How Does One Impede US AI Progress? Have a Government Meeting?

November 1, 2023

This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.

The Washington Post may be sparking a litigation hoedown. How can a newspaper give legal eagles an opportunity to buy a private island and not worry about the cost of LexisNexis searches? The answer may be in “AI Researchers Uncover Ethical, Legal Risks to Using Popular Data Sets.” The UK’s efforts to get a group to corral smart software are interesting. Lawyers may be the foot that slows AI traffic on the new Information Superhighway.

The Washington Post reports:

The advent of chatbots that can answer questions and mimic human speech has kicked off a race to build bigger and better generative AI models. It has also triggered questions around copyright and fair use of text taken off the internet, a key component of the massive corpus of data required to train large AI systems. But without proper licensing, developers are in the dark about potential copyright restrictions, limitations on commercial use or requirements to credit a data set’s creators.

There is nothing like jumping in a lake with the local Polar Bears Club to spark investor concern about paying big fines. The chills and thrills of the cold water create a heightened state of awareness.

The article continues:

But without proper licensing, developers are in the dark about potential copyright restrictions, limitations on commercial use or requirements to credit a data set’s creators.

How’s the water this morning?

Several observations:

A collision between the compunction to innovate in AI and the risk of legal liability seems likely
Innovators will forge ahead and investors will have to figure out the risks by looking for legal eagles and big sharks lurking below the surface
Whatever happens in North America and Western Europe will not slow the pace of investment into AI in the Middle East and China.
Are there unpopular data sets perhaps generated by biased smart software?

Uncertainty and risk. Thanks, AI innovators.

Stephen E Arnold, November 1, 2023

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Legal matters, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.