I do not understand what "theft" they are talking about. Those AI bots were scraping publicly accessible internet.
Publicly. Accessible.
Of course there are some parts of the publicly accessible internet which host content that may be considered illegal or has been obtained illegally. If those AI bots used such content as well, it is fair to call it out as wrong, in my opinion. But that is a separate topic.
Blindly calling scraping of publicly accessible internet a "theft" is, in my opinion, disingenuous. Especially when coming from a company operating a web search engine. Which itself has its own bots scraping the same parts of the internet 24/7.
Just because something is publicly accessible doesn't mean you can use it for free, or that it gives you rights to do whatever you want with it.
I can access a public park, but that doesn't necessarily give me the right to also bike on its sidewalks, or walk on the grass, or take some of the plants home with me.
> ... or has been obtained illegally
Similarly, content that is _accessible_ publicly may be illegal to _obtain_, these aren't mutually exclusive.
On the internet, you'll find there are terms of services and licenses. These restrict how you can use even publicly accessible material. Public availability doesn't give you a license to use it however you want.
> Public availability doesn't give you a license to use it however you want.
Of course. You listed complex examples from the real world. A park where walking is allowed but damaging the plants is not, for instance. There it makes sense to distinguish various activities that can be done in there and treat them separately.
But a website offers not much activities that you can do with it. You can read it. And that is about it.
A lot of sites have terms and conditions which explicitly disallow the use of site content as a part of another service.
If I have a bike and you start renting it out without my permission, surely you are committing theft of some sort.
If I build a complex custom bike and you start copying individual features from it on your custom bikes, surely you are committing theft of some sort, but whether it’s punishable depends on whether I’ve decided to go full corporate and protect my designs with patents and trademarks. You’ll be hard pressed to patent or trademark anything if I have published and documented prior art.
> A lot of sites have terms and conditions which explicitly disallow the use of site content as a part of another service.
Having terms and conditions in itself is irrelevant. Because in order for them to have any legal meaning, it is necessary for the other party to agree to them.
An agreement can be implicitly enforced by law. Or explicitly enforced by the website itself before giving access to the data. If neither of those are present, there is no enforced agreement. And agreeing to it becomes optional. Such sites should be considered, in my opinion, publicly accessible.
> If I have a bike and you start renting it out without my permission, surely you are committing theft of some sort.
Of course. But that is a bad analogy. No one is "renting" or "taking" anything from those websites. The bots are just reading it.
Therefore, a better analogy would be that you have a bike, parked out in the public, and people are looking at it. By looking at it they steal nothing from you. And the bike and all of its parts remain yours at all times. That is a suitable analogy, in my opinion, to what those bots are doing.
If I make the path behind my home publicly accessible so people in our town can get where they’re going easier, then Amazon builds a warehouse in our town and starts driving their trucks through my path 24/7, are you going to tell me “well you made it public access, they have a right to it same as everyone”?
With the advent of trillion dollar corporations selling extremely powerful general purpose imitation as a service, the meaning of “public access” has substantially changed, potentially invalidating the original agreement.
> are you going to tell me “well you made it public access, they have a right to it same as everyone”?
Yes. You can of course always close it to the public if the public usage bothers you. Or require those using it to agree to your terms and conditions where you restrict the speed, the weight, the time of the day, etc. Anything you want.
But if you choose to make it public with no restrictions, you have to be prepared to face the consequences.
Well, I posted a sign saying that but they’re still doing it, so I guess I’ll just close it to public access. Sucks for all of the people who now have to take a longer route. I hope they blame Amazon and not me.
The sad part is that the US could very well have had made such a trade and companionship deal with Canada themselves. Or even a better one, should they wanted to.
They used to have an excellent relationship with Canada, the UK, with the EU and with other civilized and democratic parts of the world. Until Trump started to undermine everything. And have selfish and unfair demands against everyone.
Now the US has a "comradeship" with Venezuela, Russia and North Korea.
I know that the above is perhaps an exaggeration. But the fact that the US now has worse relationships with almost all the civilized, democratic parts of the world and is bowing down to dictators and authoritarians does not come from external factors. It is all self-inflicted. Including the Iran war and its consequences.
The Disney World visitors are a specific group of people. The vast majority of them do not go there every week, nor every month. So the behavior you observe in there is not representative of the routine behavior of those people.
In other words, yes, they may pay 5x the price for a meal in an amusement park that they visit once a year. That does not mean they are willing to pay anything close to that for a meal every week or every day.
Most families I personally know who have gone it’s far from an annual trip. This will be their once in a lifetime or maybe once in a decade trip to Disney World. Literally saved up and planned for years for that “dream” family vacation.
