Capital will always try to use its influence on the political apparatus to push for "market regulations" that make it harder for newcomers to enter into an existing market, thereby stabilising existing monopolies and oligopolies. Amok machines and robot rebellions are not the real dangers of AI, it's just what #Capitalism does all the time, anyway. The real problem is that Big Money is trying to keep newcomers out of #AI while they're still figuring out how to sell it for profit. 🧵
The real danger of #AI is that most of the large machine learning models are closed to the public, nobody gets to see the source code or the training data, and in most cases, not even the actual software runs on the local machine, meaning everything you can do while interacting with the AI model can be controlled and monitored by some commercial company. This only works because of a legal fiction called "intellectual property". 🧵
'Intellectual property' is bullshit. Anything that can be copied will be copied, anything that can be cut up and remixed will be taken apart to create new things out of it. The problem is that the #AI companies want the software to be their I.P.--I say, let's regulate the shit out of AI before it even becomes a serious market. Create laws that force all sufficiently advanced machine learning into the public domain, with free open source licenses for every piece of code... 🧵
You'll get more small models that can be used on your own computer that way and fewer big ones, and you get more actually useful AI and less useless bullshit. You'll get fewer big companies and more small garage businesses. You'll get more efficient designs instead of bloated ones which just scrape the entire Internet for data. #AI is not a monster, it's just a fancy name for a set of digital powertools. We need to get these tools into the hands of the people, not the corporations. 🧵
And we need people to learn how to play with #AI toys in ways that break them and behave them in weird ways so that they understand that these models are not actually intelligent, they're just mimicking a part of what intelligence can do. We're storytelling apes, and if something can tell us a good story, we're likely to think it's intelligent even if there is no actual mind to be found. I think if you want to see real electronic intelligence, look into autonomous robotics. 🧵
One more thing: Things that have been created by generative systems should not be anybody's I.P., of course. If it has been created by a machine, it belongs in the public domain. If, however, the #AI is just part of an actual human being's bigger creative process, they can, of course, claim I.P.--as silly as that is, since I.P. only really works for the rich. I.P. lets you terrorise #fanart and #fanfic groups if you're rich and famous, it doesn't help a struggling artist against the industry. 🧵
@LordCaramac You seem to be missing the part where these systems are built on the backs of exploited artists who never got a say in the matter and labour exploitation in poor countries in particular.
Making labour exploitation more accessible is not a good thing, actually.
