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The Internet Is About to Get Much Worse (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/5400607

This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons, where a common resource is harmed by the profit interests of individuals. The traditional example of this is a public field that cattle can graze upon. Without any limits, individual cattle owners have an incentive to overgraze the land, destroying its value to everybody.

We have commons on the internet, too. Despite all of its toxic corners, it is still full of vibrant portions that serve the public good — places like Wikipedia and Reddit forums, where volunteers often share knowledge in good faith and work hard to keep bad actors at bay.

But these commons are now being overgrazed by rapacious tech companies that seek to feed all of the human wisdom, expertise, humor, anecdotes and advice they find in these places into their for-profit A.I. systems.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I don't think the issue is corps feeding the internet into AI systems. The real issue is gatekeeping to information and only giving access to this information while milking the individual for data by trackers, money by subscriptions, and more money by ads (that we pay for with subscriptions).

Another larger issue that I fear is often ignored is the amount of control large corporations and in theory the government can have over us just by looking at our trace we leave in the internet. Just have a look at Russia and China for real world examples of this.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yep, the truly free and open internet is coming to an end. Corporations and governments have spent decades trying to claim control over it, and they're nearly there.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Which, ironically, will be greatly expedited by the drive to prohibit AI from learning from "unlicensed" materials. That will guarantee that the only AIs with a broad training set will be those owned by corporations that already control an enormous amount of training materials (Disney, Getty Images, etc.)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, right now the fight is between corporations and creators, but I feel like the future battle is going to be between corporate AIs and "pirated" ones, because Disney is going to keep a firm chokehold over what its generative AI can make, while the community ones will completely ignore copyright restrictions and just let people do whatever they want.

Not gonna need to worry about paywalls when you can get a pirated generative AI to create the superhero mashup you always wanted to watch as a child. That said, I could definitely see Disney and other piggybacking off of AI panic to extend copyright protection into spaces that were previously fair use.

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