Uruguayan developer Tammara poses in front of text generated by (DigitalSimon) thanks to artificial intelligence before his (dSimon) performance at the Avignon Fringe Festival in Avignon on July 14, 2022・Shadow of Leites. (Photo by CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
Artificial intelligence would not exist without the vast knowledge of humans. Today's generative AI applications are built on such information extracted from across the Internet and in various databases, totaling about 300 billion words by at least one estimate.
This is a vast body of intellectual property, much of it created by generations of professional writers, polished by editors, and published by publishers of newspapers, magazines, books, and more.
It's hard to put an exact price on something like this, or even to measure the overall value of such a great library.
It should never be free.
However, this does not mean that OpenAI acknowledges that the use of all this data (much of which is subject to various copyrights) is fair use and that the original creators and owners of that knowledge and information are This is the assumption made when arguing that no compensation is needed.
If you go into a bookstore and steal not just some books, but all the books, that's a crime, right?
As a result, newspapers, including this newspaper, authors and a range of digital publishers are suing OpenAI to force them to pay for exploiting their works.
The public is not allowed to make copies of recent bestsellers and resell them with different covers. Nor can a studio stream a competitor's series just because it's on the internet and can be copied. If the owner allows, you may be able to license the material and, of course, purchase a copy, but even if you purchase a copy, you will not be able to reproduce and redistribute such work to the purchaser. No rights are given.
There are fundamental questions of ownership involved here.
For decades, newspapers were independent entities. They have written obituaries of local notables, recorded crimes committed, and followed disputes over public works projects. Almost every city in the United States accumulates a great treasure trove of knowledge every day.
Stealing journalism to create a new product clearly aimed at replacing news publishers, at a time when fair and balanced reporting and sharing a set of facts is more important than ever. This will further damage the news economy.
Weakening news publishers not only siphons revenue from publishers, but also has collateral effects on democracy, as it damages publishers' reputations by attributing false information to trusted publications. ing.
AI “hallucinations” occur when an AI app provides incorrect information in response to a user’s questions.
The rise of artificial intelligence may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean content creators shouldn't expect to get paid well.
OpenAI and its main backer Microsoft pay engineers to write code, and they certainly recognize the value of that code. In fact, OpenAI was recently valued at $90 billion.
Certainly, all the knowledge and information needed to train your app (develop the code, so to speak) is valuable.
Recognizing their value, these companies must be held accountable.
