Technology is not the problem, protecting creators is

[TreChriron]

Disclaimer: I work for a blockchain development company.

I feel like blockchain and AI are getting a bad rap. These are just tools. How people are programming them and using them allows for charlatans and crooks to leverage the tech for harm.

For example; AI generated art utilizing only an individual's input to generate it, would just be another tool in your toolbox (like illustrator or photoshop). Instead, developers sourced the internet to STEAL artists art to seed their AI. This is wrong. The source is wrong. The AI is just a program.

If we keep discussing AI as the problem, the original crime will never be addressed. It should be illegal to leverage other people's work to seed your AI.

In the future, I see creators offering licenses and art pieces for customers to buy with the express permission to use for AI seeds (similarly to royalty-free markets). This could create a whole new avenue of revenue for creators. But first, we have to create laws that protect artists from theft.

AI used to help you check your grammar or spelling would be a very useful tool. Also one that helps you proofread your product. Again, it's the sourcing of "public" writing that makes it problematic. If we all owned the sourcing of our own AI tools, and writers could provide samples or works expressly for use in AI sourcing, then we would have an equitable market template vs. leveraging AI to create whole new works from other non-credited non-compensated sources. A programmer could easily prevent AI from making fully created new works, and instead limit it to more acceptable uses.

Blockchain is just an algorithm that verifies transactions on that platform. The big goals are distributed applications that can't be shutdown from a single source. In some cases it's also about distributed data that improves redundancy and performance. It functions like a cloud platform like AWS / GCS / or Azure. It's just usually distributed across all those cloud platforms! Transactions are transparent, available for anyone to query. Even with the development of special "transaction anonymizers" security firms have figured out a way to follow transactions, recovering funds for hacked users or preventing embargoed countries from leveraging crypto to fund themselves. It's very difficult to hide transactions. Sure blockchain is the source of cryptocurrencies and YES these have been used by crooks to rob people. But it does way more than that, and most of it just a useful way of creating a computing platform.

I believe that creators need to agitate for ownership or sources, and restrictions on sourcing. There should be legal restrictions on using AI to create "new" "original" works based on other's works.

It's no different than someone mixing together several clips from TV or movies and making a whole new video. That is IP theft. AI and blockchains are tools. People using them with stolen sources should be just as legally liable than anyone using any technology that has come before it. Don't fear the technology. Instead, advocate for laws protecting creator's IP and rights. I believe if we focus on that problem, it won't matter what technologies appear in the future, we will have laid the groundwork to protect creators.

 

[John Dallman]

Sure blockchain is the source of cryptocurrencies and YES these have been used by crooks to rob people. But it does way more than that, and most of it just a useful way of creating a computing platform.

Cryptocurrencies, including NFTs, are a lost cause. There has been so much fraud, and so many Ponzi schemes, that nobody with any sense will have anything to do with them. Their only lasting uses are speculation, based on greater fool theory, and crime.

Please quote an example of another blockchain application that is operating productively, at a large scale, and demonstrating advantages over a central database. As far as I know, there aren't any. I have tried creating concepts for blockchain applications in my corner of the software industry, and they did not stand up to evaluation.

 

[Rabulias]

I am by no means an expert, but I will weigh in just the same (it is the Internet). The energy requirements and general inefficiency of blockchain (in terms of transactions per second) make it a sub-optimal choice. There is nothing blockchain can do that cannot be accomplished with a well-designed and properly secured database application, at a fraction of the environmental impact and thousands of secure transactions per second. Blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.

 

[ichabod]

If we all owned the sourcing of our own AI tools, and writers could provide samples or works expressly for use in AI sourcing, then we would have an equitable market template vs. leveraging AI to create whole new works from other non-credited non-compensated sources.

We're not going to get that, because that would be expensive, and AI is being looked at for cheap solutions. Furthermore, that doesn't solve bias problems. Just because you are paying for your training sets doesn't mean your training sets aren't biased.

A programmer could easily prevent AI from making fully created new works, and instead limit it to more acceptable uses.

