Comment by richardw
My opinion isn’t fully formed but I currently think either all content producers have a claim (potentially workable as eg a discount), or only those who contribute should get access to AI’s.
And by all I mean the AI companies owe a huge debt to all humans who wrote or designed or drew anything. The vast majority of the benefit of this technology relies on volume: the billions of pages and lines of code we wrote for other humans, but have now been repurposed. This technology relies on bulk, which was mainly unprofessional or freely given content, by those who intended it for other humans. It was not 100% built only on the output of the few who charge for their exquisite words or designs, even if their output is higher quality.
Alternatively, let the AI companies go for it but everyone who uses any kind of AI should understand that they’re standing on the shoulders of the millions of developers and nonprofessional writers whose work has now been repurposed. Not the few artists and journalists. So those artists and journalists should both refuse to contribute to, and use, AI.
* I’ve written very little of this useful content, but would be happy to pay my share to those that have built what we have. I also turn off training on my content, but I pay a lot for models. Feel free to help me think through this with comments of your own.
I am following a similar mental path. I feel like the AI companies should be paying some sort of tariff on their output, going towards everyone on the planet who contributed anything at all. I don't think you can account for it more finely than that.