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Well lucky us we don't live in a primitive society, and that's basically the point of this whole debate. > you may have to work harder in your woodchopping bus

Well lucky us we don't live in a primitive society, and that's basically the point of this whole debate. > you may have to work harder in your woodchopping business, as I'm now competition So China copying our products is good, because we now have competition?

jkepler 4y ago
My comment is regarding whether ideas fall in the same category as physical goods. Ideas are fundamentally different, in that they're non-scarce unless we make them scarce via intellectual property laws. And I question whether those laws really promote human flourishing, or whether they simply protect whoever is close to the government. Regarding China, copying without attribution should be prosecuted as a form of reputational or brand fraud, as it fails to give credit to others for the idea. And sure, under existing intellectual property laws many Chinese firms ought to be prosecuted and held accountable---I don't advocate breaking existing laws. I simply think that the laws out to be brought into better alignment with reality, and ideas simply aren't scarce (at least in how economics considers scarcity).
- lancesells 4y ago
  > Ideas are fundamentally different, in that they're non-scarce unless we make them scarce via intellectual property laws. Is code an idea? Is the corpus of Github an idea?
- gumballindie 4y ago
  > as it fails to give credit to others for the idea That is precisely the issue at hand. > Ideas are fundamentally different But that's essentially what products are. It's not like chinese companies take a product and clone it, they take the idea of how to make a product look like and work and implement it. Same applies to code, art, books. OpenAI takes those products, the results of ideas, modify them and resell them without attribution or without having paid a license. That's simply theft.
jkepler 4y ago
Also, assuming you're writing from a United States perspective, part of the reason so much of our manufacturing sector was outsourced to China (and other nations) is that since 1971 the US dollar has been our primary export, as the global reserve currency among all the fiat currencies. This is starting to change, so I think we'll see more and more manufacturing returning to the USA as the dollar looses international reserve status. And I wonder to what extended Chinese copying our technologies is connected to macro monetary realities. It will be generally good for the world, for American manufacturing, workers, businesses, and families---pretty much for all except Wall Street banks and those close to the government money spigots.
- gumballindie 4y ago
  I am writing from a european perspective as we share common problems caused by countries copying our products and ideas. Now it would appear that the US wants to do the same but for intellectual work. That's not nice to put it mildly. I think licensing data, expensive as it may be, would eventually lead to higher quality ai and healthier growth. At the moment this whole campaign of promoting openai's products, and those of similar companies, appears to be focused on: 1) i'll take your products (books, art, software, music) 2) resell them 3) put you out of a job. That's precisely what malicious actors such as China have done. Not only are we swamped with lower quality products, but as you wrote, we are also facing significant social and economic issues. This time at an unprecedented scale.
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    Your solution will definitely employ a lot of lawyers! A strange utopia of full employment
hnbad 4y ago
> So China copying our products is good, because we now have competition? Yes? Isn't that the entire point of the market driving innovation and improving things over time? Let's try the opposite: Why is China copying foreign products bad? And to whom?

jkepler 4y ago

My comment is regarding whether ideas fall in the same category as physical goods. Ideas are fundamentally different, in that they're non-scarce unless we make them scarce via intellectual property laws. And I question whether those laws really promote human flourishing, or whether they simply protect whoever is close to the government. Regarding China, copying without attribution should be prosecuted as a form of reputational or brand fraud, as it fails to give credit to others for the idea. And sure, under existing intellectual property laws many Chinese firms ought to be prosecuted and held accountable---I don't advocate breaking existing laws. I simply think that the laws out to be brought into better alignment with reality, and ideas simply aren't scarce (at least in how economics considers scarcity).

lancesells 4y ago
> Ideas are fundamentally different, in that they're non-scarce unless we make them scarce via intellectual property laws. Is code an idea? Is the corpus of Github an idea?
gumballindie 4y ago
> as it fails to give credit to others for the idea That is precisely the issue at hand. > Ideas are fundamentally different But that's essentially what products are. It's not like chinese companies take a product and clone it, they take the idea of how to make a product look like and work and implement it. Same applies to code, art, books. OpenAI takes those products, the results of ideas, modify them and resell them without attribution or without having paid a license. That's simply theft.

jkepler 4y ago

Also, assuming you're writing from a United States perspective, part of the reason so much of our manufacturing sector was outsourced to China (and other nations) is that since 1971 the US dollar has been our primary export, as the global reserve currency among all the fiat currencies. This is starting to change, so I think we'll see more and more manufacturing returning to the USA as the dollar looses international reserve status. And I wonder to what extended Chinese copying our technologies is connected to macro monetary realities. It will be generally good for the world, for American manufacturing, workers, businesses, and families---pretty much for all except Wall Street banks and those close to the government money spigots.

gumballindie 4y ago
I am writing from a european perspective as we share common problems caused by countries copying our products and ideas. Now it would appear that the US wants to do the same but for intellectual work. That's not nice to put it mildly. I think licensing data, expensive as it may be, would eventually lead to higher quality ai and healthier growth. At the moment this whole campaign of promoting openai's products, and those of similar companies, appears to be focused on: 1) i'll take your products (books, art, software, music) 2) resell them 3) put you out of a job. That's precisely what malicious actors such as China have done. Not only are we swamped with lower quality products, but as you wrote, we are also facing significant social and economic issues. This time at an unprecedented scale.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Your solution will definitely employ a lot of lawyers! A strange utopia of full employment

hnbad 4y ago

> So China copying our products is good, because we now have competition? Yes? Isn't that the entire point of the market driving innovation and improving things over time? Let's try the opposite: Why is China copying foreign products bad? And to whom?