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Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

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Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#111

Post by pas »

esafak wrote: post #100
tracerbulletx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not specifically about technical problems. He's saying that you need to just go all in on getting traction and not constantly be worrying about things that aren't going to matter if you never get it. It's the same thing as people who just opine about how they'll handle the big server bills, or how they'll scale to a billion users, or how they'll deal with regulations, when they haven't gotten their first user ye…

Do you remember Napster? They went all in on getting traction, succeeded, then got crushed by the music industry. Ignoring the law only works if you are bankrolled. Don't try this at home, kids.

ostensibly Napster is the exception that makes the rule, etc.

Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#112

Post by esafak »

petesergeant wrote: post #109
esafak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember Napster? They went all in on getting traction, succeeded, then got crushed by the music industry. Ignoring the law only works if you are bankrolled. Don't try this at home, kids.

That’s why you’ve heard of Napster, and Shawn and Sean have money.

I've heard of other failed companies too; that's not saying much. Did the founders make money off Napster? How?

Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#113

Post by stale2002 »

esafak wrote: post #100
tracerbulletx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not specifically about technical problems. He's saying that you need to just go all in on getting traction and not constantly be worrying about things that aren't going to matter if you never get it. It's the same thing as people who just opine about how they'll handle the big server bills, or how they'll scale to a billion users, or how they'll deal with regulations, when they haven't gotten their first user ye…

Do you remember Napster? They went all in on getting traction, succeeded, then got crushed by the music industry. Ignoring the law only works if you are bankrolled. Don't try this at home, kids.

Napster is an amazing example. They are a massive success story.

Sean Parker is doing great. It worked out for him.

So the point stands. If you get serious traction, the worst that can happen is your current company goes under, years down the line, after you have cashed out and you then fail upwards into being a successful tech celebrity.

This is all a much better outcome than nobody caring about your product, as you "followed the rules", hampered yourself, and ended up with zero users.

Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#114

Post by dathinab »

It's not even a new strategy just made easier using AI.

I a ton of "move fast break things" startups include "laws", "ethics" into the "things they break" and sadly often enough "people and peoples livelihood", too.

I mean which large successful SV startup in recent decades hasn't been involved in both legal and ethical controversies often with them being clearly in on the wrong side but got away with it anyway.

It might sound unpleasant but if law makers don't move proactively this is pretty much what will happen.

Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#116

Post by salawat »

csouzaf wrote: post #78
mistrial9 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's crazy that is a phrase often used by people who are appealing to an invisible sense of "us versus them", emphasizing that the crazy thing-person-event is "not us" ? > even after the video was made private by the Stanford YouTube channel private conversations among the very powerful is exactly the topic.. so this seems a bit of a Freudian slip > I thought the talk was great. I am one of "us" so why so much upse…

Sorry, mate. I'm really not immersed in the English-speaking world, so I don't exactly understand the use of 'crazy'. I just see this word being used and used it here. What I meant was that I think what he said was perfectly normal C-level talk, and that's it. I hope my words don't resonate badly Really, I was just commenting something completely honest about what I thought.

The problem is exactly that it is "perfectly normal C-Level talk". It's a bit like having all of your legislators discussing acceptable combat attrition rates as balanced against territory annexation all-the-time.

If the most novel innovation your leaders can come up with is "lets do something illegal/immoral/unethical until we become TBTF/TBTBHTA(Too Big To Be Held To Account)", it's a sign you really have a leadership problem, period.

Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#117

Post by stale2002 »

gruez wrote: post #105
cyanydeez wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make enough money, you just purchase laws. No need to try and decontextualize.

> you just purchase laws. What sort of favorable laws did google or ai startups "purchase"?

For AI startups it is too early in the cycle for them to do that. The first lawsuit on copyright infringement only just made it to discovery last week!

In this context though, The favorable laws that they will "purchase" would of course be either a favorable court outcome saying that training on other people's data without permission is fair use (in at least some circumstances), or otherwise a new law that says that explicitly.

AI startups have a couple years left of runway before even the first lawsuit is settled, so that is more than enough time to get traction and takeover the market, given how useful AI is likely to be.

Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#118

Post by sroussey »

BobbyJo wrote: post #101
esafak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember Napster? They went all in on getting traction, succeeded, then got crushed by the music industry. Ignoring the law only works if you are bankrolled. Don't try this at home, kids.

Yes, but how did things work out for the founders?

Or the founders of Uber and Lyft?

Legal gray area. They could have waited years and years and tried to get laws passed to allow their business to function with a clean slate of legality, but bureaucrats would have never allowed it.

Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#119

Post by jordanb »

Jensson wrote: post #49
lucianbr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a regular joe, try to do something legally questionable against Oracle, and then "have the lawyers hammer it out". See how much of a good place the world is in this case. The problem is this stuff is highly asymmetric. Things are always "hammered out" in their favor, because you cannot afford to be a party to the "hammering out".

Regular joes use adblockers and torrents etc to do legally questionable things all the time, so not sure what you mean. Personally I played hundreds of pirated games growing up for free, don't personally know anyone who got into trouble for doing that sort of thing.

Google torrent lawsuits. Tens of thousands of people have had their lives ruined due to torrent use.

Claiming that there's anything illegal about adblockers is a real stretch, although I can definitely believe that they will eventually be outlawed either by statute or through some torturous legal argument agreed to by corrupt judges.

Re: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

#120

Post by sroussey »

ryandrake wrote: post #86
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to pay income taxes until you record profit, at least, so that really is like what he is saying. The IRS is not going to think this is weird, many (most even) startups never get to the point of paying taxes, and non-profits by definition don’t.

Obviously I'm not talking specifically about corporate taxes, here. In fact the example was about personal taxes. It's a generality about the attitude of "Ignore the rules, do what you have to now, and worry about the consequences later."

No, it more like “rewrite the rules” either by litigation or politics.
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