A programmer can do that. But will a business or individual looking for easy money do that?

 

[Scribe]

Yes, things COULD in theory be used for good.

The actual implementation? Good luck.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

AI and blockchains are tools.

This is true.

Unfortunately both are tools largely being use for either grift or outright theft.

The blockchains are a solution looking for a problem. I say that having worked extensively on a blockchain product for my company, note, not someone who is fundamentally opposed to the concept. The trouble is, they're too slow, too expensive to run (both inherent problems which cannot easily be avoided), and the fact that they effectively make ownership more public actually is adverse to the very rich people who could be primary drivers of usage. So their usage largely has been either entirely pointless, or in places where they're actively unhelpful, adding a time overhead and cost to something that would run more efficiently with centralized servers. The one place they could be useful, which is property ownership, and particularly the transfer thereof, where they genuinely could save people insane amounts of money and problems, their usage is directly opposed by the most wealthy property owners who absolutely do not want people in general to know what they own or what they paid for it, and especially not anything even suggestive about where they got that money from (a statistically significant part of higher-end property ownership is money-laundering). Nor do owners of large amounts of property want normal people to have easier time buying and selling houses - on the contrary, most want to make it as painful as possible so they can benefit from the price rises that friction brings.

So the only places where the blockchain could help, where it is not just pointless frippery or "X with extra steps", we can't use it because it doesn't benefit the mega-wealthy.

AI has been useful for a long time - again the company I work at has used it since long before LLMs became the topic du jour - but it's now basically being by the rich to steal from the middle and working classes. I don't say that in a political sense, but rather a very literal one - all the current successful AI tools are essentially stealing everything that's not nailed down (and some stuff that is!), providing absolutely no recompense whatsoever to the creators or owners of that stuff (most of whom are individuals or companies which are not very powerful or wealthy), and funnelling the money to a few tech execs or tech bros, most of whom were already extremely wealthy.

A big part of the problem is that if you simply label your company as a "tech company", and needlessly involve the blockchain, NFTs, AI or the like in what you're doing, you can achieve three things:

1) You can evade regulation in heavily-regulated industries. This is the typical "use case" for blockchain/crypto-based companies. Perhaps the actual majority of them, at this point, are attempting to essentially create unregulated banks. Please recall that banks are regulated because of the insane damage and horrific schemes they cause when unregulated. These "tech companies" are essentially seeking to do horrific or incredibly financially dangerous schemes which would be illegal for banks.

2) You can get funding from the huge cadres of absolute airheads who operate VC and PE firms, and even banks and the like, because of the completely irrational yet bizarrely widespread view among these people that almost with "tech company" written on it is inherently better and more deserving of funding than the exact same company without "tech company" written on it. This is helping to cause what is inevitably going to be a dotcom bubble again.

3) Politicians, particularly of the most brainless modernist kind (and on both sides of the centre), rush to slap public contracts into the hands of "tech companies" because they're "modern" and "forward looking" and offer "unique value" and so on.

A good example of the above would be Ambulnz* (seriously), an NY company which, in reality, is just pretty much a very basic shoddily-run, extremely low standards medical transport company, of which there are a basically infinite number. But by branding themselves a "tech company" and claiming to "use AI" (in unspecified ways), they've attracted tons of funding and public contracts which, were they called something like "Ambulance Inc" and just presented themselves as what they actually are - a dodgy medical transport company, they wouldn't have got much of either.

* = C.f. this week's episode of Trashfuture if you'd like more details.

 

[MichaelSomething]

AI isnt being used to help people,
It's being used to replace people.

 

[Ryujin]

This is true.

Unfortunately both are tools largely being use for either grift or outright theft.

