Hamlet’s IP & AI

Uploaded on 2024-06-04 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Artificial Intelligence, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

To regulate or not regulate that is the question. Whether it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of massive IP theft or to stifle a truly revolutionary technological happening.

Ok, it’s not Shakespeare. But, it is the very essence of what the tortured Hamlet of the DC bureaucracy is currently putting itself through as it deals with IP and Artificial Intelligence. Whatever AI is?

Beware The Ides Of Section 230

The first time artificial intelligence was mentioned was in the mid-1950’s. It was based on the premise of getting machines to simulate human intelligence. Sci-fi stuff in that period. Same with a concept called Cyber space.

Flash forward, when I was on the Hill in 1996, Congress was reviewing that nascent technology Cyber space - or the Internet as everyone called it - and its potential regulation. Thanks to lobbying focused on platform providers concerns about being sued for outsider placed content, a clause was put into protect them – Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. No one at the time could be against decency – nor could predict the political, economic, and social explosion surrounding that decision.

A simple clause, Section 230, turning into a law from Mount Sinai – thou shalt not regulate the internet. It unleased a generation of unprecedented and unbridled development of an entirely new domain. Only in the past few years has the American body politic thought to ask - have we let this all go too far

Though This Seems Madness…

I believe the main DC political concern over AI is driven by the challenges of cyber space - the buyer’s remorse of “we should have done some type regulation sooner.”

So, AI is now a DC political target. An imagined job stealing, militarily dangerous, opinion shaping creature causing fear and loathing. Even if no one quite understands what it is. And - not helping - the often “true believer guys” pitching it have exaggerated its real capability - so far.

In the final analysis, AI is a tool. But a different kind of tool. Not a hammer. Not a computer. A shape shifting 21st century tool.

At its simplest, AI is software with algorithms based on code produced by a bunch of White middle class young men in their late 20’s with all their flaws and biases – and with all the zero day challenges that could be expected from such

But it is a software with algorithms that can “learn” – it adopts and adapts based on the information it can intake. How much and how well is yet to be determined. But, so far, promising.

Think of it as a child learning as it grows by experiences, reading, and discussion. Diving into the “data lake” it has available – good and bad information - and learning how to, say, think about things. Each child with perhaps a different “software” to take in and process the experiences at a different pace and expertise.

Who Steals My Purse…

For those of us who toil in the information business –lawyers, teachers, doctors, reporters, actors, writers – we are particularly absorbed by AI.

First concern - Is it going to replace us or is it a tool to enhance our work? That is a “time will tell” question.

And, contrary to most of history, it is “amusing” to watch the “white collar” guys sweating a major technological change. Still, remember: just because we now stream information doesn’t mean libraries have totally gone away. They have adapted and we will too.

The other big question - and a more justifiable one to my mind - is that of the Intellectual Property (IP) the AI is using to build its knowledge and produce output. Who’s paying for this IP - or should they?

From one standpoint, AI may participating in the greatest IP theft of all times – bigger than Guttenberg’s press (plus all those poor brown collared scrivener monks out of work!)

And while this is a real business and intellectual concern, this may be a moment for us to determine exactly what rules go for IP.

We are crying wolf to some extent having allowed a generation of cyber space “fair use doctrine” - read IP thievery - that ranges from free uploaded music and videos to every article not lying behind a firewall.

Still, there are some rules guiding IP ownership. And, in my view, rather antiquated. Thanks to a former rock star and 1990’s Congressman, Sonny Bono, America has the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.

The act “extends the duration of copyright in a work to the life of the author and 70 years after the author's death.” And it also “extends the duration of copyright in anonymous or pseudonymous works or works made for hire… to 95 years from the year of the first publication... or 120 years from the year of creation, whichever expires first.”

We live in the 21st century. Is it still really sensible to have IP controls over an entire century? Will this also apply on the Moon and Mars for instance? The current rules have got to go.

Is it equally sensible for someone to have their ideas appropriated and not be compensated for it? No. Simply no. The music industry decided a long time ago to charge per play. Not a bad model for IP if workable.

Alas Poor DC, What Should It Do?

First, the AI panicking driving whatever decision making in DC must stop. AI is not some 12 foot tall, 800 pound monster.

It is an evolving software which can be guided in development by sensible controls – like we didn’t do on the internet and are doing at the Pentagon. Rules for military development should not be the same for education. Think sectoral - not one size fits all.

Second, and to the point of this article, we need to think carefully about our IP laws. Developed in the 19th century and reinforced in the 20th, they really don’t apply to an era where information is being produced in cyber space at the rate of a Library of Congress a second.

Third, the era of no compensation for IP must end. It is thievery by the very definition of the word. Pay for it. You’ll no doubt pass on the costs. Welcome to Capitalism for all.

All’s Well That Ends Well?

Change is inevitable. As the Bard said, “come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”

AI represents big change. Some will lose. Some will win. But I believe history shows more will win with such innovations.

With the sure knowledge that AI will continue to develop and expand, DC must move beyond fear and loathing to provide solid guidance for AI and sensible rules of our time for IP.

Perhaps all will end well….

Image: Ideogram

Ronald A. Marks is a forty plus year national security veteran. A former CIA and Capitol Hill staffer, he was an IT executive and is current a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Visiting Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

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