[replygirl]

So hopefully we play our cards right, by extracting benefits from AI that overcompensate for the negative impacts like mass unemployment and democratization of intellectual property. If the spoils are distributed in such a way that people's standard of living is maintained or improved, people have more liesure time, which the social sciences have shown will not mean people will just stop working--they'll work less, but with higher productivity on things promising a greater benefit to family, community, and society.

Forgive me if I'm misreading, but I'm having trouble with your line of reasoning. Your first reply to me scarequoting "captive" strongly implies an argument that the imperative to seek employment for survival is not a limiting factor on how people spend their time, and therefore that my suggestion that giving people more choice over how they apply their talents could be a good thing is irrelevant; but your child reply implies a concern that AI taking over some human labor will cause mass unemployment and explicitly states choice is declining.

I'm advocating that, since the genie is out of the bottle, AI could be used to free people from toil, just as other labor innovations like machinery and the 40-hour work week have done. Why the dismissive snark? In the abstract, do we not want the same thing?

[gumballindie]

Unfortunately real life doesn't work the way you describe. People won't be "free" to enjoy more "leisure" time, by "democratizing" the results of their work. Instead, all of this stolen data, will be used to "free" them from jobs and to consolidate corporate control. Say bye to microbusinesses, to freelancers, to indie developers. You know, those people that have been truly free. Similarly, office workers will be "free" to lose the jobs that they chose to perform, and will have nowhere else to go but unemployment lines. All thanks to "democratizing" ip by stealing data.

[visarga]

> All thanks to "democratizing" ip by stealing data.

That horse is already dead. Large models can learn everything, there's nothing that can be done to stop them from learning. It's too easy for them to do it. We can't hold any meaningful IP when models can generate 100 variations only different enough to pass the test. IP is dead. But on its corpse there will grow a new world of applications. We all got new skills, depends on us if we use them or not.

[gumballindie]

Sure. In before people used to say that currency is dead because crypto currency has replaced money already, and already people are using them, and already [insert marketing statement]. I see they now moved on to ai.

[sebzim4500]

>currency is dead because crypto currency has replaced money already

Literally no one said that, you are being ridiculous

[mkaic]

I agree! I actually wrote a blogpost about this recently[0], but the TLDR is that ownership is nothing without enforcement, and it has become increasingly difficult to enforce ownership of intellectual property in the modern world — first digital files, then the sharing of those digital files over the Internet, and now generative models that allow people to create high-quality ripoffs of any IP for zero marginal cost. The sheer volume will just be too much to contend with, because you can't sue everyone. In my view, this is a good thing and a long time coming!

[0] https://blog.kaichristensen.com/p/generative-ai-is-the-final...

[replygirl]

I agree that not playing our cards right is the default scenario.

[gumballindie]

As a technology ai can indeed free people in a productive manner. But it would appear that we started on the wrong footing. Power will be consolidated in the hands of a few at a scale we haven't seen yet. It all depends tho on whether we can regulate how data is collected, at least at the basic level of not infringing copyright.