Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

> The best outcome of AI is if it delivers huge amounts of value to society but no profit to anyone.

geohot should use language better imho - this idea of his is called a commons. And i do think that AI could be a commons. But as with most commons, there's always a tragedy associated with it.

Unless the gov't makes sure such a commons is kept clean, and available to everyone, this tragedy will always happen.

> Then people figured out how to monetize it. It was a race to extract every tiny bit of value, and now we have today’s Internet. Can this play out differently with AI?

But i think today's internet was better than back in the 2000. Now i have a video platform for which there's next to zero lag, plays high definition, and most importantly, free for me to use (not to mention it became a source of revenue for a lot of creators).

The old internet still exists, if one chooses to visit them. It's just like the wild west still exists, if one chooses to live that way. Except nobody _wants_ to.

So for the AI to be a commons, like the implied commons that the internet could've been, another entity would need to be solely responsible for, and regulate it.

It is worth reading back on the origin of the phrase 'tragedy of the commons'.

There is little evidence that commons always have a tragedy associated with them. The term itself was coined in order to facilitate a transfer of commons from the communities which looked after them to the crown and the gentry. This process was called the 'enclosure'.

The degradation of the land was not due to the self regulating commons, it was and is due to the commercial imperative for continuous and rising returns on the capital investment. The commons version of the internet was great early on because there was no commercial imperative. Though the commercial imperative creates more throughout (just like with farmland), it also destroys the landscape and the communities which supported it.

No, that isn’t a “commons”. And a commons in terms of the “tragedy of commons” isn’t well defined either. And the “tragedy of the commons” isn’t well supported either.

For example, sunlight. Sunlight delivers huge value to society but profit to no one. According to your claims that is a “commons”. And according to your theory unless a government manages sunlight it will always result in a “tragedy of commons”.

But we can even extend this to human created stuff. Especially scientific and mathematical knowledge. Lots of knowledge has been created that benefits everyone but does not deliver profit to anyone. For example calculating the area of a rectangle or a triangle.

These things still fit your definition of a “commons” being things that “deliver huge value to society but no profit to anyone”.

> Sunlight delivers huge value to society but profit to no one. According to your claims that is a “commons”. And according to your theory unless a government manages sunlight it will always result in a “tragedy of commons”.

or perhaps the tragedy hasn't happened yet. And in any case, humans barely harvest the sunlight at the moment. So it might yet happen in the future. What if by building a dyson swarm, the sunlight becomes owned? Would that not be a tragedy then?

> These things still fit your definition of a “commons” being things that “deliver huge value to society but no profit to anyone”.

And we get increasingly fewer and fewer of these knowledge today imho, thanks to a tragedy called IP law.

So i do claim that my definition of commons is inline with the idea of commons, and that tragedy of the commons can (and probably will) still happen.

Well, access to sunlight is already a problem in high density residential areas. When you're surrounded by tall buildings in every direction, it's hard to get sunlight in your house.

And this is covered by building codes (and labor codes in case of commercial use).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com