The idea that copyright in its existing form will survive into the AI era is troubling. There is this expectation that the future will somehow be this knowable

The idea that copyright in its existing form will survive into the AI era is troubling. There is this expectation that the future will somehow be this knowable extension of the past, but with thinking computers. Recently, and in the spirit of this farce (and the law) the US copyright office laughably declared that copyright can only be given to something that is substantively attributed when its creation involves a human. The reason this is dumb is simple: we are creating digital intelligences that will evolve consciousness at some point. Sentience in the machine. AI is not close to being sentient at the moment, and the closest thing we have to it now is the constant drone of anthropomorphic tendency in its reviewers, but it will eventually get there, probably in the next few decades (but remember how far off our current AI systems were predicted to be just in 2018). The social values will change at that time and they will change mightily. Social values and ultimately the legal system that supports it. Part of that prediction is in the fact that our existing legal system will be profoundly disrupted by AI, which is already at expert level when it’s not hallucinating (of course, to be fair, I’ve met some attorneys who might reliably have that in common with modern AI). I know it’s some asmovian futurism but we have clearly turned the corner in this direction, and the existing system, which desperately seeks to reinforce itself, is doomed.