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Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'
- ano-ther 2y agoEssentially he is arguing that you should try and figure out the licensing later. Because why pay licenses or lawyers if it doesn’t sell? > So, in the example that I gave of the TikTok competitor — and by the way, I was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody’s music — what you would do if you’re a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, which hopefully all of you will be, is if it took off, then you’d hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right? But if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content. He seems to realize that people may take issue with this approach. > And do not quote me.
- oldpersonintx 2y agohe's right there's no essential universal moral truth about IP law, these laws are just an economic enabler you won't go to hell for IP breaches, no kittens will be smothered let the lawyers figure it out, but be prepared to pay
- dkasper 2y agoIt depends on the framing. “Stealing” content that someone else created is universally derided. Slurping up the internet and distributing it to billions of users is an economic model.
- warkdarrior 2y ago> “Stealing” content that someone else created is universally derided. All the people using torrents every day do not agree with you.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIsn’t he describing what big companies can do? They can copy startups using their giant cash reserves and use lawyers and frivolous patents to make it difficult to challenge them.
- dehrmann 2y agoI think Youtube is a better example than AI because AI is arguably transformative, while early Youtube had much more blatant copyright violations. It's too risky for established players to do this because they'll be sued immediately. A small player can fly under the radar for long enough to see if the idea has legs. If it does, it'll be worth it for rights holders to negotiate.
- Ahmed_rza 2y agoIsn't it what the companies already do? specially google
- diggan 2y agoThe playbook of "Do something legally gray > raise funding & expand > pivot away from legally gray OR employ lawyers to make it not legally gray" is basically the standard playbook of startups, the examples are countless: AirBnb, YouTube, Spotify, Uber, OpenAI, etc, etc... I'm sure it isn't always a bad idea, but struggling to come up with good examples for when the outcome from doing so have been more than just "shareholder value went up".
- sdoering 2y agoIt’s the ideology of disruption. As if this were an inherently good thing. They could go the democratic route and raise awareness, create enough support within the constituency for their idea and have the democratic institutions adapt the respective laws. Or they can decide that they are above such trivialities as the law and democratic process, move fast and break things and grab the fortune they feel entitled to have. That’s the ideology behind this anti-democratic capitalist system.
- chucksmash 2y agoAirbnb, Spotify, YouTube and Uber wouldn't see shareholder value increase if people didn't find those services useful. The number doesn't just magically go up if you build something nobody wants.
- diggan 2y agoSure, but also, "shareholder value go up" just isn't very interesting or overall helpful to the world. It's helpful to the shareholders, sure, but beyond that?
- scarmig 2y agoMass scraping the Internet and linking to different places was also legally questionable until lawyers hammered it out. Would the world be a better place if search engines had been preemptively ruled illegal?
- neilv 2y agoAll the sketchy people know that, but they don't say it in public. > [...] during a recent talk at Stanford Minting the next batch of sketchy people.
- robswc 2y agoInteresting ideas... but IMO that has _always_ been a thing. Hell, isn't that even a plot-line in silicon valley?
- seydor 2y agoit worked for google, youtube, facebook, reddit, discord, tumblr, twitter . it's not exactly rocket science
- ronsor 2y agoIt just works, and if anything, it's a sign the law is broken if you have to ignore it to succeed (and it's profitable to do so).
- Arainach 2y agoThat's absurd. It's also incredibly profitable to rob a bank or to dump chemicals in the river instead of properly cleaning them up, but that's not a signal the law is broken.
- uhmpire 2y ago[dead]
- ronsor 2y agoYou've missed the "if you have to ignore it to succeed" part of my comment. You'll do fine without robbing a bank or dumping chemical waste (neither of which are profitable in practice now, as well). Meanwhile society is littered with so many small instances of copyright infringement (memes, which usually are not fair use; fan art; etc.) that it's common practice for rightsholders to look the other way - but it shouldn't have to be common practice, it should just be policy. Also copyright infringement does not physically harm people.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoAnother absurd and less covered part of the speech is this: > If TikTok is banned, here's what I propose each and every one of you do. > Say to your LLM the following. > Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it and in one hour, if it's not viral, do something different along the same lines. > That's the command. > Boom, boom, boom, boom. He doesn't really think anything even similar to this would work, does he??
