A speech by Sulzberger of the NYTimes, summarized by Graham Lovelace.
In general Sulzberger verifies my feeling that publishers are the best defense against AI. Publishers don’t need to apologize for hating technology! Publishers started modern technology in 1455, and have been at the forefront ever since. Publishers also understand what’s especially new and especially bad about this latest bit of tech. Unlike other mass production tools, the Altman tool functions SPECIFICALLY AND SOLELY by stealing copyrights. Printing itself, whether paper or digital, doesn’t INTRINSICALLY vacuum up billions of properties.
Sulzberger: Their hijacking of the public square is made possible by the original sin that animates their AI products — a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale. Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the news organizations that created this work. And this happens not just once during the training process, but countless times every single day.
AI vs printing is exactly parallel to securitized mortgages vs a single loan. When you buy a house or print a book the honest way, you know who built the house or wrote the text, and you can be held responsible for paying the builder or writer. One payment for one piece of work. Securitizing sucks a whole lot of properties into a masher, grinds them up, and sells bits of the resulting mash. There’s no one-to-one connection or relationship.
Sulzberger then recommends the union or Mutual Benefit approach, which I’ve been pushing for a long time.
At the end he spoils it all by showing why he wants to fight Altman.
Sulzberger: Who else will go to the places where events are unfolding? Bring us firsthand accounts from the front lines of war? Equip us with reliable information in a public health crisis? Expose the high-flying company or political career built on a lie? Ensure debates about economic policies are informed by their impacts on real people? Who else can enrich all this work with hard-won expertise that adds insight and context, and deeply ingrained professional commitments to make each story as fair and accurate as possible?
Well, it sure as fuck isn’t the mainstream media. You hate Trump when he does normal political crap, and you LOVE him when he does horrible shit like 2020 or bombing Persia. You helped Trump and Fauci to SILENCE reliable information in 2020. You expose politicians and companies with an R label. You hide the sins of companies and politicians with a D label.
Polistra's Mill 