A Drop in the Ocean of Profit

This is kind of funny/not-so-funny, and just demonstrates that although we sometimes look at the zeroes in the fines handed out to big tech for infringements of all sorts and think they’re big numbers, it’s absolutely a drop in the bucket. It’s the very minor cost of doing business. It’s a bit shocking, really. Seven days and 3 hours.

One Day

One day, we will all just become a photo. We should do our best to leave a little more than that.

This thought came to me as I read an article recently about a man dying of Parkinson’s, who was sitting at a desk surrounded by old sepier photos of previous generatons.

A Landmark Case

In this age of GenAI, and what seemed to be the blatant and flagrant ignoring of copyright in the way OpenAI scooped up everything it could lay its hands on to build its ChatGPT model, this will be an extremely important landmark case to understand whether copyright actually means anything in this new age. Let’s just put it this way… if I wrote a book which ended up in some product or other, I’d expect some sort of recognition of my copyright and some sort of due payment for using my material to make someone else money. I think that’s a pretty straightforward expectation that has been in place for some time and I don’t think GenAI changes that too much, so it’ll be interesting to see how the courts handle this. It looks like NYT is not only hitting OpenAI up for the breach of copyright but also for taking business away from them off the back of that breach. Should be very interesting. One thing is for sure… the NYT is not a soft target OpenAI can ignore or placate with some sort of minor payout. They have both financial heft and a big voice.

Chaotic hype

The recent chaotic events at OpenAI have garnered a lot of commentary. It has certainly been interesting to see Microsoft’s approach to what was happening. What also becomes crystal clear is that the OpenAI board should pretty much accept that they have now become a big rubber stamp to whatever Sam Altman wants to do because there will never again be any circumstance under which they can hold him accountable for anything. This weird series of events has guaranteed him total control of the entity without any constraints going forward. It was an interesting governance setup to start with, and it really just became entirely redundant. I wonder what they talk about in Board meetings going forward? It’ll be fascinating to see how this rolls.

BS and Hype – the AI way

This is a terrific piece by Michael Small – a concise and clear critique which slices through the hype and BS we’re exposed to every day about AI. What is most disturbing is that much of this hype is emanating from tech companies (yes, I’m definitely including OpenAI in this list) who really should know better than most the limitations of the tools they’re building, and yet keep propagating totally fanciful pictures of the future.