Letters to the Editor: Should AI investors pay for copyrighted materials that their programs use to learn?

To the editor: Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, quoted by columnist Michael Hiltzik, makes an excellent point: “There are no authors of copyrighted material that did not learn from copyrighted works, be it in manuscripts, art or music” (“AI investors say they’ll go broke if they have to pay for copyrighted works. Don’t believe it,” column, Nov. 16).

Khosla goes on: “All humans train on cumulative learning from many past works by other humans. [Artificial intelligence] may train on just a larger set of past works and be subject to similar rules and constraints but no more and no different.”

The purpose of copyright law is to ensure that creators of intellectual property can make a living from their work. If others could copy and republish, they could undersell the originator, and everyone would buy the cheaper copy.

Over the years efforts have been made to extend copyright to include control over anything that is done with a work, but that is a foul idea. An author may prefer it if my neighbor buys a copy of a book instead of borrowing it from me, but at the root of this is our liberty.

An author loses nothing when a computer reads a book.

Rory Johnston, Hollywood

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To the editor: I agree 100% with Hiltzik. AI is nothing less than predatory capitalism on steroids.

If allowed to function without stronger legal restraints, AI executives will gradually assume as their own the works of many artists and writers who are already well below them in our economic system. It will inevitably create a new form of economic servitude.

Equally important, it will eliminate the counterbalancing influence of the arts and literature on our nation’s soul and spirit. The efforts of many authors and artists will be legally stolen and rendered the property of those who had nothing to do with creating it.

The inevitable result will be rampant, destructive materialism unlike anything we have seen since the 19th century robber barons plundered our nation’s wealth and claimed it as their own.

Dennis M. Clausen, Escondido