The blockchains are a solution looking for a problem. I say that having worked extensively on a blockchain product for my company, note, not someone who is fundamentally to the concept. The trouble is, they're too slow, too expensive to run (both inherent problems which cannot easily be avoided), and the fact that they effectively make ownership more public actually is adverse to the very rich people who could be primary drivers of usage. So their usage largely has been either entirely pointless, or in places where they're actively unhelpful, adding a time overhead and cost to something that would run more efficiently with centralized servers. The one place they could be useful, which is property ownership, and particularly the transfer thereof, where they genuinely could save people insane amounts money and problems, their usage is directly opposed by most wealthy property who absolutely do not want people in general to know what they own. Nor do owners of large amounts of property want normal people to have easier time buying and selling houses - on the contrary, most want to make it as painful as possible so they can benefit.

So the only places where the blockchain could help, where it is not just pointless frippery or "X with extra steps", we can't use it because it doesn't benefit the mega-wealthy.

AI has been useful for a long time - again the company I work at has used it since long before LLMs became the topic du jour - but it's now basically being by the rich to steal from the middle and working classes. I don't say that in a political sense, but rather a very literal one - all the current successful AI tools are essentially stealing everything that's not nailed down (and some stuff that is!), providing absolutely no recompense whatsoever to the creators or owners of that stuff (most of whom are individuals or companies which are not very powerful or wealthy), and funnelling the money to a few tech execs or tech bros, most of whom were already extremely wealthy.

A big part of the problem is that if you simply label your company as a "tech company", and needlessly involve the blockchain, NFTs, AI or the like in what you're doing, you can achieve two things:

1) You can evade regulation in heavily-regulated industries. This is the typical "use case" for blockchain/crypto-based companies. Perhaps the actual majority of them, at this point, are attempting to essentially create unregulated banks. Please recall that banks are regulated because of the insane damage and horrific schemes they cause when unregulated. These "tech companies" are essentially seeking to do horrific or incredibly financially dangerous schemes which would be illegal for banks.

2) You can get funding from the huge cadres of absolute airheads who operate VC and PE firms, and even banks and the like, because of the completely irrational yet bizarrely widespread view among these people that almost with "tech company" written on it is inherently better and more deserving of funding than the exact same company without "tech company" written on it. This is helping to cause what is inevitably going to be a dotcom bubble again.

3) Politicians, particularly of the most brainless modernist kind (and on both sides of the centre), rush to slap public contracts into the hands of "tech companies" because they're "modern" and "forward looking" and offer "unique value" and so on.

A good example of the above would be Ambulnz* (seriously), an NY company which, in reality, is just pretty much a very basic shoddily-run, extremely low standards medical transport company, of which there are a basically infinite number. But by branding themselves a "tech company" and claiming to "use AI" (in unspecified ways), they've attracted tons of funding and public contracts which, were they called something like "Ambulance Inc" and just presented themselves as what they actually are - a dodgy medical transport company, they wouldn't have got much of either.

* = C.f. this week's episode of Trashfuture if you'd like more details.

This time, however, the "tech bubble collapse" will more closely resemble what happens when a pyramid scheme runs out of suckers.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah. Welcome to capitalism. Where everything that can be used to exploit people with less power will be. If it’s not profitable, it’s not worth doing. Short-term profits over long-term environmental collapse. Etc.

Technology is not the problem, capitalism is.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Please quote an example of another blockchain application that is operating productively, at a large scale, and demonstrating advantages over a central database. As far as I know, there aren't any. I have tried creating concepts for blockchain applications in my corner of the software industry, and they did not stand up to evaluation.

The blockchain is a solution to a problem that does not exist.

"What if we utilize the blockchain to do financial transactions, only far slower and consuming vastly more amounts of energy in the process" is an example.

AI isnt being used to help people,
It's being used to replace people.

Eventually they'll figure out that when nobody is working, nobody can buy the things they are making with AI. At that point it will be too late.

Yeah. Welcome to capitalism. Where everything that can be used to exploit people with less power will be. If it’s not profitable, it’s not worth doing. Short-term profits over long-term environmental collapse. Etc.

Technology is not the problem, capitalism is.

Also, required viewing for anybody who hasn't seen it. The video title talks about NFTs but it talks about Web 3.0 stuff more generally, including the blockchain.