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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

#261

Post by thedevilslawyer »

sobellian wrote: post #188
opsnooperfax wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prope…

Eminent domain. It can be made to apply to AI.

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

#262

Post by Garshtrot »

vrganj wrote: post #196
jcranmer wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Alaska, the oil is literally on land owned by the State of Alaska (as in, the titleholder of the land is the state itself), and the rights to oil extraction is leased by the state to oil companies. By contrast, data centers are generally going to be on land owned by the operator, and corporate offices are either owned by the company or leased to the company by some commercial real estate operator you'v…

The sovereign entity granting said private ownership is the state. It is privately owned only insofar as the state wills it.

Holy shit a realpolitiker. There is a God called "state" that WILLS the laws. Only by the power of prayer can one communicate with the sovereign, who whimsically discards centuries long legal traditions because a midwit read Schmitt or something.

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

#263

Post by Garshtrot »

exe34 wrote: post #75
Aunche wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oil is on Alaska/Norway's land, so they can choose what they want to do with money from selling that oil including distributing it or purchasing assets. Sanders seem to be proposing to arbitrarily seize half of the companies.

They seized all of humanity's intellectual output first.

Where'd they put it? All my books are still on their shelves.

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

#266

Post by mrdependable »

csallen wrote: post #253
mrdependable wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> * training for free on everyone's work* "Training on other people's work" has always been free for anyone to do for the entire history of humanity, and that shouldn't change. You do not get paid just because somebody read your work and learned from it, nor should you, unless you want to gatekeep it and charge for access. As Jefferson said, "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclus…

An AI training is not equivalent to a human learning, despite how we like to anthropomorphize the process, and ideas are not protected by copyright in the first place.

Your point was that people that create something valuable are not entitled to stop others from capturing the value of their creation, ostensibly because they “don’t want to do the hard work.” My point is that even if someone did want to do the work, the benefit would go to the people with the money and infrastructure to act on it. In your vision, IBM would just take Windows and slap their name on it. Where would that have left Microsoft?

Computers and cars don’t rely on the intellectual output of others to function. AI still needs people doing the work that it is displacing, but it strips the economic incentive to do it.

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

#267

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jcranmer wrote: post #158
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it would be pushing pretty hard against the Takings clause. Federal wealth taxes in general are rather precarious in the US because the 16th amendment allows taxing income, not assets.

Strictly speaking, that's not accurate. Article 1, Section 8 has the general taxation clause: > The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; but Section 9 has the apportionment clause: > No Capitation, o…

I'm not sure which part you're calling inaccurate. The 16th amendment:

> The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Allows taxes on incomes (but not wealth) without apportionment.

According to your own post:

> it's generally been held that taxes on property (including wealth) would classify as a direct tax.

Implying that unlike income under the 16th amendment, a federal tax on wealth would have to be apportioned. But apportionment isn't something people are likely to accept in that context because then you can't put the screws to people in New York or Texas without extracting the same amount per capita from the people in New Mexico or Arkansas.

> In many respects, it's probably unnecessary because even without it, it's probably fairly likely that Pollock would have been overruled as just being bonkers reasoning anyways.

Unclear how that reasoning could be bonkers without Wickard v. Filburn being even worse, since the logic is pretty similar. The 16th amendment itself had exactly the result apportionment was intended to prevent, i.e. states with structural political advantages (swing states, lower population states with more US Senators per capita) quickly set up massive federal transfers to themselves at the expense of other states.

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

#268

Post by csallen »

mrdependable wrote: post #266
csallen wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * training for free on everyone's work* "Training on other people's work" has always been free for anyone to do for the entire history of humanity, and that shouldn't change. You do not get paid just because somebody read your work and learned from it, nor should you, unless you want to gatekeep it and charge for access. As Jefferson said, "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclus…

An AI training is not equivalent to a human learning, despite how we like to anthropomorphize the process, and ideas are not protected by copyright in the first place. Your point was that people that create something valuable are not entitled to stop others from capturing the value of their creation, ostensibly because they “don’t want to do the hard work.” My point is that even if someone did want to do the work, th…

> An AI training is not equivalent to a human learning, despite how we like to anthropomorphize the process

How is it different in a way that's relevant here?

> My point is that even if someone did want to do the work, the benefit would go to the people with the money and infrastructure to act on it.

That's not true. Millions of entrepreneurs every year create companies, and do hard work, and capture value, without having to rely on copyrights/patents.

> In your vision, IBM would just take Windows and slap their name on it. Where would that have left Microsoft?

In a different world, things would be different. So? That doesn't mean that world would be worse.

For example, imagine a world where recipes are patentable. The inventor of pizza would own Pizza, Inc., and no one else on earth would be allowed to make or sell pizza. It would be their intellectual property. And Disney would buy up tons of food patents and own an exclusive license to make french fries and cookies and milkshakes. And someone in that world would ask the same question you're asking, "Omg, without recipe patents, Gil Bates never would've been able to start Spaghetti, Inc., because The Olive Garden would've just been allowed to make spaghetti, too! What a nightmare!" But here we are, living in a universe where everyone can make spaghetti, and no one else has the right to tell other people they're not allowed to make spaghetti just because some other guy did it first. And it's just fine.

> Computers and cars don’t rely on the intellectual output of others to function.

Sure, different inventions work differently. What does that matter?

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

#269

Post by chrischen »

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #102
chrischen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't really buy this argument. When you buy a physical product, you are paying the entire product lifecycle, not just the marginal aspect of retail distribution. This is the same thing. The marginal inference has to come FROM somewhere. It doesn't just appear out of nowhere.

This is the same argument people were making about how stealing music was the same as stealing a physical product.

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

#270

Post by chrischen »

Larrikin wrote: post #116
chrischen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AI companies took public, private, and copyrighted data. Your position is that because these big companies stole so much we should let them get away with it by devaluing it further so everyone can ignore intellectual property law.

They already "stole" it. They aren't giving it back and they've established their valuations based off of that. If they start paying now, it's simply going to be impossible for any more upstarts to do this or even release open-weight models because everyone with data will become rent seekers. Imagine if they started off with rent-seekers, we'd simply not have the benefit of these models at all at this point.
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