- wahnfrieden 2y agoHe’s describing agentic LLM tools which don’t exist in a usable state yet but also may not require full on AGI to create later on with the help of code/rules on top and from within. And he’s saying why this is useful beyond being able to do it without a workforce that costs a lot - because it’s fast enough for anyone large or small to iterate quickly with once it works, like the next step beyond continuous deployment to continuous development Idk why he says it like ppl already do that today in detail lol
- RodgerTheGreat 2y agoHe's describing a completely absurd fantasy. No matter how amazing your agent's code generation capabilities are, you can't simply snap your fingers and acquire the userbase that makes social media sites notionally valuable, and even if you could the market would be so flooded with people creating the same kind of garbage that absolutely nothing would "go viral".
- buescher 2y agoThat's not a nice way to say it - but it's true that startups don't have time or money to go through detailed legal clearances. That's for medium size companies with incumbent advantage, cash, and plenty to lose in a lawsuit. It's both a liability and an advantage for startups.
- sdoering 2y agoIf you can’t do it legally, you have a choice. Become a criminal. Or just don’t do it. It’s that easy. Because with your rationalization I could argue for any solipsistic behavior.
- nradov 2y agoYou seem to be confused about the legal context. What he described are only potential civil law violations, not criminal. It's a completely different thing. Civil law has a lot of gray areas, especially around novel IP issues.
- buescher 2y agoYeah, also what GP doesn't get is that you can do everything right and with the best intentions, get all the clearances in the world, and still get sued, and still lose. These decisions are about risk preference, and the risk tolerance at a startup is by nature different from that at an established company.
- sdoering 2y agoI get that the world isn’t fair. And that you can get fucked over by someone with deeper pockets. But that doesn’t resolve anyone from the decision and responsibility to honor the societal rules (or use democratic means to change them) or to ignore the law and hope to become to big to fail. In the latter case, I see those as detractors from the overall good.
- omoikane 2y agoIt's hard to tell if what Eric Schmidt was saying was a joke, an observation, or a recommendation. One interpretation from the context of the transcript seem to be "AI can make/steal stuff and manual intervention (lawyers) can clean those up later". Another interpretation from the context of Eric Schmidt being a savvy businessman is that people should go ahead and solve all the technical challenges first, and everything else can come later because if the technical problems aren't solved successfully, the other things won't matter. I can't tell if he is mostly responding to the room or not. This whole transcript[1] is more than 10k words, everyone will probably find an interpretation from random snippets that matches their perceived reality. [1] https://github.com/ociubotaru/transcripts/blob/main/Stanford_ECON295%E2%A7%B8CS323_I_2024_I_The_Age_of_AI%2C_Eric_Schmidt.txt https://github.com/ociubotaru/transcripts/blob/main/Stanford...
- greenthrow 2y agoWhether he was "joking" or not this is the playbook they have been running for years now.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y agoYes. Sure. But the reason this is on HN (for the millionth time) is because Eric said it, and Google bad, or whatever.
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoIt's Heisenberg's Joke. It's both a joke and not a joke. Whether it collapses into a joke when you open the box depends on whether you agree with the sentiment.
- tracerbulletx 2y agoIt's not specifically about technical problems. He's saying that you need to just go all in on getting traction and not constantly be worrying about things that aren't going to matter if you never get it. It's the same thing as people who just opine about how they'll handle the big server bills, or how they'll scale to a billion users, or how they'll deal with regulations, when they haven't gotten their first user yet.
- glitchc 2y agoWow, he's totally delusional, isn't he?
- Superblazer 2y agoAmazon has been doing this for a while now
- underdeserver 2y agoHe's got a lot of opinions. At the very least, Ilya Sutskever's story is evidence that there are engineers and researchers at Google who want to win, but aren't allowed to.
- gonzo41 2y agoIt worked for uber and taxi's.
- dudeinjapan 2y agoLol why was this downvoted? It's the most accurate comment here.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoI hope this teaches billionaires to never speak candidly to groups.
- CatWChainsaw 2y agoWhy do you want them to hide their underhanded behavior better, allowing them to inflict more harm on everyone else?
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt’s more of a tongue in cheek laying out the consequences of the student who leaked.
- trentnix 2y agoEx-Google CEO says successful AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to ‘clean up the mess’ Eric Schmidt has a similar approach to his extra-marital affairs.
- saagarjha 2y agoHe has affairs with people to steal their IP?
