AI will not be our god. If it brings our demise, it will be because of human greed and stupidity. I wrote somewhat extensively about how generative AI’s are trained a few months ago. But here’s a three bullet point recap. Generative AI, whether text, audio or images requires a massive amount of training data. The training data, is almost always created by humans who receive no compensation for their work. Most business models for generative AI compete with human creators. Stolen Ideas Not all AI training involves fundamental intellectual property infringement. At least one large company in this space is reportedly only using licensed stock images, and compensating artists; thanks Adobe. Also, the public domain exists, but that’s not how most generative AI is being trained. Training a generative AI takes huge archives of images and text. Adobe aside, most AI training data is “ripped from the net,” as the kids say. At least two large class action lawsuits are pending each against multiple companies in this new AI space 1, 2 over the use of copyrighted works. Separately Getty Images is suing Stability AI. That’s hardly an exhaustive list of pending AI, IP, litigation. Even without the conclusion of those lawsuits, artifacts of the human data stolen to build machines keep appearing. Wired traced an AI writing assistant’s use of a fanfiction sex trope to the original source. I highlighted a time when ChatGPT gave incorrect information from a single source. Futurism found examples of plagiarism in CNET’s…AI Enabled Greed And Stupidity