I truly believe this is a frivolous lawsuit. Yeah.... it might be abused. But that isn't a good reason to not have the alert system. If I were a judge I'd tell them to come back after its been mis-used at least once. Then offer injunctive relief... not before.
Just add to the documentation at the beginning a disclaimer: All servers outlined within this document are consenting and mature and this is a voluntary arrangement as part of a healthy relationship. Any mention of inhumane things are role-play only.
So the whitehouse staff is claiming that his 5am shitter tweets are official whitehouse policy.... but that his personal account is not official government documentation and thus subject to freedom of speech concerns?
Sorry guys, you cannot have it both ways, either its the depraved private musings of a senile old man on his own personal account OR It is official government documentation and policy announcements, and thus you cannot censor whom has access to reply.
Agree 100%. We only know that other humans are self aware because: A) they tell us they are B) we ourselves are C) because we are all humans we can extrapolate B -> A as a proof.
This is duck typing at its finest... if an AI acts exactly as if it were self aware.... who are we to doubt it. We'll never be able to experience the world the same way this hypothetical AI would.
Honestly I would be MORE concerned about making a super intelligent self aware (and self preserving) AI by ACCIDENT than by design. As many have said, we actually don't have a clue how consciousness actually works, or how it emerges at this point. Therefore why do we assume the only way to achieve consciousness is by intentionally designing it? Remember how Terminator 2 outlined it: "The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug." Now I'm not saying this is an imminent threat, but its an example of: They weren't setting out to make an AI that was self aware.... but it happened as a side effect. I think that is all that Musk and other technologists are calling for, not to abort all AI research, but to have a serious adult discussion about how to progress safely.
You also must understand that as a company that utilizes AI in some way Zuckerberg has a vested interest in continuing to use that AI unhindered and to develop the technology in whatever way they see fit without restriction. So of course he would dismiss criticism that might someday effect his business model.
I don't believe in fear mongering, but I think in this case Musk is correct. With how fast computer software can be developed, and with how slow government moves (let alone understands), and with how thoroughly government regulators have been corrupted by corporate interests; it makes a lot of sense to have a serious conversation to set down some ground rules. Things that would trigger a re-evaluation of the technology. There is no sense putting limits on AI at the moment because clearly it is a long way off from overtly dangerous applications, but as Musk said, if we wait until AFTER a potentially dangerous application of AI has been disclosed it may be too late (due to entrenched interests). So maybe somethings along the lines of the following would be appropriate at this time: When AI in 5 years (or less) is estimated to be able to achieve X proficiency this automatically triggers a re-examination of the risks posed. Development of sentient AI --- forbidden (for example) Development of AI weapon systems --- forbidden
Yeah seriously..... that is the BEST safety feature for any car that has anything approaching self driving functionality. If the car gets confused..... and doesn't know how to handle the situation... PULL THE HELL OVER. Heck, if the driver is ignoring your safety warnings.... having the car come to a complete stop will get their attention. (or they are asleep... either way... good idea0
A likely part of the problem and why those "unworking" people you encountered were disruptive to society is because they were seen as "takers" and as such there was a social stigma associated to receiving that benefit. People who are called undeserving or lazy by the greater community tend to internalize that message and as such act out.
And you also have it wrong. If Uber is the client of the driver, then sure the driver may not be able to negotiate the pay rate with uber..... but they should be allowed to set their prices for their OWN customers on the other end of the transaction. So say Uber says "to use our service you must pay us $2 per transaction" OK, thats fine. If the driver wants to charge the people they are providing rides for $10 or $20 and then pay uber their flat $2 that is all well and good. BUT Uber is setting the prices that the driver WILL charge to their clients. This is what transforms it from an independent contractor arrangement into an employee -> employer relationship.
I've been forecasting exactly the thing mentioned in the blurb for years. There are only so many hours in the day for people to seek to be entertained. Entertainment comes in many forms television being one of them. So lets say that the hours people watch TV (or other media) per day is capped at 8hrs eg, every waking moment that isn't work or sleep. That means that television viewership can ONLY grow at the expense of other television viewership OR at the population growth rate. I would wager good money that the number of hours of media produced per year is going up at a rate substantially above the population growth rate.
