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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

#271

Post by chrischen »

foobarchu wrote: post #247
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…

> 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.

If I understand the correctly the initial models were done by scraping the internet off public data. They now probably pay for access, especially to companies that hold the data. Even in the latter case, the content creators probably don't see anything because they signed away their rights using whatever free service they uploaded their work / comment to. In hacker news' case I'm sure some bot is scraping my prose right now and training something with it, which I'm totally fine with because the act of trying to rent seek my 0.00001 cent of value in this post is not worth the detriment to AI advancement.

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

#272

Post by sobellian »

gettingoverit wrote: post #257
sobellian wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's advocating for the government seizing ownership of the means of production without compensation. That sounds pretty communist to me.

Do you propose taxpayers to shoulder compensations to AI companies that robbed them of data and jobs? I guess not being absurd is communist now :)

I'm not proposing anything. I don't think it's the government's remit to be honest. But government seizing the means of production is literally the definition of communism.

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

#273

Post by DerArzt »

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.

Aaron Swartz?

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

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

#274

Post by ethbr1 »

pessimizer wrote: post #201
fny wrote: post #22

> A.I. is built on our collective intelligence: our books, songs, artwork, journalism, computer code, scientific research, videos, conversations, images and ideas spanning generations I know many here would scoff at nationalizing a private company, but AI is a usurpation of human knowledge and quite literally at times. (Every AI company was embroiled in copyright lawsuits and lord knows what Qwen et al are up to.) In…

> Should not there be a tax to offset the "frictional" unemployment? Absolutely not. That's like taxing shovels because people were digging with their hands. The result is just more people having to dig with their hands, the fact that 7/8ths of people who now dig with their hands will starve because shovels have been introduced is a choice that we are making. We are choosing not to feed them. Creating an unnecessary…

> the fact that 7/8ths of people who now dig with their hands will starve because shovels have been introduced is a choice that we are making. We are choosing not to feed them

The unfortunate truth of western economic history is that capital does not willingly share its profits unless forced to (by government or labor).

The core point here is about power.

Assuming AI takes off and automates large sections of the economy, who gets to have control over those entities?

It seems a bit premature to identify the current major AI labs as inevitably being the ones to benefit.

But I am sympathetic to the idea that having the public as a (mostly) silent partner, both in profits and control, is prudent.

Where it gets dangerous is how "the public's" equity share is represented and by whom.

F.ex. I'd be vociferously opposed to the current kleptomaniacal US administration being able to wield 50% control

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

#275

Post by ethbr1 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
vrganj wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The oil is on Alaska/Norway's land These AI companies are on American land.

The funny thing about data is... it can move across borders a lot better than oil deposits...

Data can.

Data centers at scale, less so.

But I suppose that's why Altman and Musk have been cozying up to autocratic Middle Eastern regimes and dreaming about AI in space...

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

#276

Post by lostmsu »

DerArzt wrote: post #273
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.

Aaron Swartz? Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

Are you asking me to find evidence counter to my understanding of situation? Show that he was prosecuted for copying. From a quick skim I'm in doubt anything he was found guilty of is copying.

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

#277

Post by AlwaysRock »

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…

LLMs have been trained on the collective output of the global population. That is why.

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

#278

Post by keeda »

I'm sympathetic to the argument that AI is built without recompense on the work of all humanity, but anyone else think that's a lot of words to say "government backstop"? ;-)

Personally, I'm very bullish on AI but it's not so clear that the frontier labs have (so far) a business model that justifies their valuations. Having the government own a substantial stake in them sounds like it could set up some very perverse incentives.

Furthermore a significant ownership stake also comes with a degree of control, and we do not want any government to have that much control over what is going to be THE biggest influence vector in the history of humanity.

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

#279

Post by mrdependable »

csallen wrote: post #268
mrdependable wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

I suppose if Spaghetti Inc and Olive Garden were in the business of creating and licensing recipes, they would both be in trouble. But they are selling labor and ingredients, which is what people are paying for. Also, pizza and spaghetti have been around a long time and patents don't last forever, so I don't see how this applies.

Maybe a better example would be to explain how drug companies are able to cover the cost of research and development, or how Studio Ghibli is able to invest in animating a movie that anyone can sell. Should everyone provide the full suite of services a business needs in order to earn a profit? That seems like an inefficient way to organize the economy. The mechanical engineer also has to be a marketer or else he doesn't deserve to be paid for an invention? How does that make sense?

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

You cut the sentence that answers the question.

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

#280

Post by csallen »

mrdependable wrote: post #279
csallen wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

I suppose if Spaghetti Inc and Olive Garden were in the business of creating and licensing recipes, they would both be in trouble. But they are selling labor and ingredients, which is what people are paying for. Also, pizza and spaghetti have been around a long time and patents don't last forever, so I don't see how this applies. Maybe a better example would be to explain how drug companies are able to cover the cost…

You're essentially just saying that you can't imagine a world in which there are business models that are different than the existing business models today. Which I don't really get, because there are plenty of businesses that don't rely on patents or copyrights to do business. Plenty of ways to make money in other ways.

- Let's take music, for example, which is a form of content. Where do artists make most of their money? From touring, from actually going out and playing, which is a form of labor.

- Let's look at code, which is another form of content. How do tech startups make most of their money? From copyrighting and licensing their code? No. From hosting and serving it, which is a form of digital labor.

- Etc.

Drug companies I'm sure would find a way. They would just have to transition from being intellectual property holders (making money on high margins) to being service and manufacturing specialists. But people would find a way to make a profit, just like they do in every other competitive industry.

The idea that you need copyrights and patents in order to spur investment, research, creativity, or capitalistic enterprise is completely false, and thoroughly disproven.

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