- dudeinjapan 2y agoDon't we all?
- bottled_poe 2y agoOk? Sounds like a personal issue.
- lelanthran 2y ago> Eric Schmidt has a similar approach to his extra-marital affairs. I thought it was currently not in vogue to judge people on their sex-lives.
- baxtr 2y agoThis is only half true. It needs to read: “Any VC backed startup can steal IP and hire lawyers to clean up the mess” If you have money, you can usually buy influence and also buy your way out of a ‘mess’. Just make sure that those you steal from have less money/influence at their disposal than you.
- kaffeeringe 2y agoCrime pays, when you are rich.
- rbanffy 2y agoWith enough money you can help elect someone to change the law and… whatever you did is no longer a crime. Problem solved.
- rchaud 2y agoExactly. Uber was an illegal taxi service, and Airbnb was an illegal hotel service that skated on technicalities thanks to an an army of lawyers and influential cheerleaders on Capitol Hill and CNBC beating the drums of "innovation". The playbook has been in operation for over a decade.
- gruez 2y ago>Uber was an illegal taxi service That claim is at best, speculative. According to wikipedia they won every case brought against them, so as far as the law is concerned they didn't do anything illegal. >Taxi companies sued Uber in numerous American cities, alleging that Uber's policy of violating taxi regulations was a form of unfair competition or a violation of antitrust law.[80] Although some courts did find that Uber intentionally violated the taxi rules, Uber prevailed in every case, including the only case to proceed to trial.[81]
- sroussey 2y agoThere is a reason they changed their name.
- daedrdev 2y agoEric is quite familiar with that mo, of corurse
- csouzaf 2y agoIt's crazy to see the repercussions of the talk he gave at Stanford, even after the video was made private by the Stanford YouTube channel. I thought the talk was great. I remember in the talk he said something like this, but he was being really open about what normally happens in these types of companies. I think the problem is that he, as someone in a position of power, was too open about it?
- bugglebeetle 2y ago> I thought the talk was great. The talk was effectively how to be a criminal sociopath with some minor technology set dressing, so please elaborate on its greatness.
- csouzaf 2y agoI really liked the openness he presented about himself. He talked to a bunch of students about things he knew, with little filter, that's it
- ryandrake 2y agoYou're allowed to both like the openness and criticize the character of the speaker who is being open.
- csouzaf 2y agoOf course, I thought that my comment didn't touch on the critical part about it. I just liked the talk he gave. Should I also criticize when saying 'It's great' so I can express myself in a perfectly balanced way between justice and what people think he said badly? I'm asking an honest question
- philipwhiuk 2y agoNo but you might think to be less surprised about the repercussions when he's basically suggesting wrecking an entire industry. Maybe you're not as grounded in the world many people live in.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] Lots more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41263143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41263143
- neilv 2y agoThe bit the headline references starts at about 23m41s in: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eQPHqcRwChpTHYEUQlhUDnBNnCSCTXtp/view?usp=drive_link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eQPHqcRwChpTHYEUQlhUDnBNnCS... FWIW, the talk starts rough, but there's some good bits throughout.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoThe irony of re-hosting on Google Drive to avoid a takedown from Google YouTube.
- falcor84 2y agoThe irony is a bit dulled when you consider that Drive is a service that you pay for (beyond the free tier), while YouTube is a service where they pay you to host popular videos.
- danjl 2y agoYou have a choice when you start a company. You can be ethical or not. It may be easier to make money if you are not ethical. It all depends on your goal. For many people, the only guidepost is financial success. For others, making the world better is a higher goal.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 2y agoIf they get really good at it they can use their own AIs to defend them.
- ta_1138 2y agoThe reason we have copyright laws is that sufficient people with power believe that the world is better with them than without them. Same with fair use exceptions. If an AI agent becomes just massively useful, and then a judge says that it's impossible to run it profitably with the current interpretation of copyright law, the agents won't go away: Copyright will change to make the agents legal. It really wasn't very different with copyright's evolution as the web developed: There are theoretical copyright regimes that are much harder than what we have, but basically kill the legal internet. But the damage to existing internet services was just unacceptable, including to users.
