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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'

#161

Post by tgma »

teddyh wrote: post #152
tgma wrote: post #131

It’s interesting to see so many supposedly ‘hackers’ take the state of Intellectual “Property” laws that are from a different era (and are “purchased” by old incumbents too by the way) as gospel and object to strategies to deal with them for the long term. Schmidt is very pragmatic simply predicting something like that is inevitable and probably the right strategy is to build your AI thing and bet/try that something…

The problem is people at large companies creating these AI models, wanting the freedom to copy artists’ works when using it, but these large companies also want to keep copyright protection intact, for their regular business activities. They want to eat the cake and have it too. And they are arguing for essentially eliminating copyright for their specific purpose and convenience, when copyright has virtually never be…

I agree with your characterization. It's probable that they will have to weaken their existing positions and pivot to the new world of copyright. Nevertheless that is a good argument.

That argument wouldn't start with a dig against Google Books or Google Search which is a net positive for the consumer and the society and I believe the original author in most cases. The publisher is the annoyed party.

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

#162

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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."

I don’t understand how we went from talking about “companies not worrying about success problems until they have success” to talking about individuals where none of that applies and is just a bad analogy.

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

#163

Post by [deleted] »

shrubble wrote: post #67
csouzaf wrote: post #46

It's crazy to see the repercussions of the talk he gave at Stanford, even after the video was made private by the Stanford YouTube channel. I thought the talk was great. I remember in the talk he said something like this, but he was being really open about what normally happens in these types of companies. I think the problem is that he, as someone in a position of power, was too open about it?

Why was it made private? Isn’t the whole idea of a university to allow different opinions and views to be made available?

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by rchaud »

gruez wrote: post #108
rchaud wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Uber was an illegal taxi service, and Airbnb was an illegal hotel service that skated on technicalities thanks to an an army of lawyers and influential cheerleaders on Capitol Hill and CNBC beating the drums of "innovation". The playbook has been in operation for over a decade.

>Uber was an illegal taxi service That claim is at best, speculative. According to wikipedia they won every case brought against them, so as far as the law is concerned they didn't do anything illegal. >Taxi companies sued Uber in numerous American cities, alleging that Uber's policy of violating taxi regulations was a form of unfair competition or a violation of antitrust law.[80] Although some courts did find that…

If you or I started a similar company, we'd be shut down. Apparently the difference between "violated the rules" and "illegal" is how many billions you have backstopping your efforts.

American laws have enough loopholes that a convicted felon running for the highest office in the land is a "legal gray area".

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

#165

Post by BobbyJo »

sillyfluke wrote: post #159
BobbyJo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is kind of an amusing point to consider since we were talking about Kim Dotcom's extradition just moments ago. So is the point to try it if you've got Napster level success but not Megaupload level success? And since there is no way to know which level of success you are going to achieve beforehand, the note of caution still makes sense I guess?

Kim Dotcom made the mistake of not knowing when to quit. Napster shut down when it got told to shut down. Megaupload hopped around hoping to outsmart the law after it was told to shut down, and the executive branch doesn't let that go.

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

#166

Post by Manuel_D »

kelnos wrote: post #156
Manuel_D wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Taxi medallions are required to let you pick up someone else that hails you on the street. It is not required for a drive scheduled elsewhere like over the phone or the Internet. They weren't breaking laws, at least in the US. Most of the regulations applied to Uber were new regulations introduced after their ride to popularity, often crafted with the express purpose of curbing Lyft and Uber.

You're definitely misremembering history, then. Hailing is certainly a "category definer", but what Uber was doing in the beginning was definitely not kosher in many US jurisdictions. Ordering on-demand in an app was seen by regulators as much more taxi-like than scheduling a black car for a particular date, time, and place. Uber was originally called "Ubercab", and changed their name specifically to attempt to dista…

> Ordering on-demand in an app was seen by regulators as much more taxi-like than scheduling a black car for a particular date, time, and place.

Regulators tried to reinterpret existing laws to placate an interest group. Most cities has explicit laws around this: responding to someone hailing on the street required a medallion. Scheduling a ride via the internet did not.

This is why they had to pass new laws to try and stamp out taxi's competition.

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

#168

Post by stale2002 »

lucianbr wrote: post #149
stale2002 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look around at all the AI companies that are doing this, dude. Its a lot of people. So the point stands, a large number of people are doing this. Meaning that, yes a lot of people are getting away with this, and only like 4 companies are being sued. This means that the point about people immediately getting in trouble is wrong, given that a lot of people are doing this. Can you directly address this point, inste…

Honestly I'm having a really hard time arguing that regular joes are not on the same footing with megacorps as related to "legal gray areas". It's like asking me to prove the sky is blue. Whereas of course, anything you claim, is "obvious, just look around dude". What's the claim here, that now torrenting is officially legal? People have been torrenting, there's no consequences, it's been hammered out, now it's a-ok?

> What's the claim here

The claim is that people use models like stable diffusion, right now. Stable Diffusion was trained on copyrighted data. Lots of AI companies use that. And yet, they are all getting away with it. Only 4 companies are being sued for that.

Also, the claim here is that there are a whole lot of AI companies that are trained on other people's data, that are released publicly on the internet, and they are often made by regular joes.

> now it's a-ok?

People do seem to be getting away with it, seeing as there are only 4 companies that are being sued for this stuff, even though people have been using stable diffusion for 2 years now.

Do you really think that people aren't using stable diffusion? Do you believe that people are not making mario pictures, or copyrighted images? Clearly they are.

And a lot of AI startups, and regular people, train their models on data that they don't own.

> It's like asking me to prove the sky is blue.

If it obviously true, then you'd find more than 4 companies being sued over this stuff. But thats not happening.

Like, did you know that you can just google AI art stuff right now? Any of those models that pop up, right now, was trained on copyrighted data.

Stable Diffusion is used by all sorts of AI companies. And that model was all trained on copyrighted data.

Do you just think that nobody is using stable diffusion? As in, is it completely made up? Nobody is using that?

Clearly people are.

> there's no consequences

Apparently there isn't consequences because only like 4 companies have been sued in 1 lawsuit over this AI stuff.

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

#169

Post by fhd2 »

tgma wrote: post #160
fhd2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've skimmed the comments, but I didn't see any passionate advocacy for copyright laws. If there's rules we all need to comply with, it can be upsetting to see others proudly not do it and get away with it because they're rich. That has little to do with whether the rules were sound in the first place. It's more about fairness. And I've found "hackers" to be nothing if not fair - in a "chaotic good" way perhaps.

So you define "fairness" as always following the rules as is. That's objectively false. Many historical examples.

No, not really. I'd say it's more about the spirit than the letter of the law.

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

#170

Post by sfink »

tgma wrote: post #160
fhd2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've skimmed the comments, but I didn't see any passionate advocacy for copyright laws. If there's rules we all need to comply with, it can be upsetting to see others proudly not do it and get away with it because they're rich. That has little to do with whether the rules were sound in the first place. It's more about fairness. And I've found "hackers" to be nothing if not fair - in a "chaotic good" way perhaps.

So you define "fairness" as always following the rules as is. That's objectively false. Many historical examples.

It sounded more like defining fairness as having the rules apply equally to everyone in practice. Which is a pretty decent definition, IMHO.
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