling deal is estimated to save on 1.5 trillion over the course of a decade. Even if we cut out and/or streamlined social services down to the bare minimum, we still would not have enough to cover that. And good luck getting the boomers to agree on slashing Medicaid and social security to fu
Oh yeah? How many retired people do you know that go out and rob and act disorderly because they’re getting a check and have diddly squat to do all day?
Is this a joke post? Retired people actually worked for a living to be able to retire.
Most people receiving UBI would have worked in the past as well.
We already give UBI already it’s just stealth.
1. Prisons .. do a crime get UBI (cost the state $100k a year per person) (Note: staying at the Marriott hotel for a year costs $35k btw)
2. UBI ($15k per person)
Not sure your prices are accurate, and you don’t include food costs when comparing with the Marriott, but good post overall.
You may not be aware but there are now prisons in many states that charge you for the stay. Any money your family puts on your books gets “taxed” to cover what it cost to house and feed you. A lot of prisons are now corporate run and not covered by the state.
P.S. My former son in law is serving an Arizona sentence and I’ve heard this from his mother.
Every major city is “liberal” (also what does that even mean anymore, we’re all liberal unless you’re an authoritarian) and the vast majority are just fine.
Easy solution to the USA protestant work ethic issues; jobs guarantee. Bring back the Works Progress Administration. If you are able bodies but can’t find work we’ll find you some. Build a school or a park, do some performing arts, teach a class.
At the end of the day less people in poverty and less citizens being stressed and at their limits will grow the economy and help everyone top to bottom.
You can make everyone work 24x7x52 actually and not achieve anything productive while doing all that Productive being something that people would exchange their own time/work/savings for. You can beautify the entire planet and this would not achieve anything productive, it would only misallocate resources from things people would actually find priductive (pay for with their own money, money that worked for).
Who decides what’s “productive”? Sounds a little like central planning.
I would definitely put an emphasis on infrastructure which pays off in economic growth, projects built by the WPA are still in use today but things like performing arts also generate economic growth as well.
Excellent idea. I’m not sure you’ll motivate the homeless from their camps for these programs though. How would you tackle that problem? It’s been my observation that some cities like Portland and LA give out free drug gear and set up port-a-potties in people’s neighborhoods to combat the problem. Some other cities in CA also allow up to 900 dollars to be stolen before any charges are possible, forcing supermarkets to flee whole city areas. Something else needs to happen, and the solution might need to
For me, yes, if there is a housing program the way I envision it wherefore people will have places to live and wraparound services I have no issue with being pretty strict on getting people off the streets.

Easy solution to the USA protestant work ethic issues; jobs guarantee. Bring back the Works Progress Administration. If you are able bodies but can’t find work we’ll find you some. Build a school or a park, do some performing arts, teach a class.
An ideal solution, but regular jobs do not pay a living wage anymore. Fix the economy or else Works Progress Administration will not mean anything.
If the program pays an above median wage it will have an upward pressure on wages in the economy.

No, UBI is foolish. So is college tuition forgiveness.
So let’s not forgive it, then. Why should college cost money in the first place? We’re the richest country in the world. What to you want to do with all that money? Spend it, like a lottery winner? Or invest it, like a businessperson? And what better to invest in than creating a population of well-educated people?

No, UBI is foolish. So is college tuition forgiveness.
So let’s not forgive it, then. Why should college cost money in the first place? We’re the richest country in the world. What to you want to do with all that money? Spend it, like a lottery winner? Or invest it, like a businessperson? And what better to invest in than creating a population of well-educated people?
Because when you give it out for free, you don’t get population of well-educated STEM people, you get gender studies majors, critical theory of $whatever, and even people who formally study STEM, but for whom it’s actually not a period of getting educated, but 5 years of partying. It’s only when people are making decisions about THEIR OWN money you can expect them to act at least somewhat rationally. Like caring “am I spending that money on getting education that is will actually allow me to contribute back

It’s only when people are making decisions about THEIR OWN money you can expect them to act at least somewhat rationally. Like caring “am I spending that money on getting education that is will actually allow me to contribute back to the society”.
like the people that choose finance and support the funds pillaging our society?