Like when I was poor living in a trailer park with my parents going out to eat at Olive Garden or Red Lobster was a special occasion. We got to go to the “nice” restaurant and splurge. I doubt anyone who frequents HN from the US considers those to be “nice” or “high quality” restaurants. To some on HN Disney World is or could be an annual trip. For most others it’s a major event. I’m sure a significant amount of debt is accrued in a many cases to make their vacation a reality.
What does not help, in my opinion, is that the wealthy people often have enough resources to optimize their taxes to a point where they pay much lower rate than their fair share. While the others cannot afford to do that and pay the full rate. That in itself creates inequality.
If a base rate that the society agrees on is e.g. n %, then, in my opinion, everyone should pay that n %. But in reality the poor people pay n % because they have no time to even think about optimizing it. As they often work around the clock to make ends meet. While the richer people hire professionals to take care of their taxes and optimize them to the extent that they pay significantly less than n %. And then there are super rich, some of whom, such as Donald Trump, pay almost no taxes at all.
This is, in my opinion, wrong and significantly contributes to wealth inequality. And therefore I believe that it needs fixing.
>While the richer people hire professionals to take care of their taxes and optimize them to the extent that they pay significantly less than n %.
Source for this claim? All the claims I've seen involve treating unrealized gains as income, which is questionable methodology. For instance, if you founded a startup that then raised a few million dollars, at a valuation that values your shares at $1M, should your income be treated as $1M for that year, even if it didn't even hit your bank account and can't even spend it?
The specific mechanism may vary by country. It often involves personal service companies through which the people are paid rather than being paid directly as employees. This usually means that they pay significantly less social insurance and health insurance than what they would have paid if they were regular employees.
To clarify, I am using the term taxes in a very generic way where it covers not only the income taxes but also all kinds of fees collectable by the government. Including social insurance and health insurance.
> For instance, if you founded a startup that then raised a few million dollars, at a valuation that values your shares at $1M, should your income be treated as $1M for that year, even if it didn't even hit your bank account and can't even spend it?
Yes, though it requires some intelligent accounting. For instance, the ability for tax payers to defer certain obligations. However, the principle of "all income should be treated equal" is a necessary prerequisite to having a fair society. As it currently stands, the richest people don't pay much tax at all. Effective taxes on the billionaire class are like 8%-24%, less to way way less than the median tax payer.
IMO it's helpful to think this through to the post-wealth-tax equilibrium. In such a world, financial services will adapt and develop mechanisms for handling these seemingly tricky tax situations. IMO focusing on the minutia of how this is going to work is not useful in evaluating the macro effects of the policy.
The author is a tool, not a person. Tools cannot hold copyright. Copyright requires human authorship. Licenses depend on copyright as their essential mechanism.
Exactly. The person holding the camera is the author. Even if they just point the camera and press the record button.
In a similar way, I would not consider AI to be the "author" of the output they produce. Rather, the person prompting it should be considered the author, in my opinion.
Well, I do not have an account and when I open any profile on it right now, I cannot read it properly. I cannot click on posts. I cannot read replies. I cannot open images.
In my opinion, that is quite far from "functional".
Such a behavior alone is a sufficient justification, in my opinion, for the services like xcancel to exist.
And if the X social network does not want their content to be publicly available, fine. They are free to gate it behind a login.
There is no "gymnastics" needed. And those "middleware" layers are working just fine.
A user just opens the original X link in xcancel or some of the similar web service. And it will display the actual content only. Without ads and without other user-alienating features.
I think that it is also way simpler than "creating an account".
Suggesting a burner account to access the most basic functionality of a website is quite the technique to prove your point that the website is the most functional website.
> Your ability to continue to perform this work can be withdrawn at any time for any (or no) reason.
Thanks to the fact that there are no widespread stories about this actually occurring in practice, at least not yet, people do not take it as a relevant risk at the moment.
> You have little ability to validate that the work is being performed as expected and isn't being silently nerfed or outright subverted based on competitive considerations, bribes, overactive 'safety', or cost management.
Yes, I agree that this is a real concern that many people might rightfully have. And I am unaware of any way to mitigate this concern while using black box AI models. Because the only thing that their creators can do is to tell their customers: "trust us". But there is no way to objectively verify whether they serve tainted AI model responses or not.
I assume that these populist, extremist or dictator-willing-to-be politicians, not only in Germany but also in other European countries, in Russia, in the US, in Canada, as well as in China and elsewhere, are now all spending countless AI tokens to perfect their psychological manipulation and brainwashing techniques.