- jordanb 2y agoAnother component here is that, even if nothing useful comes out of this AI boom, none of the principles of any of the companies expect to be held personally responsible for the decisions they take. The statutory penalties in copyright law are large and ruinous for small-time violators. People have had their financial security and lives ruined by bittorrent lawsuits, for instance. Applied consistently these damages would run into the hundreds of billions for folks like Altman. But Altman and all of his cohort including Schmidt do not expect them to be applied consistently.
- JonChesterfield 2y agoNotably we got this far on the GPL which we are now burning to the ground in pull up the ladder behind us fashion. It seems to be taking people a while to notice that open source is moribund. That the blow has been dealt largely by Microsoft (courtesy of GitHub and OpenAI) may explain the delayed recognition of this intellectual catastrophe.
- FireBeyond 2y ago> The reason we have copyright laws is that sufficient people with power believe that the world is better with them than without them You could equally say: The reason we have copyright laws is that sufficient people with power believe that the world is better for them with them than without them
- grensley 2y agoSome peak "Genius and Madness are next door neighbors" energy coming off Eric Schmidt from that talk.
- dathinab 2y agoIt's not even a new strategy just made easier using AI. I a ton of "move fast break things" startups include "laws", "ethics" into the "things they break" and sadly often enough "people and peoples livelihood", too. I mean which large successful SV startup in recent decades hasn't been involved in both legal and ethical controversies often with them being clearly in on the wrong side but got away with it anyway. It might sound unpleasant but if law makers don't move proactively this is pretty much what will happen.
- stratom 2y agoSo he wants to tell us to stop paying for our streaming services and games? As we can acquire them via shady sources and claim that we wanted to train an AI model, but haven't had success yet.
- tgma 2y agoIt’s interesting to see so many supposedly ‘hackers’ take the state of Intellectual “Property” laws that are from a different era (and are “purchased” by old incumbents too by the way) as gospel and object to strategies to deal with them for the long term. Schmidt is very pragmatic simply predicting something like that is inevitable and probably the right strategy is to build your AI thing and bet/try that something like that would happen. https://youtu.be/eginMQBWII4 https://youtu.be/eginMQBWII4
- fhd2 2y agoI've skimmed the comments, but I didn't see any passionate advocacy for copyright laws. If there's rules we all need to comply with, it can be upsetting to see others proudly not do it and get away with it because they're rich. That has little to do with whether the rules were sound in the first place. It's more about fairness. And I've found "hackers" to be nothing if not fair - in a "chaotic good" way perhaps.
- tgma 2y agoSo you define "fairness" as always following the rules as is. That's objectively false. Many historical examples.
- fhd2 2y agoNo, not really. I'd say it's more about the spirit than the letter of the law.
- sfink 2y agoIt sounded more like defining fairness as having the rules apply equally to everyone in practice. Which is a pretty decent definition, IMHO.
- tgma 2y agoThe reality is that small companies also have advantages in not following the law in its strictest sense than big ones in some areas mainly because no one cares about them. Ignoring that dimension, here's another possibility: it is very possible that the utilization of AI and the licensing structure that Schmidt predicts here will increase the total licensing revenue that copyright holder pockets in aggregate despite their resistance today. It could be a win-win in the end. Wouldn't that be more than fair?
- sfmike 2y agoThis isn't a gaff he's just entering his older man boss talk stage of life and more open about truths and it's great keep it up Eric you'll have a legendary brand.
- dgeiser13 2y agoHow much makeup is Eric Schmidt wearing?
- VeejayRampay 2y agothis is why libertarians want as little state as possible, because states are the only actors that would actually prevent you from doing these kinds of things and get away with it, it's absolutely infuriating
- sandspar 2y agoSchmidt has been on a public relations campaign for the last year or so. It's unclear why.
- limit499karma 2y agoA typical specimen - no wonder he is a darling of MIC. This guy is the creepiest thing out of old Sun Microsystems. Must be one of those "bozos" Andy,Bill et al worried about in re to hiring ..
- yalogin 2y agoThis isn’t new is it? Every startup in the last decade plus existed to slurp user data one way or another. User data accumulation is the single most popular value proposition for startups and what drove funding. In that sense AI is not new, it super charges everything including user data aggregation. It will be surprising only if this is a new trend.
- sleight42 2y agoLawyers are who rich people and companies use when they did wrong in order to make that wrong somehow acceptable (for them). There is sometimes accountability, if a sort. It is rarely the form of accountability that mere mortals receive. Let's not pretend: we're not equal under the law. We should be but we're not.
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