Added to the fact that the old media content is still accessible the figure of "new content produced per year" should probably be adjusted up by some scaling factor of content produced in previous years (probably a belle curve since the older the show/movie gets the less likely it is to be seen).
A race to the bottom is ensuing.... the problem is its a race to the bottom in terms of quality.... not price. If they cannot get the viewership, they cannot get the money to support the show. Advertising revenue is more or less fixed at # of eyeballs on screen. This yields designing shows for the lowest common denominator.
Wouldn't it be nice if a tv show when its announced would tell you how long it was scheduled to run. Say if networks were forced to buy the show as a package and not piecemeal episode by episode or season by season? It would kinda force network execs to commit to shows or face legal recourse. Say if they cancel it after 2 seasons and it was budgeted for 5, they have to pay a big penalty to the show creator for breach of contract.
It might also have a beneficial effect on the show creators whereby they know how long the show is going to run for before starting and they can pace themselves. It could also help prevent "jumping the shark" where shows just go on endlessly because its still profitable but long ago lost all purpose.
Even 10 or 20yrs at max is WAYYYYYY too long given how fast technology and culture is moving along. Either something that is around 1 year in time or perhaps measured in how much profit it has generated could be a more useful measure. Perhaps an unregistered copyright lasts 1 month while a registered copyright lasts 1 year, or until the costs entered on the copyright registration form have been 200% met. Whichever comes first. I think a 200% profit is more than enough incentive to keep producing new works without allowing anyone to rest on their laurels for too long. I think copyright infringement would dramatically go down if the public had any sort of reasonable expectation that they could get the product for free at some point in the foreseeable future. Piracy is a symptom of a system that is so far out of whack as to be ludicrous.
I certainly hope that some major economic reforms occur within my lifetime. It would be intensely interesting, even if it proved fatal.... still interesting.
Or we could actually just ditch copyright since it doesn't really make sense in an age where copying things is instantaneous. While I do think authors and creators need to get paid this way no longer works, time to think of another business method. Maybe try a decade without copyright in any form. If suddenly no music/movies/books are created and authors are starving in the streets then we can reinstate it (modified). I think its time we gave market innovators a chance to come up with new business models that work in the digital age rather than forcing them to work against the system (with things like the GPL or other free licenses to work around copyright)
Sounds to me like we are getting a head start on blotting out the sun to stop those pesky solar powered robots from wiping us out. They will never find a power source as abundant as the sun. What could go wrong?
Interestingly enough, I liken the push for strong IP protection to be a new form of colonialism. Think of it this way, the countries that are pushing for strong IP laws want to have a lock down on culture, with these international agreements they can force all developing countries to buy culture from them because to create their own would be infringing (cause everything builds off what is already there). Meanwhile, raw materials "eg cheap shirts, cd players, toys etc" are sent from the developing countries to the big powers. In a similar way to colonialism where unprocessed goods were sold to the industrial powers and processed goods were sold back to the colonies.
This is the best solution for both patents and copyrights. It basically enshrines limited duration in a way the players can understand. An invention is valuable to the inventor, but it is also valuable to the public at large. The longer you keep that monopoly to yourself the more you owe to the public domain.
The only downside to this is inflation will gradually increase the length of time protection exists. Maybe it could be normalized to inflation?
This is basically what I've been worried about for the past 6 months ever since I watched a slew of youtube economics videos.
The capitalist system will collapse when people finally realize that 95% of work done is BS just to drive sales whereas the 5% is necessary to produce the goods everyone wants/needs.
HELL YEAH. Auto drivers don't have to be perfect... they just have to be better than the average jokers out there on the road. Difficult to get a comparison with so little data. We need more tests.
Basically what I see from the discussion so far, is that the solution is for game companies to lower their prices on new very quickly.
Say, they release the game at $70 on monday. By wednesday there will be used copies in circulation (for most titles), so they need to scale down the prices to used game prices at the same time. And keep them declining as the used retails cut those prices as well. It may not make them as much money per unit, but they will HAVE money instead of the second hand retailers.
