Lanier is an effective wordsmith and I applaud the point he's making. Many of the same (good) arguments from his books like "Who owns the future" and "You are n

Lanier is an effective wordsmith and I applaud the point he's making. Many of the same (good) arguments from his books like "Who owns the future" and "You are not a gadget". But alas I feel he is pissing into the wind. The reasoning engine that emerged with the latest rounds of GPT is a pre-fire, post-fire phase-change. The impact of the ability to coerce automated reasoning via natural language (even if it's flawed etc) from a digital runtime is.. difficult to overstate. His appeal for a just and equitable distribution of value honouring "data dignity" is noble. But the world in which that could happen doesn't exist. Instead there is an insane, frenzied, wild-eyed land-grab going on because it's painfully apparent that raging rivers of money and control are going to accrue to the masters of the new frontier (precisely because it will be possible to own and implement an acute version of precisely the problems Lanier tries to address in his equitable digital economics treatises). Our capitalist economic systems are not able to "think of the people". Every dev + mba with any inkling at all is racing to get in on the "opportunity". Governments will react a decade or more too late. This train has already left the station and a great many people are going to be left stranded. Lanier is right to (continue to) ring this bell. Too bad he's more Stallman than Jobs, because this cause desperately needs backable champion.