The latest, we spoke about yesterday, was Sony and Warner going after Anthropic.
Their argument is basically that Anthropic's AI models, the ones we use to get answers to questions, scrape and bottom trawl the internet for information.
That information, including song lyrics, is often IP owned and produced by humans or companies.
So, scraping it and using it to sell as a product is theft.
Media companies in New Zealand take a similar view.
If the robot is scraping content produced, at cost, by a news business, then how is that not also theft?
But if you think about it, humans do this all the time. I do it every day. It's actually what I'm paid to do.
I ingest large amounts of information and then use it to inform interviews and content.
Lawyers do it for legal cases. Politicians do it. Businesses do it. We all do it in one way or another.
And we all use the information the internet provides for our own purposes. Usually, to make money.
Knowledge is power and content is king.
So, the question then becomes, what is the difference between us doing this and using this information and an AI model doing the same?
Surely Claude is committing no greater crime than the rest of us.
Of course, how they get their hands on the information is key.
If you're ripping it off bit torrent, then you might have other problems. But if you're getting it from a paid subscription, isn't that what we do?
In the news business you credit your sources. But not always. There's a point where the collective weight of the information you've consumed becomes your own thoughts and your own IP.
Are robots any different?
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
If AI is learning from modern lyrics, we're not going to make.
Many people think AI is the answer to everything.
Politicians want AI running the public sector and their rabid supporters are slathering at the idea of finally getting one back on all the public servants that have slighted them, by having them all SACKED.
That glee is often expressed in this website.
But they might have to think again and swallow that gloating.
It seems AI is extremely expensive to run, and the licensing is deliberately structured to squeeze the consumer.
It's unlikely there will be any saving.
I guess humans are also cheaper than "thieving robots".
Sorry to burst the bubble...
Ryan, I think the distinction is that intellectual property (I.P.) law protects only the tangible expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. Or to translate that into English, when you write your mum a letter complaining about the price of groceries, everyone is free to raise the same gripe with their own mum. What they can't do, is copy your letter. So you trawling the internet for content is just fine, as long as you don't duplicate the wording, images or sounds that someone (or something) else has created.
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