Game companies effectively have 4 choices:
1) Make games that CANNOT be resold (eg bound to online accounts)
2) Make games that users DON'T want to resell
3) Kill first sale doctrine (or something similar)
4) Price compete with the used game sales. Just think of it as yet another version of pricing to the market. (just like region locking)
So far I haven't seen any retailers go with option 4. The price always drops 6-12months after release.... by then no one is buying, not even used.
.... is that people are not informed. If every person that wanted to sign up for services that make their money off advertising and user profiling and collecting your personal details and all that jazz, was actually informed in a real life example of what such company was going to collect and store, and derive and market from their use of that service. I think fewer people would use these services, or would opt for a paid version where they turned off all that tracking. The issue is, that these things are declared up front, in some arcane laywerspeak that is a EULA.... that no one reads cause its impossible to understand.
If however the EULA said "By using this site, and posting details about your life on it, you enable our company to find out what you had for breakfast, where you work, what your political views are, your criminal history, your relationship preferences and [half a dozen other things that might worry people]....." then people could understand what that meant, and possibly say "you know, I'm gonna pass on this".
Basically, people see FREE STUFF, and don't figure out what they are actually giving up to get that free stuff until wayyyyyyyy later.
A valid criticism. You should write to your representative and Senator. Let them know where you stand. Or better yet, start a Political Action Committee (PAC). By collecting $155,000 / year ($10 / year from only 15.5k people) your PAC could max out its contributions to the primary and general election campaigns of every incumbent (or their leading opponents) on the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet and the Senate Judiciary Committee. You may not get your way (especially if your message boils down to "copyright sucks!"), but you can be sure they'll listen. Taking a few steps of civic engagement would be much more positive (not to mention legal) than, for example, downloading the latest top-40 and claiming its justified because you have to go to the library, instead of Project Gutenberg, to get a Hemingway novel.
Can slashdot form a PAC? I'm sure there are 15k people here that care enough about copyright to do something like that, and I'd certainly spend $10 a year to maybe get something accomplished..... rather than just endlessly troll.
Slashdot Mirror
I truly believe this is a frivolous lawsuit. Yeah.... it might be abused. But that isn't a good reason to not have the alert system.
If I were a judge I'd tell them to come back after its been mis-used at least once. Then offer injunctive relief... not before.
Just add to the documentation at the beginning a disclaimer:
All servers outlined within this document are consenting and mature and this is a voluntary arrangement as part of a healthy relationship. Any mention of inhumane things are role-play only.
So the whitehouse staff is claiming that his 5am shitter tweets are official whitehouse policy.... but that his personal account is not official government documentation and thus subject to freedom of speech concerns?
Sorry guys, you cannot have it both ways, either its the depraved private musings of a senile old man on his own personal account
OR
It is official government documentation and policy announcements, and thus you cannot censor whom has access to reply.
Agree 100%.
We only know that other humans are self aware because:
A) they tell us they are
B) we ourselves are
C) because we are all humans we can extrapolate B -> A as a proof.
This is duck typing at its finest... if an AI acts exactly as if it were self aware.... who are we to doubt it. We'll never be able to experience the world the same way this hypothetical AI would.
Honestly I would be MORE concerned about making a super intelligent self aware (and self preserving) AI by ACCIDENT than by design.
As many have said, we actually don't have a clue how consciousness actually works, or how it emerges at this point. Therefore why do we assume the only way to achieve consciousness is by intentionally designing it?
Remember how Terminator 2 outlined it:
"The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."
Now I'm not saying this is an imminent threat, but its an example of:
They weren't setting out to make an AI that was self aware.... but it happened as a side effect.
I think that is all that Musk and other technologists are calling for, not to abort all AI research, but to have a serious adult discussion about how to progress safely.
You also must understand that as a company that utilizes AI in some way Zuckerberg has a vested interest in continuing to use that AI unhindered and to develop the technology in whatever way they see fit without restriction. So of course he would dismiss criticism that might someday effect his business model.
I don't believe in fear mongering, but I think in this case Musk is correct. With how fast computer software can be developed, and with how slow government moves (let alone understands), and with how thoroughly government regulators have been corrupted by corporate interests; it makes a lot of sense to have a serious conversation to set down some ground rules. Things that would trigger a re-evaluation of the technology. There is no sense putting limits on AI at the moment because clearly it is a long way off from overtly dangerous applications, but as Musk said, if we wait until AFTER a potentially dangerous application of AI has been disclosed it may be too late (due to entrenched interests).
