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

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

#241

Post by rainsford »

nradov wrote: post #109
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.

There are lots of new jobs in building data centers, plus all the components that go into those. For example, worldwide employee count at Amphenol is way up over the past couple years. They make a lot of electrical connectors and similar items.

I like to think I'm generally more optimistic than average that AI growth will be a a net benefit to the economy, standard of living, and employment, but "AI creates jobs building AI data centers" is a terrible argument in favor of that optimistic idea.

Ignoring the fact that the number of data center construction jobs a given data center produces is probably vastly lower than the labor displacement possible with the compute power said data center will hold, the idea of losing your job due to AI only to get another job building data centers for more AI is some genuinely dystopian stuff.

I feel like AI would be a lot more popular if the proponents of building AI hadn't seem to have all gone to the Darth Vader school of PR. AI is a valuable tool because it allows skilled labor to be vastly more productive, not because it displaces skilled labor into jobs where they build they build the infrastructure for the robotic overlords that replaced them.

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

#242

Post by mrdependable »

csallen wrote: post #236
mrdependable wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entitled for others to believe they have any say in what happens with the work of others. The world without these protections would be worse off by far. What I gather from what you are saying is that if I write a song, or a book, anyone else should be able to take what I've done and make their own money off it. By that logic, a publisher wouldn't need to compensate writers. Record executives wouldn't need to com…

Copyright is literally the granting of monopolies. That's the whole point of it. Copyright benefits huge corporations way more than "the little guy." The biggest holders of copyrights and patents are huge corporations, many of which are often bought explicitly for the purpose of warding off competition from new upstarts. These huge companies (e.g. Disney) also use their massive war chests to lobby the government into…

You say means of production is an antiquated idea, but the world you are using as an example of the idea being unnecessary is a world where copyright exists. The world would look very different otherwise, and you can actually get a sneak peek of what would happen by looking at AI companies. These are not people using ingenuity to capture value that no else bothered to. They are owners of massive capital training for free on everyone's work to not only capture their value in ways the little guy can't, but to replace them outright.

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

#244

Post by TehCorwiz »

lostmsu wrote: post #111
TehCorwiz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can go to jail over it then they should too. Let's not judge them by some imaginary ideal world while judging individuals by the present crushing reality.

But you can not. At least not in US. Basically, you can not go to jail for it almost anywhere.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/maryland-man-sentenced-cri...

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

#245

Post by akramachamarei »

jmyeet wrote: post #233
akramachamarei wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides economic and historical facts, I think one of the biggest reasons to flee municipal broadband is its liability to become a tool of government repression. What we're essentially proposing is that at the dusk of paper and analog media we want the government to be the provider of information and communication infrastructure. I'm reminded of a quote from Martin Niemöller.... Perhaps our Constitution would protect…

This is just a slippery slope fallacy and I'm honestly confused as to why it's so sticky. Are we really concerned about possible repression by Marquette, MI? And what would that look like exactly? Also, what are we comparing it to? Social media companies do untold amounts of repression. My problem with this kind of argument is that it weights future hypothetical harm as more important than documented historical harm.…

Yes, we should really be concerned about the government repressing internet users on its network. Surely you've noticed the hubbub about age verification recently. Maybe not Marquette, but in other places I certainly would expect the government to try to, for example ban porn under the guise of "protecting kids", or policing "hate speech" under the guise of preventing "incitements to violence". Now, you may not like porn, you may think you don't engage in hate speech, but as in the Niemöller quote, we shouldn't wait for the next disfavoured group to be us. We are I think, thankfully, very far from that, but I don't even want to take steps in that direction.

Maybe this is just a hypothetical future harm. I'm not sure the benefits are any more concrete. After all, if Fios throttles your Netflix, you can (usually) pick another competitor. Would a municipal broadband provider permit competition? Seems unlikely to me, unless the state is willing to forgo the taxes from citizens who go with a private ISP, which I don't think they'd tolerate.

And what if all the ISPs were throttling, i.e. you really had no alternative? I think it's worth asking what economic forces are incentivizing that, and why we think municipal ISPs wouldn't be subject to them? And if they are, who is paying to compensate?

> The truth here is that big companies are more complicit to government intervention than small ones are.

Seems backwards to me. Small company, small litigation warchest. It's "yessir" or we evaporate you. Why do you think it's the other way around?

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

#246

Post by lostmsu »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #244
lostmsu wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can not. At least not in US. Basically, you can not go to jail for it almost anywhere.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/maryland-man-sentenced-cri...

That man did not go to jail for any random copying.

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

#247

Post by foobarchu »

chrischen wrote: post #32
TehCorwiz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because AI companies basically took everything we ever wrote, drew, recorded, posted, or thought and turned it into a product with the power to lie, propagandize, and manipulate the public with zero oversight. Walmart is a parasite using welfare to subsidize their operations but they didn't tell a judge that they were immune to copyright because they stole just so much damn information.

Yes but all the AI companies took all the public data, so when you pay for an AI model you are paying for the marginal service of building a model off that data, not for the data itself. What we should do is ensure that the data is available to more people to train AI models... but sadly this doesn't seem to be happening. Instead AI companies that were first-movers got to train off public data, and as the companies a…

> when you pay for an AI model you are paying for the marginal service of building a model off that data, not for the data itself

Well no, you're also paying them for having done the work to "acquire" that data. That acquisition arguably amounts to the greatest theft in history.

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

#248

Post by foobarchu »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #140
TehCorwiz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because AI companies basically took everything we ever wrote, drew, recorded, posted, or thought and turned it into a product with the power to lie, propagandize, and manipulate the public with zero oversight. Walmart is a parasite using welfare to subsidize their operations but they didn't tell a judge that they were immune to copyright because they stole just so much damn information.

So if they only use public domain data, and data from the Chinese and Europeans, do you still feel entitled to their valuations? Because I hate to break it to you, they could have zero drop in quality by just not incorporating US data... If we're talking about copyright, why are we somehow entitled to profits derived from stealing Taylor Swift's IP? Why do you get a cut of AI derivatives and not get half of her wealt…

> Because I hate to break it to you, they could have zero drop in quality by just not incorporating US data...

This is so false and unsupportable it's comical. The same goes the other way, if you claim they would use no value by only incorporating American data.

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

#249

Post by asgeesg »

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…

[dead]

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

#250

Post by culi »

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…

Gov't spending is 38% and that's totally normal, if a bit low. France is at 57%, the UK at 44%, and Japan at 39%
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