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by philipkglass 1058 days ago
The intellectual property lobby doesn't have much sway outside of countries with significant cultural exports, software businesses, and/or patent-protected manufacturing. That's basically the Anglosphere, richer parts of Europe, South Korea, and Japan. If countries outside this group can grow prosperous faster by pirating intellectual property than by continuing to play by WTO rules, they will.

If the only thing standing between poor countries and a world of cheap AI abundance is law, respect for those laws won't last. Why should e.g. India play by the normal rules of trade if foreign companies have developed do-everything robots that they want to license on a restrictive basis? India can obtain a few do-everything robots by means of normal trade, jailbreak or reverse engineer them, then duplicate do-everything robots domestically while ignoring the impotent griping of the original company and its government. There's no big IP lobby inside of India itself and it's really hard to see what "carrot" other countries could offer for compliance that tops the prize of having unlimited do-everything robots.