So maybe somethings along the lines of the following would be appropriate at this time:
When AI in 5 years (or less) is estimated to be able to achieve X proficiency this automatically triggers a re-examination of the risks posed.
Development of sentient AI --- forbidden (for example)
Development of AI weapon systems --- forbidden
Yeah seriously..... that is the BEST safety feature for any car that has anything approaching self driving functionality. If the car gets confused..... and doesn't know how to handle the situation... PULL THE HELL OVER. Heck, if the driver is ignoring your safety warnings.... having the car come to a complete stop will get their attention. (or they are asleep... either way... good idea0
A likely part of the problem and why those "unworking" people you encountered were disruptive to society is because they were seen as "takers" and as such there was a social stigma associated to receiving that benefit.
People who are called undeserving or lazy by the greater community tend to internalize that message and as such act out.
Only in the case where contraceptives are unavailable.
And you also have it wrong.
If Uber is the client of the driver, then sure the driver may not be able to negotiate the pay rate with uber..... but they should be allowed to set their prices for their OWN customers on the other end of the transaction.
So say Uber says "to use our service you must pay us $2 per transaction"
OK, thats fine. If the driver wants to charge the people they are providing rides for $10 or $20 and then pay uber their flat $2 that is all well and good.
BUT Uber is setting the prices that the driver WILL charge to their clients.
This is what transforms it from an independent contractor arrangement into an employee -> employer relationship.
I've been forecasting exactly the thing mentioned in the blurb for years. There are only so many hours in the day for people to seek to be entertained. Entertainment comes in many forms television being one of them. So lets say that the hours people watch TV (or other media) per day is capped at 8hrs eg, every waking moment that isn't work or sleep. That means that television viewership can ONLY grow at the expense of other television viewership OR at the population growth rate. I would wager good money that the number of hours of media produced per year is going up at a rate substantially above the population growth rate.
Added to the fact that the old media content is still accessible the figure of "new content produced per year" should probably be adjusted up by some scaling factor of content produced in previous years (probably a belle curve since the older the show/movie gets the less likely it is to be seen).
A race to the bottom is ensuing.... the problem is its a race to the bottom in terms of quality.... not price. If they cannot get the viewership, they cannot get the money to support the show. Advertising revenue is more or less fixed at # of eyeballs on screen. This yields designing shows for the lowest common denominator.
Wouldn't it be nice if a tv show when its announced would tell you how long it was scheduled to run. Say if networks were forced to buy the show as a package and not piecemeal episode by episode or season by season? It would kinda force network execs to commit to shows or face legal recourse. Say if they cancel it after 2 seasons and it was budgeted for 5, they have to pay a big penalty to the show creator for breach of contract.
It might also have a beneficial effect on the show creators whereby they know how long the show is going to run for before starting and they can pace themselves. It could also help prevent "jumping the shark" where shows just go on endlessly because its still profitable but long ago lost all purpose.
Even 10 or 20yrs at max is WAYYYYYY too long given how fast technology and culture is moving along. Either something that is around 1 year in time or perhaps measured in how much profit it has generated could be a more useful measure. Perhaps an unregistered copyright lasts 1 month while a registered copyright lasts 1 year, or until the costs entered on the copyright registration form have been 200% met. Whichever comes first. I think a 200% profit is more than enough incentive to keep producing new works without allowing anyone to rest on their laurels for too long. I think copyright infringement would dramatically go down if the public had any sort of reasonable expectation that they could get the product for free at some point in the foreseeable future. Piracy is a symptom of a system that is so far out of whack as to be ludicrous.
I certainly hope that some major economic reforms occur within my lifetime. It would be intensely interesting, even if it proved fatal.... still interesting.
Or we could actually just ditch copyright since it doesn't really make sense in an age where copying things is instantaneous. While I do think authors and creators need to get paid this way no longer works, time to think of another business method. Maybe try a decade without copyright in any form. If suddenly no music/movies/books are created and authors are starving in the streets then we can reinstate it (modified). I think its time we gave market innovators a chance to come up with new business models that work in the digital age rather than forcing them to work against the system (with things like the GPL or other free licenses to work around copyright)
Sounds to me like we are getting a head start on blotting out the sun to stop those pesky solar powered robots from wiping us out. They will never find a power source as abundant as the sun. What could go wrong?