So that they can secure more and more fanatic followers who will vote for them no matter what. And so that they can remain in power for as long as possible.
To them, the "illegal immigration issue" is just a vehicle to gain power. Nothing more.
Because, from what I can see, their only and actual goal is to get in power. No matter the cost. Then abuse it to the benefit of them and their friends. And never ever give it up ever again.
> to them, the "illegal immigration issue" is just a vehicle to gain power. Nothing more.
If what you said made any sense whatsoever, then the parties currently in charge would have stopped it along time ago. Because if according to you that makes the far-right parties grow stronger, then why would anyone in their right mind not do anything about it?
Why wait for these parties to use this issue to fuel their growth?
The CDU has been trying to adopt more AfD positions and talking points, in the hopes of getting their votes. Meanwhile this keeps only strengthening the AfD, but the CDU would rather see the fascists in power than govern with anyone left of center.
I am unfamiliar with the details of German politics but if what you say is true, I am not surprised at all. I do not think that one can "win" against those parties by using their methods or adopting their positions. Because they are genuine at it. While the others would only fake it.
If the voters have a choice between a fake populist and a genuine populist, they would, in my opinion, naturally pick the genuine one.
I think that one of the reasons is that the "fakeness" is not very appealing to anyone. So they prefer the "real deal".
The research I've seen points to a different, but closely related causal chain - when the mainstream party adopts positions by the extreme party, some view it as a confirmation that the extreme party was right on this point, and might be right on others.
That issue is just one of many that they use and abuse to gain popularity. They have also spread lies about vaccines. They promote antisemitism, xenophobia, hate against the LGBTI people, historical revisionism (e.g. they say nice things about the Nazis), etc. They are even fighting against the wind turbines (or, as Donald Trump calls them, the "wind mills"). You cannot satisfy their demands by "fixing" one issue. Because they will always find another. The more absurd one, the better, it seems. I think that the reason is that those absurd causes are supported by people who are easy to manipulate. They know it. And they abuse it.
> Why wait for these parties to use this issue to fuel their growth?
No one wants to wait. But at the same time, I have not yet seen a successful recipe on how to root out their populist practices and render them ineffective against the general population at large. Because, unfortunately, there is still a considerable number of people who are falling for it. And it seems to me that no politician or party so far has been able to figure out a reliable way to protect those who are most vulnerable from being manipulated this way.
"They're not afraid to say climate change is fake".
"They're going to kick out the refugees".
"They're going to fix the retirement pensions".
"Back to the good old days".
I'm now reading that the AfD are saying in the press that "democracy demands the other parties work with them". I mean if someone got into power on the promise of taking away the right for women to vote, I guess all the adults in the room have to bow down to 'democracy'.
I personally think the general population is some small percentage of saintly people. And a small percentage of evil people. And a huge mass in the middle. That mass in the middle can be swayed to vote for almost anything.
I am unfamiliar with these matters and I am also unsure what specifically you are referring to.
But in general, if big companies get away with wrongdoings by receiving a gentle slap on their fingers, figuratively speaking, it will, in my opinion, lead to no change whatsoever.
Because if there are no material consequences for wrongdoings, they probably would not care. And there are very few kinds of actually material consequences for big companies. One of them being a really hefty fine.
> Because if there are no material consequences for wrongdoings, they probably would not care. And there are very few kinds of actually material consequences for big companies. One of them being a really hefty fine.
In mono/oligo-poly situations there's no really such a thing as "a really hefty fine". Either the cost will be happily trickled to the very public that are being wronged or the fine is effectively unsurvivably hefty, which noone would levy against a too-big-to-fail entity.
Look at the recent fine for Meta for example. Settling a case against one of the core monopolic drivers for a couple percentage points of early revenue is peanuts. I can't believe the exec suite[-s] are thinking anything else than "which anti-consumer behavior can we buy indulgence for?", they would be stupid not to at these discounted rates.
I'm half joking here, but at this point it feels like the only reasonable way to instill some fear against building Torment Nexus and cyberpunk dystopia would be personal criminal liability of the boards and exec suites that is impossible to settle.
Publicly. Accessible.
Of course there are some parts of the publicly accessible internet which host content that may be considered illegal or has been obtained illegally. If those AI bots used such content as well, it is fair to call it out as wrong, in my opinion. But that is a separate topic.
Blindly calling scraping of publicly accessible internet a "theft" is, in my opinion, disingenuous. Especially when coming from a company operating a web search engine. Which itself has its own bots scraping the same parts of the internet 24/7.
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