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It makes sense to replicate and sharing knowledge among as many people and organizations as possible. Replication is the best way to protect knowledge. The old

by antpls 8y ago

It makes sense to replicate and sharing knowledge among as many people and organizations as possible. Replication is the best way to protect knowledge. The old model is to see knowledge as words written down on a piece of paper, and only knew by a few people. It does not work in a modern world where knowledge can be shared easily, sent at speed of light and replicated on many support. I don't know about you, but I don't have millions of dollars sitting in my bank account, I prolly don't care about previous investments and decisions made in a world I didn't exist, but I care about living a good life and living as long as possible. The investments should change direction.

fauigerzigerk 8y ago
Let me rephrase my question: How do you suggest a profit driven company can justify employing people to create new knowledge if that knowledge and all its derivatives and representations are immediately available to everyone else without any restrictions? I am very skeptical of patents as a matter of principle, because banning people from using their own original ideas just because someone else happened to have a similar idea seems extremely unfair and prone to misuse. I am also skeptical of putting copyright interests above all else (although I'm not against copyrights in principle), going as far as building a global surveillance state and imposing draconian penalties in order to enforce extremist copyright laws without fail. I am also skeptical of very restrictive no-compete clauses in employment contracts or any sort of anti-poaching activity by corporations. And it's exactly _because_ I am skeptical of all the above approaches to protecting investment into knowledge generation that I'm very hesitant to also oppose keeping trade secrets. Creating new knowledge has to have some direct economic benefit above and beyond the general benefits of human progress (which is also important of course).
- antpls 8y ago
  > Let me rephrase my question: How do you suggest a profit driven company can justify employing people to create new knowledge if that knowledge and all its derivatives and representations are immediately available to everyone else without any restrictions? I have two arguments : 1) The process of creating new knowledge alone won't be valuable once we have enough processing power to evaluate scenarii faster than a coordinated human effort. With vulgar words : AI will make the creation of knowledge a commodity, and my personal opinion is that it will happen before the next human generation, unless some people actively work against that idea to make sure it doesn't happen (because they try to defend previous investments for example.) 2) Knowledge alone is not enough to accomplish or execute anything in the real world. Actually building car requires factories, materials and logistics. Of course, if we have an AI solving all sort of problems, we may ask it to find an efficient way to build car. If we continue the reasoning, we enter a world where the meaning of an human life is completely different than today, with completely different forces acting on it. We may don't even need the cars anymore. Edit : I mean, the argument of "it gives job to people" won't stand forever. We will have to seriously re-think the system at some point.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    >Knowledge alone is not enough to accomplish or execute anything in the real world. That's true, but if companies compete only on execution and not on innovation, I fear that the result will be less innovation. Also, some of the digital artifacts that can easily be copied are largely on the execution side. Software being a prime example of that. >AI will make the creation of knowledge a commodity If and when AIs are that advanced they're going to have to sort out their own problems and fight over their own ideologies. But how will we even get there if everyone is busy executing and no one has an incentive to innovate? That said, profit is certainly not the only incentive to innovate. It's one of the incentives though, particularly where it's closely intertwined with execution and product development.

by antpls 8y ago

fauigerzigerk 8y ago

Let me rephrase my question: How do you suggest a profit driven company can justify employing people to create new knowledge if that knowledge and all its derivatives and representations are immediately available to everyone else without any restrictions? I am very skeptical of patents as a matter of principle, because banning people from using their own original ideas just because someone else happened to have a similar idea seems extremely unfair and prone to misuse. I am also skeptical of putting copyright interests above all else (although I'm not against copyrights in principle), going as far as building a global surveillance state and imposing draconian penalties in order to enforce extremist copyright laws without fail. I am also skeptical of very restrictive no-compete clauses in employment contracts or any sort of anti-poaching activity by corporations. And it's exactly _because_ I am skeptical of all the above approaches to protecting investment into knowledge generation that I'm very hesitant to also oppose keeping trade secrets. Creating new knowledge has to have some direct economic benefit above and beyond the general benefits of human progress (which is also important of course).

antpls 8y ago
> Let me rephrase my question: How do you suggest a profit driven company can justify employing people to create new knowledge if that knowledge and all its derivatives and representations are immediately available to everyone else without any restrictions? I have two arguments : 1) The process of creating new knowledge alone won't be valuable once we have enough processing power to evaluate scenarii faster than a coordinated human effort. With vulgar words : AI will make the creation of knowledge a commodity, and my personal opinion is that it will happen before the next human generation, unless some people actively work against that idea to make sure it doesn't happen (because they try to defend previous investments for example.) 2) Knowledge alone is not enough to accomplish or execute anything in the real world. Actually building car requires factories, materials and logistics. Of course, if we have an AI solving all sort of problems, we may ask it to find an efficient way to build car. If we continue the reasoning, we enter a world where the meaning of an human life is completely different than today, with completely different forces acting on it. We may don't even need the cars anymore. Edit : I mean, the argument of "it gives job to people" won't stand forever. We will have to seriously re-think the system at some point.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  >Knowledge alone is not enough to accomplish or execute anything in the real world. That's true, but if companies compete only on execution and not on innovation, I fear that the result will be less innovation. Also, some of the digital artifacts that can easily be copied are largely on the execution side. Software being a prime example of that. >AI will make the creation of knowledge a commodity If and when AIs are that advanced they're going to have to sort out their own problems and fight over their own ideologies. But how will we even get there if everyone is busy executing and no one has an incentive to innovate? That said, profit is certainly not the only incentive to innovate. It's one of the incentives though, particularly where it's closely intertwined with execution and product development.