Interestingly enough, I liken the push for strong IP protection to be a new form of colonialism. Think of it this way, the countries that are pushing for strong IP laws want to have a lock down on culture, with these international agreements they can force all developing countries to buy culture from them because to create their own would be infringing (cause everything builds off what is already there). Meanwhile, raw materials "eg cheap shirts, cd players, toys etc" are sent from the developing countries to the big powers. In a similar way to colonialism where unprocessed goods were sold to the industrial powers and processed goods were sold back to the colonies.
PLACEBO EFFECT, in a negative way. People will complain about anything and everything given a chance.
This is the best solution for both patents and copyrights. It basically enshrines limited duration in a way the players can understand. An invention is valuable to the inventor, but it is also valuable to the public at large. The longer you keep that monopoly to yourself the more you owe to the public domain. The only downside to this is inflation will gradually increase the length of time protection exists. Maybe it could be normalized to inflation?
Best counter argument for supply side economics I've seen in a long while.
This is basically what I've been worried about for the past 6 months ever since I watched a slew of youtube economics videos. The capitalist system will collapse when people finally realize that 95% of work done is BS just to drive sales whereas the 5% is necessary to produce the goods everyone wants/needs.
That would be the single greatest improvement to long games I have ever heard of.
HELL YEAH. Auto drivers don't have to be perfect... they just have to be better than the average jokers out there on the road. Difficult to get a comparison with so little data. We need more tests.
Basically what I see from the discussion so far, is that the solution is for game companies to lower their prices on new very quickly.
Say, they release the game at $70 on monday. By wednesday there will be used copies in circulation (for most titles), so they need to scale down the prices to used game prices at the same time. And keep them declining as the used retails cut those prices as well. It may not make them as much money per unit, but they will HAVE money instead of the second hand retailers.
Game companies effectively have 4 choices:
1) Make games that CANNOT be resold (eg bound to online accounts)
2) Make games that users DON'T want to resell
3) Kill first sale doctrine (or something similar)
4) Price compete with the used game sales. Just think of it as yet another version of pricing to the market. (just like region locking)
So far I haven't seen any retailers go with option 4. The price always drops 6-12months after release.... by then no one is buying, not even used.
.... is that people are not informed. If every person that wanted to sign up for services that make their money off advertising and user profiling and collecting your personal details and all that jazz, was actually informed in a real life example of what such company was going to collect and store, and derive and market from their use of that service. I think fewer people would use these services, or would opt for a paid version where they turned off all that tracking. The issue is, that these things are declared up front, in some arcane laywerspeak that is a EULA.... that no one reads cause its impossible to understand. If however the EULA said "By using this site, and posting details about your life on it, you enable our company to find out what you had for breakfast, where you work, what your political views are, your criminal history, your relationship preferences and [half a dozen other things that might worry people]....." then people could understand what that meant, and possibly say "you know, I'm gonna pass on this". Basically, people see FREE STUFF, and don't figure out what they are actually giving up to get that free stuff until wayyyyyyyy later.
A valid criticism. You should write to your representative and Senator. Let them know where you stand. Or better yet, start a Political Action Committee (PAC). By collecting $155,000 / year ($10 / year from only 15.5k people) your PAC could max out its contributions to the primary and general election campaigns of every incumbent (or their leading opponents) on the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet and the Senate Judiciary Committee. You may not get your way (especially if your message boils down to "copyright sucks!"), but you can be sure they'll listen. Taking a few steps of civic engagement would be much more positive (not to mention legal) than, for example, downloading the latest top-40 and claiming its justified because you have to go to the library, instead of Project Gutenberg, to get a Hemingway novel.
Can slashdot form a PAC? I'm sure there are 15k people here that care enough about copyright to do something like that, and I'd certainly spend $10 a year to maybe get something accomplished..... rather than just endlessly troll.
May as well just ban it at that tax rate anyways. So same difference.