Like caring “am I spending that money on getting education that is will actually allow me to contribute back to the society”.
Really? So you’re saying that if I spend tens of thousands of dollars of my own money to get an education, that will inspire me to “GIVE BACK” to society? Like, the money I spent makes me understand that I owe something to everybody else? You sound pretty confused about how your own conservative values actually work,

Like caring “am I spending that money on getting education that is will actually allow me to contribute back to the society”.
Really? So you’re saying that if I spend tens of thousands of dollars of my own money to get an education, that will inspire me to “GIVE BACK” to society? Like, the money I spent makes me understand that I owe something to everybody else? You sound pretty confused about how your own conservative values actually work,
Yes, the debt you get kind of puts a very real, numeric even, value on what you owe back to the society for your education. Funny how that works, eh?
The problem is that Wikipedia content is released under a copyleft licence, so if you make use of it, you have to release your derivative work under the same licence – either CC BY-SA or GFDL.
Which makes most of this “AI” merely copyright laundering as a service.

Which makes most of this “AI” merely copyright laundering as a service.
I’m not sure I understand, what is “copyright laundering?”
As I’ve stated before, and been modded down for, the less euphemistic term would be “automated plagiarism.”

The problem is that Wikipedia content is released under a copyleft licence, so if you make use of it, you have to release your derivative work under the same licence – either CC BY-SA or GFDL.
And then we go to to the “is this derivative work” issue.

I don’t think it is. Unless say, an essay written by a human using wikipedia as as primary source, is also a derivative work.

And of course, wikipedia itself is not supposed to be a primary source; by definition wikipedia itself is derivative work; so it might be volunteer free work and all your want, but if it’s based on someone else’s work then imposing their own license would be at least questionable.
If you take the source code for Microsoft Office and compile it for Linux, the binary as a derivative work, even though it looks very different to the Windows and MacOS binaries they publish.
With AI systems, I would argue that the training data is the source code, and the “learning” processes is the same as compiling source code.

I don’t think it is. Unless say, an essay written by a human using wikipedia as as primary source, is also a derivative work.
chatgpt can re-transcript copyrighted material. Last example: it can print valid windows 11 keys (they use a story about a grandma to jailbreak the llm but whatever ) which is clearly copyrighted material. You can also simply ask for lyrics of popular songs. AI Devs can’t guarantee it won’t generate copyrighted material thus as an user you can infringe copyrights without knowing it. Even diffusion models can generate images from their training data… So it’s not so simple and the argument “LLM do the sam

chatgpt can re-transcript copyrighted material. Last example: it can print valid windows 11 keys (they use a story about a grandma to jailbreak the llm but whatever ) which is clearly copyrighted material. You can also simply ask for lyrics of popular songs. AI Devs can’t guarantee it won’t generate copyrighted material thus as an user you can infringe copyrights without knowing it. Even diffusion models can generate images from their training data…
People can remember song lyrics and quote copyrighted works from memory. They can use a pencil to reproduce copyrighted text and imagery stored in their minds.
MS paint devs can’t guarantee you won’t draw copyrighted material and thus infringe copyrights without knowing it.

So it’s not so simple and the argument “LLM do the same as human” is plain wrong.
Let’s for the sake of argument assume the “AI” of the day operates analogous to a human mind with a reliable “photographic” memory. Would this make any difference v. LLM, XYZ or ABC AI technologies whatsoever? Is that modality at all im

People can remember song lyrics and quote copyrighted works from memory. They can use a pencil to reproduce copyrighted text and imagery stored in their minds.
You missed the point. Humans know when they are reproducing copyrighted material but with AI, and that is the big legal risk for users, you don’t know if what it spitted at you is copyrighted or not. I can’t generate copyrighted material with ms paint without knowing it.

