Weekend Edition 13 – Big Tech, Crypto, FDA Issues, AI, and More

WE 13.1 – Whatever Will The Valley Do?
Well, my sense is that they will lobby the new lawmakers harder to protect themselves from the inevitable hail of lawfare that the new congress members will likely initiate to placate the voters who allegedly elected them. Ok, now that I’ve hot-taked a bit, let’s talk about the article itself... The Demoncrats, who still control both chambers of Congress, have been sabre-rattling about passing anti-trust laws targeting Big Tech for being at least partially broken up, or some legislation meant to force censorship on the teeming masses of our nation and the world, for that matter. This is something that some experts suggest they should fear more than political noise made by the GOP when it assumes power again in January. More hearings wouldn’t frighten me much, either, to be honest. It is theatre. That is the reality for the whole shebang, anyway, and has been for a long time. After all, both wings belong to the same bird. I hope that the GOP does more than simply huff & puff at Big Tech’s house, which may as well be an underground bunker, with as much good as either party has done in terms of reigning them in in any meaningful way. Pitiful. All that said, it looks like both wings of congress very well may have crosshairs trained on Section 230, and limiting the protections that Big Tech has so benefitted from. This might be interesting to watch, particularly as everyone is realizing just how big of a deal digital privacy and rights are in our lives right now. That, at least, is a good thing, and may lead to big things in those areas. Looks like it could be a good time for me and others like me to set up shop to help people transition.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/tech/silicon-valley-republicans-house
#weekendedition #privacy #digitalrights #bipartisan #politics #eyeroll #politicaltheater #TechFreedom

WE 13.2 – Would You Eat Lab-grown Anything?
We are one step closer to having a cell-cultured chicken option at the supermarket, as the FDA has deemed it safe for human consumption. Keep in mind that it also Ok’d both Beyond Meat and Impossible brand plant-based meat substitutes in the past. These have proven to cause certain individuals to gain weight when it was advertised that they would help people lose weight. I am not convinced that this is a good thing at all, let God-designed animals provide the animal protein that we all need in our diets, not man-made alternatives. Is it ingenious? Certainly. Is it wise? I am not into playing God, even though I used to enjoy some Sim City and The Sims, back in the day. I am not convinced that we know enough to do this well, yet, without any long term problems for humans who eat products like these. Also, the FDA has missed the ball many times, and that is being very charitable. Personally, this sounds like a horrible idea, and something that was joked about in an old show called “Better Off Ted”. The R&D arm of the company that the show centers on was working to create a product not too different from this, and they put in in front of a taste-tester, who proclaimed that it tasted like “despair”. That show was produced about 10-15 years ago. Yikes. No thanks. What about you guys? Tell me in the comments.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63660488
#weekendedition #clonedchicken #labmeat #gross #blech #wtf #fda #TechFreedom

WE 13.3 – FTX CEO Strikes Out at SBF
The new CEO, after SBF filed for bankruptcy and bugged out with millions of dollars, is looking at how the exchange was built to fail. He says that in his 40+ years of working in similar situations, including managing the end of Enron, this was one of the worst corporate structures he has ever seen. Too much power, and too little accountability concentrated in the hands of too few, young, inexperienced, and likely compromised people. This sounds like the case for the vast majority of the crypto industry. Tell me I’m wrong. Prove my sense wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I was excited about crypto somewhat about 5 years ago, and most of our investment got stuck in a now-defunct exchange from New Zealand. I have watched too many shit coins get shilled, too many NFTs scam people, and too many pump & dump schemes happen around me to think that crypto is some sort of savior for the financial system, which is just as corrupt and broken. Tell me what you think about crypto down below.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63662396
#weekendedition #ftx #sbf #crypto #fud #fed #scams #shitcoins #idk #TechFreedom

WE 13.4 – Who Should Own AI-Generated Things?
There is so much that is unclear in this situation. On one hand, the art, music pieces, generated writing, or code that is entered into one of these AI setups is often copyrighted material, in some form or another, so should the person entering the prompts in question be forced to pay royalties for using those works as seeds for generated material, given that the output is copyrightable and they make money from the output? How would that be sorted out?
One thing that seems to determine whether one of these generated works is copyrightable is how much work the person entering the inputs actually did to create them. If you simply put in a single text prompt, the results are likely not copyrightable, whereas if they really put effort into curating the inputs, in the form of seeds and the like, they can be copy protected in the US.
What of using copyrighted inputs? In the US, we have fair use doctrine, which allows things like commentary on art, books, music, and movies to be protected and used to make money for the the commentator. One aspect of deciding if fair use is applicable is whether the original artist is adversely affected by the “new” work. Was enough changed from or added to the original that it actually constitutes a new work? If the answer to these questions was in the negative, then it is not fair use, and the secondary creator can be penalized or sued by the original copyright holder. It seems that one can train an AI on copyrighted work, but actually using that training to generate something may constitute infringement of the copyrights involved from the original works. For instance, if one trains an AI on works from one particular artist or writer and tells the AI to create something in that style, that artist or writer would likely have a strong case that you infringed on their work, and could potentially sue you over it. However, if you tweak it and transform it in significant ways, then you are probably safe, and could potentially seek a copyright yourself on the generated work.
This extends to the things that Microsoft has been doing through GitHub and people’s open sourced code bases, but the truth is that those AI tools often lift large chunks of code without tweaking it, and dropping them into new projects. That sounds like breaking GPL and other open source licenses, particularly if there is no attribution, and it is being used to make a profit for another entity. Microsoft feels that they can get away with it because they know the financial situations for the majority of open source developers. That seems very wrong, to me, at any rate... Maybe there needs to be a massive class action (I think that it is in the works even now, thankfully).

https://www.theverge.com/23444685/generative-ai-copyright-infringement-legal-fair-use-training-data
#weekendedition #AI #copyrights #patents #licensing #intellectualproperty #TechFreedom

WE 13.5 – Climate Change Fear Porn... Big Tech Must Be More Sustainable!!!
Ok, so the world seems to be heating up... Given. However, is it our fault? No. The earth is a very resilient system, and it has its own cycles which have very little to do with human intervention. That said, this article is touting and pushing Big Tech efforts to become more efficient (both using less power/resources, and producing less heat). I do not have a problem with that, as there is a limit to our planet’s physical resources, and we are called to steward them well. Predicating it on fear of naturally cyclical climate change that we have hardly been keeping records long enough to notice for ourselves, then assuming that our relatively small carbon emissions would be enough to have a detrimental effect on the temperature of the planet is the height of hubris. Take a step back. Think about this for a moment. Do not hear me say that we do not need new, better, more planet-friendly technologies to be developed. I am not saying that in the least, however, the current generation of that tech is far from being as beneficial to the environment as has been propagandized about for the last 20 years. Placing data centers in water is not an entirely new thing, however, using the currents to generate power (without harming the marine life in the area, either from turbines or from heat discharge) and to cool the machines in question is a novel, though not entirely new idea. Carbon credits? Don’t get me started, that is just as much of a leftist scam as the whole climate change/global warming fear industry is. Think, people. Recycle where possible, choose to use less power and other resources where possible, and just be wise.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/internet-outages-could-spread-as-temperatures-rise-heres-what-big-tech-is-doing/

#weekendedition #climatechange #cycles #notmanmade #fearporn #bigtech #datacenters #resources #TechFreedom