reply on: Who Owns Your Brain?: How "AI" Might Break Work Completely

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102 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 11 Aug \ on: Who Owns Your Brain?: How "AI" Might Break Work Completely - Brainfork AI

the knowledge gained along the path of producing such software less so.

I'm not sure what the current state of the art is in NDAs but the last few of my friends that landed a job at Google ¹ basically had to sign their ideas away. Cynically put: if you have an awesome idea on a Sunday night while you masturbate under the shower, it's goog's IP.

Very soon, employees will want to bring their own agents to the workplace without losing ownership of the agent to their employer, whilst employers will want to manage and mitigate the risks of unknown agents running riot in the workplace.

I don't think any of this is very likely to come to pass.

I'd totes do this. It would be a hard requirement. ²

I don't want to guard my knowledge, I want other people to interact with my ideas

I've personally done a little back-and-forth on this because it can be infuriating when someone uses your code and then uses your name to buy credibility for their product. "Look this app is super awesome because it uses <opti's library>." Kinda sucks. But I think AI actually fixes this because ultimately no one will care anymore who coded what, #noheroes. ³ I think this is actually for the better. Hero devs are an awful phenomenon and it almost always ends up in people making bad decisions based on the fame of a person.

I don't understand how [I can] stop anyone from owning my knowledge

Well... it'd be sucky if a patent troll would C&D your own idea from you. So maybe this is the final straw for the idea that ideas and knowledge can be owned. I'd not cry if that were the ultimate outcome of LLMs and AI training on pirated stuff.

Now that I think about it, Google hiring someone I know didn't happen in a while. The hiring freeze is probably real for a few years now. ↩
But then, I also refuse to carry client's hardware or hang my clean machine on their dirty, dirty wifi - something that always causes light conflict. ↩
If you browse the comments at phoronix re: RISC-V stuff (#1076180) then it becomes clear that #noheroes is real. Even Linus probably wouldn't be immune to being disposed of without his tm. ↩

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 12 Aug

I'd totes do this.

I should have been more careful with my words. My enthusiasm got the better of me: I don't think an employer will be bold enough to claim that some agent a person brings to work is the employer's property. If I download a script I find on Github and use it at work, nobody is going to argue that gives my employer the ability seize ownership from whoever made the script available.

maybe this is the final straw for the idea that ideas and knowledge can be owned

Yes! This is exactly where I'd like to see things go. It makes no sense to claim ownership of an idea. It might make sense to claim credit for it. But once the knowledge has passed to one other person, you lose all control over it. It's just how knowledge works. I think most efforts to control the flow of information are probably going to do more damage than they avert.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 12 Aug

If I download a script I find on Github and use it at work, nobody is going to argue

A little over a decade ago I worked with a client where GPL licensed open source was forbidden because, there being a lot of coders in that company, legal deemed the risk too high that someone would need to contribute back and the company becoming liable for something they couldn't control and wasn't their core business. Per Hintjens, Apple has done a similar thing with GPL-3, but for a different reason:

So, the last requirement is protection from patents. The GPLv3 has language that scares off patent lawyers. It's effective. and arguably the main reason Apple has invested so much in removing all GPLv3 products from its stacks and tool chains.

It makes no sense to claim ownership of an idea.

We're aligned. I do think that the system will need to change radically for this to become reality. I nowadays work a lot with entreprenerds that have no love for the patent system but allocate and spend massive budgets on patents regardless, simply because if you don't register, a troll will, and you'll be in trouble.

Maybe this could be a silver lining in the otherwise ridiculous valuation of AI tech. But I also feel it's a long shot.

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