So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.
I really don’t get how opinions on intellectual property and its “theft” turn 180 whenever AI is mentioned.
the common denominator is money
I don’t mind it if the models are open for anyone to use in any way they see fit. If you trained it off public works and made it available to everyone, I am ok with that.
ai is the rich stealing from us, piracy is usually us taking it from the rich.
That’s true in the same way that Trump’s tariffs are paid by other countries. Which is to say: Not at all.
Bill Gates was no billionaire at the time. His background was probably shared by almost all computer hobbyists at the time.
Hardly. Bill Gates came from a wealthy family, attended a private school, and through it had thousands of hours of computer programming time several years before even the Altair 8800 came out. He had a personal connection to IBM through his mother, which is how Microsoft got the DOS deal. His circumstances were unique, and his success the result of a hefty dose of luck.
AI is theft in the same way that all private property theft. It isnt the piracy of media, it’s the alienation of labor from its product, and withholding it for profit.
Private property is not theft, it is exploitation. Marx already refuted this anarchist childish way of thinking
The exploitation of private property is derived from the exclusion of labor from its product - maybe you have a different understanding of what ‘theft’ means, but it’s the principled exclusion of what labor produces from the labor producing it that is the basis of marx’s claim of ‘exploitation’
All private property is theft? Lmao go back to your cave tankie
“Property is theft.”
???
Clearly one of those horrible anarchotankapalists.
tbf that’s also the tankie view about it.
Even libertarians, who are on the exact opposite side economically, agree IP is garbage made and manipulated to enrich the few.
It’s a bit of a split among libertarians. Some very notable figures like Ayn Rand were strong believers in IP. In fact, Ayn Rand’s dogmas very much align with what is falsely represented as left-wing thought in the context of AI.
It’s really irritating for me how much conservative capitalist ideals are passed off as left-wing. Like, attitudes on corporations channel Adam Smith. I think of myself as pragmatic and find that Smith or even Hayek had some good points (not Rand, though). But it’s absolutely grating how uneducated that all is. Worst of all, it makes me realize that for all the anti-capitalist rhetoric, the favored policies are all about making everything worse.
Anarchists believe that “all property is theft”? Lol
private property, distinct from personal property.
yes.
And piracy is actual enjoyment of art made by hardworking devs who unfortunately work for multi billion dollar companies T-T
I’m on the side of abolishing intellectual property, with the caveats that commercializing someone else’s work or taking credit for someone else’s work should be illegal.
If there wasn’t a profit motive we’d get much less “slop art” and more challenging art made with passion. The slop would also be far less off-putting because at least the slop would be made with love for slop.
So, not actually abolishing IP, then.
Commercializing means sell for profit. If a non-profit were to create a cracked version of Windows 7 with security updates and sell that for $200 an install that’d not count as commercialization. The idea here is that if Netflix took someone else’s work and made a bajillion dollars off it they’d need to ask for permission and credit the original author.
I don’t know if something still counts as intellectual property if it can be infringed upon except by for-profit entities.
One day chat got won’t work without a paid subscription…
Intellectual property as a concept is a cancer to humanity, and we’d be in a much better world without it.
This is why they want Wikipedia and internet archive, etc, killed off. They have it for their training data but they won’t have a profitable model via paid subscriptions without a monopoly on information.
Information wants to be free.
Yes but we’re in the bait and switch phase of it. They’re pushing the AI responses at the top of search to cut down the through clicking to Wikipedia. They’re trying to capture behavior by being the lowest effort route to an answer. They’re gambling that people will forget these other sites and then stop donating. Then it’s to the courts until they’re too broke to keep the servers online.
The information will still be free, but maybe obfuscated enough that most people accept [erratic] information as a service.