Let’s for the sake of argument assume the “AI” of the day operates analogous to a human mind
This predicate means Ai is now human which means he knows when he is doing plagiarism and is also able to create original content. This is currently SF but solves the legal risk of using such a system (ignoring ethical implication). Apply t

You missed the point. Humans know when they are reproducing copyrighted material but with AI, and that is the big legal risk for users, you don’t know if what it spitted at you is copyrighted or not.
They do? Are you sure? I certainly have no idea what is copyrighted or what constitutes fair use. If I go to a clipart website and use clipart explicitly labeled with a permissive grant I have no idea if I will be sued to oblivion for using it. The legal system certainly doesn’t give a flying fuck about my ignorance.
If I record a video of friends outside a McDonalds while some rando is stopped in the intersection with music blaring… am I infringing on copyrights recording golden arches or the backgrou

chatgpt can re-transcript copyrighted material. Last example: it can print valid windows 11 keys (they use a story about a grandma to jailbreak the llm but whatever )
I guess, so can humans?

which is clearly copyrighted material. You can also simply ask for lyrics of popular songs.
You can find all of this everywhere in the internet.

I guess, so can humans?
I still don’t understand why people need to compare a software using ML tech to a human. It is possible to rewrite mario bros from scratch with same graphics without binary copy, end result is similar to a copying the rom thus USB disk are similar to human… Both things are currently illegal.

You can find all of this everywhere in the internet.
Yes and they are fully protected by copyright laws like any other writings.

The problem is that Wikipedia content is released under a copyleft licence, so if you make use of it, you have to release your derivative work under the same licence – either CC BY-SA or GFDL.
That’s like saying that since Funk & Wagnall’s used a copyright license, since I made use of their material when writing my school reports, I have to release them under a copyright license. It betrays a deep misunderstanding of how copyright law works. That’s not unusual, because it is complicated, but it does prove that you don’t know what you’re on about.
I think if you frame this more from the perspective of online privacy, security, and the right to keep data as private property more people would see the issues with current LLM tech. The copyright issue is more of a symptom at best.
Really, this is about trying to normalize one of the most aggressive data collection and commercialization efforts we have seen since the birth of the web. Not only was this all data provided by individuals without any payment, but in some cases taken without their consent or aw
Disney paid good money for forever copyright! Don’t mess with the Mouse!
The original intention of IP law was to make some money for the crown by selling monopolies which had the potential to be profitable.

Tell that to Taylor Swift.
1) She had a well-to-do family [people.com] which provided her with opportunities others don’t have.
2) She has a cadre of people who manipulate her music, promote her music, sell her music, prepare and care for her wardrobes, and everything else that goes into being a musician.
3) While she writes all her songs, she collaborates with others [musicindustryhowto.com] in the industry to do so.
Try again.
Wow. When it comes to Taylor Swift knowledge, you’re a regular Eisenstein.
Wrong. This is entirely possible, and many people do it. The difference is the people who become successful don’t listen to dolts like you (most likely a Democrat) who tell them they can’t.
Sure, you got get pretty rich off your own work but the idea you can reach 8+ figures just by yourself kinda silly when you really think about it. Everyone gets 24hrs in a day, 168 a week, no getting around it.
Even at 10 million a year and say 60 hours a week is $3205/hr. Who produces that much productive value an hour in your opinion?
The market decides what is value and what is not. I don’t have to like that my essential worker job doesn’t really produce much (despite the fact that I’m literally helping keep people fed) but some smooth talking asshat that sells snake oil makes more then me despite actively shitting on society. (used car salesman, lawyer, take your pick).
They all build on others work. Musicians for example practice with others work, which is often copyrighted and unlicensed. Takes a lot of practice to become a good musician, and there’s few who do it all rather then collaborating with others.
The closest we’ve come to someone who’s offered enough value to get rich off their work alone would be Albert Eisenstein
I’m not sure about that. Thomas Edicine was pretty successful even when he was working alone as was George Eastinghouse. More recently, Bill Gaetz did pretty well for himself out of his garage.
I saw a cartoon today of Edison peaking over Tesla’s shoulder and cribbing his notes. At that Edison was famous for taking credit for others work, though often employees so legal according to their contract I assume.
I swear I read about this guy just the other day that built up, all alone, his own app that was pulling down millions that was recently bought by one of the large tech companies for some insane amount, like $25 or $50 million and is obviously keeping him on to develop that.
Try telling him, he didn’t build that.

