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The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

sanders.senate.gov

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Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#181

Post by supermdguy »

NDlurker wrote: post #106

Lately I've been thinking about digital co-ops. Imagine a member owned server farm for running private AI models and cloud services. It could be small, like a neighborhood or citywide project running on cobbled together used hardware like that post the other day where someone got an older server GPU running on his PC. Or it could be a small data center for small businesses and individual users to use. Members could h…

There was a show HN for something similar a couple months ago[0]. Looks like they shut it down. Probably too difficult/low-margin to run as a business, but I think the co-op model you mentioned has potential.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47639779

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#182

Post by slackfan »

skeaker wrote: post #120
slackfan wrote: post #27

The public should own half of everything that Senator Sanders owns as well.

Why? He makes a compelling argument for his stance, and he is of course one man, not a business. If AI companies are going to have such a profound effect on the common man, including both you and me, then why shouldn't we have a say in how they operate? I can hardly say the same for Sanders' belongings.

He's a multimillionaire and I am not.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#184

Post by therealpygon »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #5

Why half of AI and not half of Walmart & Exxon & Apple? Government spending is already ~40% of GDP. And what do we get with this half? A sovereign wealth fund? That seems like a great tool for a certain corrupt politician to use as a carrot to make CEO's bend to his/her whims. What benefit does that have for anyone else? You can't build a sovereign wealth fund if you're transferring all the money out. That's just mor…

Did those other companies literally steal the collective works of most citizens to do business?

No? Then that’s probably why not, don’t you think?

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#185

Post by amanaplanacanal »

metalspot wrote: post #153
pesus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the jobs AI is creating, specifically? > And let's please not have any lazy, low-effort replies claiming that AI will somehow magically eliminate all jobs for humans. I don't think AI actually capable of doing so, but AI companies need to stop bragging about wanting to do this and making it their goal if you don't want people to keep bringing it up.

AI accelerates the entire white collar economy and makes it more efficient. It has and will continue to result in large job gains for blue collar and service workers. The people getting rich off AI have to spend their money somewhere.

Not sure how generating exponentially more boilerplate is going to make anything more efficient. I guess we'll find out.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#186

Post by jst1fthsdys »

jmyeet wrote: post #131
rayiner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be Jeff Bezos to believe you’re better off in the long run with strong property rights. To your example: I’ve got 10 gig fiber from a private company. My alternatives are 2 gig fiber from a private company, or 2 gig cable from a private company. I don’t have to be Jeff Bezos to wager that, if the people who ran Baltimore City Public Schools ran my broadband service, I wouldn’t have even 1 gig servic…

The "brutal communism of China" is just hilarious on its face. It's like a Freedom House type position [1]. Funded by the State Department btw. I'm sure it's unbiased. Surveys of Chinese citizens show very high levels of satisfaction with their government [2] while Chinese people view the West through the "kill line" [3]. The funny part about that is the NYT blaming the kill line on "state media" [4] when it originat…

You seriously can't expect us westerners to listen to the Chinese people about their government. How can we trust them, they are in a police state with the most imprisoned people, have oppressed, immiserated, and genocided minorities for decades, selectively enforce law for the elite, and are initiating wars of aggression across the globe. You can't trust anything coming out of a brutal regime like that.

Err, wait a minute...

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#188

Post by sobellian »

opsnooperfax wrote: post #172
pokstad wrote: post #149

If the public wants to own half of the AI company, then they should invest enough to buy half of it. Taking private property away without compensation is stealing. What the government did with Intel where they got 10% in stock was a bit better because Intel got money.

You basically described taxation. 25-75% of all your income is confiscated at the source and then you get… whatever it is that Washington does. I guess remit the money back as programs and direct payments or services so thousands of people can wet their beak in the process? In practice, we’re OK with theft. We just argue over who gets the loot and which segment of the population gets harmed.

There is a line between tax and unlawful taking. The constitution forbids taking of property without due process or compensation. No, the government can't just take whatever it likes from anyone and call it a tax.

Taxes generally demand payment in the form of general assets, but taking targets specific identified property. Likewise taxes are raised from a general category whereas taking singles out one or a few properties. Now if it was just the targeting of AI companies you could argue it's a one-time AI tax rather than singling out those companies for taking. But once you state that the tax must be paid by shares (and not just assets equal to 50% of market cap) that looks less like a tax and more like appropriation of equity for public good without compensation.

There are other vulnerabilities too - income taxes are explicitly exempted from apportionment. This "tax" would probably run afoul of apportionment.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#189

Post by csallen »

jst1fthsdys wrote: post #177
csallen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that somebody benefited from the output of your work is not the same thing as extracting your labor. Extracting your labor means that before you even create the work, they're conscripting you to do it. For example, I created a useful organization at my school before I graduated. That was twenty years ago. It still exists, and people are still benefiting from it. But they don't somehow owe me compensation, no…

This chain has been using expropriate, not extract. Not sure why you mentioned that. Your story doesn't really relate. I get what you are saying, but your org wasn't copyrighted under you, nor did you expect any monetary returns on it. They stole copyrighted work without permission.

> This chain has been using expropriate, not extract. Not sure why you mentioned that.

Sure, my bad.

> They stole copyrighted work without permission.

While we're nitpicking language, you can't "steal" copyrighted work. Theft/stealing are crimes that apply to situation where property is taken such that its rightful owner no longer has it. Copyright has nothing to do with theft. There is no taking of property involved. Copyright is a violation of a limited monopoly granted to a person/company to be the only one allowed to make copies.

Anyway, for a more substantive point, I think it remains to be seen that training an intelligence on information is the same thing as violating a copyright. For example, nobody would claim it's a copyright violation for a budding author to train his skills by reading tons of books.

But even setting the law aside, just morally, it doesn't seem like it should be any sort of violation. Of course, many people don't like that AI companies are getting rich, but that should be irrelevant. The fact is that nobody is harmed or deprived. Nobody's work is even redistributed. And prevention is easy -- if you don't want people/companies/AIs/etc learning from the material you put out, then keep it secret.

What seems morally bankrupt to me is this idea that anyone should be entitled to control what others are allowed to learn from. If you put information or work out into the public, that should not make you some sort of God who should control whether other people can learn from it or not.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#190

Post by jcranmer »

rayiner wrote: post #67
jmyeet wrote: post #37

People on HN generally love municipal broadband. For good reasons. It is almost without exception better than any of the national ISPs. Cheaper too. Municipal broadband is just 100% publicly-owned. That's what that means. When you have a national ISP, you might not get a service at all despite the ISP guaranteeing service in exchange for money from the state they've taken. You get a service that starts at $60 but som…

You don’t have to be Jeff Bezos to believe you’re better off in the long run with strong property rights. To your example: I’ve got 10 gig fiber from a private company. My alternatives are 2 gig fiber from a private company, or 2 gig cable from a private company. I don’t have to be Jeff Bezos to wager that, if the people who ran Baltimore City Public Schools ran my broadband service, I wouldn’t have even 1 gig servic…

I live in a town with municipal power, and the general consensus in the area is that the towns with municipal power are loads better at it than the main private utilities in the area. There's no intrinsic reason why a publicly-owned utility should be better or worse at its job than privately-owned utility.

But to talk about broadband more specifically, one of the main reasons why municipal broadband started becoming a thing was because in many areas, where there is but one (private) broadband provider to choose from, that provider would proceed to refuse to upgrade the infrastructure even when municipalities offered buttloads of cash to pay for the upgrades. So the municipal broadband choice becomes "get municipal broadband at 1 gig, or private company broadband at 25 meg (asymmetric)."

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