I actually see copyright and patents as a tiny socialist of the present composite system, i.e. 'to each according to his contribution'.
They're one of the small ways in which someone who actually does something gets a temporary monopoly on his little contribution, and it's something which is necessary to make the whole edifice function, because there is a need to ensure that people actually invent things and start companies, and if it were up to capital owners only, that wouldn't really happen. Ordinary people would have a very minimal incentive to use their intellect to discover genuinely novel things.
Public schooling is another, which is rather a socialist component, a communist component, a 'to each according to his need'.
But I suppose my view is consistent with a view that capitalism doesn't play nice with digital assets as well, but the present system does need these stabilising socialist and communist elements in order function and I think these socialist and communist components are genuine parts of the present system, just as capital ownership and wage labour are.
The real fundamental problem is that "digital assets" are bullshit.
An AI model is literally constructed by explicitly disrespecting copyright. The idea that a company gets to turn around and demand respect for their AI model's copyright is patently absurd.
I feel like this can be trivially worked around by fine tuning from the initially copyrighted weights. They’re not demanding copyright, they’re just keeping them secret. If Meta keeps releasing high quality open source models, I don’t expect the closed source models to have an advantage for long.
Intellectual property itself is a bad concept. Capitalism works for squeezing margins for bulk commodity production (largely on the expence of the worker), but for zero-marginal cost stuff it's a huge hinderance for progress.
But if you have cloud based models ... same with mainframes 30-40 years ago ... it doesn't matter. Because the power cloud gives to the model owners is 10x more than the strictest intellectual property laws do.
I don't believe, for example, that there's any intellectual property law that would let me yoink my intellectual property from you for any reason after you've bought and paid for it.
In other words: I think the capitalism discussion is kind of pointless here. Capitalism isn't what gives these companies power. It's the cloud. Mainframe computing 2.0.
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I cannot let me get tired of repeating this:
the underlying fundamental problem is that capitalism does not play nice with digital assets.
an AI model is a very valuable digital asset right now, so there's a covert war being fought over public access to this.
I actually see copyright and patents as a tiny socialist of the present composite system, i.e. 'to each according to his contribution'.
They're one of the small ways in which someone who actually does something gets a temporary monopoly on his little contribution, and it's something which is necessary to make the whole edifice function, because there is a need to ensure that people actually invent things and start companies, and if it were up to capital owners only, that wouldn't really happen. Ordinary people would have a very minimal incentive to use their intellect to discover genuinely novel things.
Public schooling is another, which is rather a socialist component, a communist component, a 'to each according to his need'.
But I suppose my view is consistent with a view that capitalism doesn't play nice with digital assets as well, but the present system does need these stabilising socialist and communist elements in order function and I think these socialist and communist components are genuine parts of the present system, just as capital ownership and wage labour are.
The real fundamental problem is that "digital assets" are bullshit.
An AI model is literally constructed by explicitly disrespecting copyright. The idea that a company gets to turn around and demand respect for their AI model's copyright is patently absurd.
I feel like this can be trivially worked around by fine tuning from the initially copyrighted weights. They’re not demanding copyright, they’re just keeping them secret. If Meta keeps releasing high quality open source models, I don’t expect the closed source models to have an advantage for long.
Intellectual property itself is a bad concept. Capitalism works for squeezing margins for bulk commodity production (largely on the expence of the worker), but for zero-marginal cost stuff it's a huge hinderance for progress.
But if you have cloud based models ... same with mainframes 30-40 years ago ... it doesn't matter. Because the power cloud gives to the model owners is 10x more than the strictest intellectual property laws do.
I don't believe, for example, that there's any intellectual property law that would let me yoink my intellectual property from you for any reason after you've bought and paid for it.
In other words: I think the capitalism discussion is kind of pointless here. Capitalism isn't what gives these companies power. It's the cloud. Mainframe computing 2.0.