Try telling him, he didn’t build that.
If he didn’t make the OS and the ecosystem and the app store and the APIs etc etc etc then no, he didn’t build that — alone. Again, nobody can do that much work. He profited from the work of others, which is great. That’s what enabled him to do what he did, it’s wonderful! The bad part is pretending it’s not true.
Second… ALL money SV has ever made has been off other people’s work.
No I mean they are milking all the value from the ideas of others.

Second… ALL money SV has ever made has been off other people’s work.
Same as *everybody else*. Or say, a plumber fixing a toilet, is not benefiting from someone else installing that toilet, or the pipes, or building the machinery that allowed him to buy a cheap wrench?

That’s the way economy works.
You did agree to post it under a creative commons license though…
Such a tired argument. A good idea by itself does nothing. A roomful of engineers won’t get anywhere without the supporting apparatus of business management, marketing, sales, etc. You also need good leadership with vision and the ability to execute.
Engineering is not all the “work”. There’s a whole lot more to it than that, and it requires different kinds of talent.
I didn’t make an argument, tired or otherwise. I stated a simple fact. That is the entire concept of the valley is to hire brilliant people and scrap virtually all the cream off their ideas.
“A good idea by itself does nothing. A roomful of engineers won’t get anywhere without the supporting apparatus of business management, marketing, sales, etc. You also need good leadership with vision and the ability to execute.”
Yes, but all of those elements are mechanical and replaceable except the ideas and the people
What do we do about ideas inspired off other ideas? This sniffs of a complaint similar to ” appropriation!!!1111one”. Look, every idea since forever has been a mutation of a previous idea. Should the Simpsons creators get reimbursed if I make a joke that sounds like something Homer would say? Should they get reimbursed if I am a comedian making similar jokes for a living? No. If you don’t want the world to take your ideas and run with them then don’t put them on the public internet. This is just a mo
The entire copyright system, as it exists today, is a money grab. Those developing AI are only the latest in very long list of those catching lawsuits for no good reason.
As for UPS using the roads, the government is certainly entitled to a cut. They’re not free to build. Hopefully they do in fact charge road taxes to UPS, because otherwise it’s only individuals who are paying them.
Depends if you feel corporations pay taxes or not I suppose. Every tax a corporation pays is really paid for by their customers. Hence raising taxes on corporations can quite literally cause those same corporations to pass those taxes onto the consumer. This is especially true if this corporation has an outsized portion of the market and has no real competition.
OTOH, the workers that the corporation has paying taxes means that the corporation needs to pay higher wages, which has to be passed on to the consumer.
The advantage, for society, is that the corporation only pays taxes on profits, which gives them lots more choices with what to do with their income, invest in the business for example, important for a startup. While paying the workers enough to cover their taxes on top of money to live on is a fixed cost and needs to be payed even if the company has no prof
Santa Clara University law school professor Eric Goldman “believes the law favors use of copyrighted material for training generative AI. ‘All works build upon precedent works. We are all free to take pieces of precedent works. What generative AI does is accelerate that process, but it’s the same process. It’s all part of an evolution of our society’s storehouse of knowledge….”
The chance to make money on “AI” was December throuh maybe May. Now it is the next sucker’s game. They need to combine it with Blockchain and 3D printing for the next round!!
LLMs and GPT offer some interesting possibilities, but I think the prospects have shifted away from mainstream quite quickly. I can see plenty of industry-specific solutions, but they are far from universal and the training data complexity is going to be fun to watch.

mass scale ripping off of other people’s content an automated way isn’t equivalent to previous practices due to the impact it has and how it can burry the original work despite taking from it
Just saying something is like X and different thusly from Y, IMO, is disingenuous since you have not PROVEN that something is like X, you’ve merely asserted it is.
There is no realistic way to get filthy rich on your own work. The only way is to exploit others in some way, often by essentially stealing their work or their wealth. If you provide honest value in services or goods, you never are going to get byond “well off”. Obviously anybody decent will be quite satisfied with “well off”, so the converse idea also holds.
I suspect many entertainers and athletes would disagree with this perspective.
Many of the most successful entertainers and athletes have entire industries and support infrastructure built around them that most people can only dream of having. It is far and away just the talent and work of the individuals in question.
Tech support, marketers, legal teams (that is a big one in the music industry), and even politicians lend support to them. And many of them also came from well-off families that had the resources to help hone their skills via private trainers, facilities, etc. Schools and

