AI Companies “Stole All the Content,” But That’s Alright,

Says Former Google CEO

 

16/8/2024

“If it took off, then you’d hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right?”

Go Quickly and Take Anything

Are you concerned that your AI startup may be stealing a tonne of stuff that is protected by copyright? Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, says you should worry about that later after you have a tonne of money and a team of lawyers.

A recent talk at Stanford’s School of Engineering featured what can only be described as Silicon Valley CEO Final Boss Energy from Schmidt, as The Verge reported.

He outlined a hypothetical scenario in which students in attendance could use a large language model (LLM) to create a rival app to TikTok in the unlikely event that the platform was banned.

Schmidt said that there may be many ethical and legal issues in his hypothetical situation, but those should be addressed at a later time.

“I’d like every one of you to do this. Schmidt addressed the room, “Say to your LLM, ‘Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it’s not viral, do something different along the same lines.”

Furthermore “what you would do if you’re a Silicon Valley entrepreneur,” he continued, “is if it took off, then you’d hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right?” He said, “It doesn’t matter that you stole all the content if nobody uses your product.”

“Do not quote me,” the billionaire continued. 

Lawyers With Mops

Schmidt did at one point try to point out that he “was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody’s music,” despite advising the students moments earlier to essentially do exactly that.

In many ways, the ex-Google CEO’s statement perfectly encapsulates much of the AI industry‘s overarching attitude toward other people’s stuff.

Companies have been scraping up human-produced content for years now to train their ever-hungry AI models. And while some entities, like The New York Times, are calling copyright foul, Schmidt sees alleged IP theft as a “mess” for lawyers to clean up later.

Schmidt told the Stanford students, “Silicon Valley will run these tests and clean up the mess,” according to an event transcript. “And that’s typically how those things are done.

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