2,854 karma · joined December 31, 2013
In tech we’re used to IP law. In entertainment, there is unsurprisingly a whole area of case law on image and likeness.
Tech will need to understand this—and the areas of domain specific case law in many, many other fields—if AI is really to be adopted by the entire world.
Her voice alone didn’t get her there — she did. That’s why celebrities are so protective about how their likeness is used: their personal brand is their asset.
There’s established legal precedent on exactly this—even in the case they didn’t train on her likeness, if it can reasonably be suspected by an unknowing observer that she personally has lent her voice to this, she has a strong case. Even OpenAI knew this, or they would not have asked in the first place.
In our government, that’s a big part of what the president’s role is. “Bully pulpit” and all that. Presidents do it every day, for smaller and higher profile cases.
At that level, it’s all negotiation. If they didn’t want (or feared the) scrutiny, corporate interests wouldn’t have started the negotiation in the first place. They know it looks bad if Biden doesn’t respond, and that he must in some way. They’re just betting that he won’t start with such a strong gambit, because corporations are no longer afraid of our government, and haven’t been for decades.
The pure shock of the prospect of breaking them up would spook investors, tank their stock, put both CEOs on the defensive, and force them back in line, and everything would get resolved nicely with a face to face meeting and a handshake.
Whether it’s merited or not is not the point. Purely from a governance standpoint, as a citizen I hate to see corporate interests trying and succeeding to usurp government and societal norms.
Sometimes examples need to be made so others know not to make the same mistake.
I think the State should stay out of religion’s business entirely (that also means no “religious freedom” exemptions to treat others like second-class citizens that the evangelical right has been winning recently), along with universities too.
Leave both organizations tax-exempt, but they should not receive any public funds for any reason, nor get any other special protections from the government, lest there’s an explicit agreement to pay it back in the form of bonds or loans. Publicly-funded research at private institutions could remain the same as it is, with the caveat that results by-default should be public to all, rather than locked behind institutional paywalls.
(State universities are a valid edge case, but I’m specifically talking about private non-government organizations here)
Like all things, it’s about finding a balance. American, or any other, AI isn’t free from the global system which exists around us— capitalism.
In more recent history, Exxon has a checkered past when it comes to using force against sovereign citizens, often employing paramilitary organizations to guard oil fields [1] to more recently abusing international court systems to disbar and jail the lawyer which successfully secured judgements against them [2]
And at this very moment, right now, is the ongoing genocide in the Congo due to rare earth mineral mining [3]
Everything I link here is quite frankly the tip of the iceberg, not the end-all-be-all, but meant to provide a jumping off point should you want to research how often private capital and genocide go hand in hand.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusations_of_ExxonMobil_hu...
[2] https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/28/chevron-lawy...
[3] https://republic.com.ng/october-november-2023/congo-cobalt-g...
No pre-set plan, no parental supervision, just a “I’m going to go meet my friends on this summer day, I’ll be back before dinner.” For purposes of illustration, assume these kids are aged 9-14, or thereabouts. Too young to drive, too old to be doted over every minute of the day.
If you would (and I hope you would!), would their friends’ parents? Would they be able to go casually knock on their friends’ doors (or even neighbors’ doors), be it biking or walking, and socialize, like kids do?
My guess is probably not. And that’s not the kids’ doing— that’s OUR doing. If parents really wanted their kids to go outside and explore, that would be the norm. But for far too many kids it’s not, because parents don’t want it to be: they’re worried about their kid getting hit by a car, kidnapped, getting in trouble, learning a lesson, the list goes on and on. The built environment reflects that kids are not expected to be outside, as if we’ve kid-proofed it. And so even if you want your kid to play outside, no one else is, and of course no kid wants to play alone!
Ironically, you would probably see more kids out and about, safe to be kids, in gasp New York City than in “safe” suburbia, from my own anecdotal experience.
Also, Texas even specifically cites puberty-blockers (which are reversible…) within the list of punishable offenses, so even Texas qualifies it as trans-healthcare, so your opinion is not particularly relevant.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/13/1098779201/texas-supreme-cour...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/23/texas-tra...
Or the fact that ceremonial graduation garb in the EU and US, from the robes to the caps, is also based in Arab tradition.
The medieval Enlightenment and subsequent Renaissance was huge for Europe, yes, but just as important to realize today is that a lot of it was taking heavy inspiration from other cultures and regions and “Europeanizing” it and then calling it their own (I.E. a cultural exchange)
Cuba is perhaps an interesting case study – and maybe it would be a lot more successful than it is today if it weren't so heavily sanctioned and embargoed by the United States – given that it's in a lot of ways still in its Cold War era. But it's hard to deny that for all the resources they've been stripped of (and attempted US-backed coups, and a non-mutually-agreed-US military base / prison on their land), that they've found some modern degree of success for what they have: very high education rates due to universal education, universal healthcare that is ahead of US-aligned peer-countries in the Caribbean, a respected culture of exporting medical professionals around the world, developed their own (effective) covid vaccine because the US sanctioned them from receiving any significant doses and now have the highest vaccination rate in the world, rising per capita gdp and household wealth... and they are, technically/in-name and more-so since the passing of Castro, a democracy (though the US government would say otherwise, but in my opinion if you'd consider modern-day Turkey, Ukraine, Hungary, or Poland a western democracy then so is Cuba), and yet also communist in most facets.
That all changed with the advent of hooks [React and Vue],
which handle state in a very different fashion. Many
frameworks started experimenting with their own
implementations of hooks, but we quickly concluded it
wasn't a direction we wanted to go in
...
We can just use the language. Updating some count value — and
all the things that depend on it — should be as simple as
this:
count += 1;