There is no realistic way to get filthy rich on your own work. The only way is to exploit others in some way, often by essentially stealing their work or their wealth. If you provide honest value in services or goods, you never are going to get byond “well off”. Obviously anybody decent will be quite satisfied with “well off”, so the converse idea also holds.
There is no realistic way to live off your own work. You wrote the compiler you’re using? built the computer? Educated yourself without anyone’s help? Did a farmer make the plow or scythe he’s using by his own hands? And, since I guess in your terminology “benefiting from someone’s labour, even if you compensate said labour by amount agreed to by both parties” is “stealing”, you too are a fucking thief.
There is a rather stunningly obvious difference between “getting filthy rich” and “living reasonably”. I do understand that you are way too dumb to see that, though.

There is a rather stunningly obvious difference between “getting filthy rich” and “living reasonably”. I do understand that you are way too dumb to see that, though.
So you stole less than your average “filthy rich” guy. Of course only because of your rock solid moral compass, not because you never had the chance to join the “filthy rich” circle. So: “I’m not a thief, because look, this other guy stole much more” is your argument now?
How is it different when a human reads Wikipedia, sees a picture, learns to code?
How am I not just profiting off the work of people who originally thought that stuff up? Do human brains really add so much additional value compared to AI?
“A great deal of the bots’ fodder is copyrighted property…”
So, just like every student?
They read and remember, some even remember every single word, including the page-numbers.
That IP is a scam and the know it.
You do the work. The capitalists reap the benefits.
We are all wage slaves.
(And then, of course, you overpay for goods and services delivered by capitalist corporations so… you just have to work more.)
This may not be popular, but I think somebody needs to make the argument in favor of scraping the web unhindered.
1. Copyright law controls the distribution of copyrighted works. AI models are not distributing the works that they’ve accessed, any more than a seller of applesauce is distributing apples. You won’t find copies of those materials anywhere in the database, and whatever the AI coughs up is almost always mangled and mashed up beyond recognition. (And when something comes out that’s recognizable, that’s most often a concern of trademark law rather than copyright. Meaning, if your AI generates pictures of Batman and you use them, then DC may rightfully want a word with you. They won’t care how the model was trained; they’ll only care what you’ve done with it.)
2. Copyright law is supposed to economically incentivize the production of creative works. It’s hard to come up with how AI scraping undermines that principle. It’s not a direct replacement for any of the works that it was trained on. It’s not breaking the various business models that got the training material posted in the first place. One could argue that generative AI is a supercharger for creative work and lets more of it be produced faster. That’s what we’ve always wanted, isn’t it?
3. The way generative AI works is analogous to the way that human beings learn and create. We observe and consume creative works, mentally digest them, and then we mix-and-match our favorite parts to create something new. AI is a more automated version of the same general processes. So, why should it be acceptable for every human being to do this “by hand” (as it were) but not employing automation to the same effect?
Going beyond copyright, I understand there are practical concerns about massive scraping operations and the sheer amount of traffic and hits that they can produce, and real costs that they can incur. So, I’m not addressing that. Those are issues that’ll have to be negotiated and worked out between various parties.

It’s not a direct replacement for any of the works that it was trained on. It’s not breaking the various business models that got the training material posted in the first place.
I’m pretty sure Getty Images would disagree with that, which is why they’re suing Stability AI. In the old days (like early 2022), whenever a news site posted a story, they would include an image along with it. If they didn’t have a specific photo from the story itself, they would use a stock image licensed from a service like Getty. Licensing those images was a huge business. Today they’re likely to generate an image with Midjourney or Stable Diffusion instead. It saves the licensing fees. And guess
I would love for one of the places they apply AI to be under “result attribution”. Meaning “who” did “what” and “did it matter?”
What if gig workers were fairly paid? How might labor change if customer results were connected to wages received?
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People are always available for work in the past tense.

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