AI learning and copyright law

Re “AI investors want to trample on copyright law,” column, Nov. 19

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, quoted by Michael Hiltzik, makes an excellent point: “There are no authors of copyrighted material that did not learn from copyrighted works, be it in manuscripts, art or music.”

Khosla goes on: “All humans train on cumulative learning from many past works by other humans. [Artificial intelligence] may train on just a larger set of past works and be subject to similar rules and constraints but no more and no different.”

The purpose of copyright law is to ensure that creators can make a living from their work. If others could copy and republish, they could undersell the originator, and everyone would buy the cheaper copy.

Over the years efforts have been made to extend copyright to include control over anything that is done with a work, but that is a foul idea. An author may prefer it if my neighbor buys a copy of a book instead of borrowing it from me, but at the root of this is our liberty.

An author loses nothing when a computer reads a book.

Rory Johnston Hollywood

I agree 100% with Hiltzik. AI is predatory capitalism on steroids.

If allowed to function without stronger legal restraints, AI executives will gradually assume as their own the works of many artists and writers who are already well below them in our economic system. It will inevitably create a new form of economic servitude.

Equally important, it will eliminate the counterbalancing influence of the arts and literature on our nation’s soul and spirit. The efforts of many authors and artists will be legally stolen and rendered the property of those who had nothing to do with creating it.

The result will be rampant, destructive materialism unlike anything we have seen since 19th century robber barons plundered our nation’s wealth and claimed it as their own. Dennis M. Clausen

Escondido