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Viewed from historical perspective, big tech is really reaping the benefits of the intellectual wealth accumulated over many thousands of years by humanity coll

Viewed from historical perspective, big tech is really reaping the benefits of the intellectual wealth accumulated over many thousands of years by humanity collectively. This should be recognized to find a better path forward.

justarandomname 8mo ago
yeah, but zero chance of that happening unfortunately.
- pear01 8mo ago
  well practiced cynicism is boring. imo there are actually too few answers for what a better path would even look like. hard to move forward when you don't know where you want to go. answers in the negative are insufficient, as are those that offer little more than nostalgia.
  - smallmancontrov 8mo ago
    It's interesting that the prosperity maximum of both the United States and China happened at "market economy kept in line with a firm hand" even though we approached it from different directions (left and right respectively) and in the US case reversed course. We could use another Roosevelt.
  - stemlord 8mo ago
    people have been pretty clear about a positive path forward - big tech should pay for the data they extract and sell back to us - startups should stop forcing ai features that no one wants down our throats - the vanguard of ai should be open and accessible to all not locked in the cloud behind paywalls
  - greesil 8mo ago
    Well practiced criticism of cynicism is boring
  - FridayoLeary 8mo ago
    But op is frankly absurd. It sounds reasonable for about 1 second before you think about it. What sets tech apart from every other area of human innovation? And why limit it to that? What about mineral exploitation? Oil etc. It's just not a well thought out comment. If we focus on the "better path forward", the entrance to which is only unlocked by the realisation that big techs achievements (and thus, profits) belong to humanity collectively... After we reach this enlightened state, what does op believe the first couple of things a traveller on this path is likely to encounter (beyond Big Techs money, which incidentally we take loads of already in the form of taxes, just maybe not enough)?
    - _DeadFred_ 8mo ago
      Tech is the most set apart area of innovation ever. First you have tech's ability to scale. The ability to scale also has it creep new changes/behaviors into every aspect of our lives faster than any 'engine for change' could previous. Tech also inherits, so you can treat it as legos using, what are we at, definitely tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of human years of work, of building blocks to build on top of. Imagine if you started every house with a hundred thousand human years of labor already completed instantly. No other domain in human history accumulates tens of millions of skilled human years annually and allows so much of that work to stack, copy, and propagate at relatively low cost. And tech's speed of iteration is insane. You can try something, measure it, change it, and redeploy in hours. Unprecedented experimentation on a mass scale leading to quicker evolution. It's so disingenuous to have tech valuations as high as they are based on these differentiations but at the same time say 'tech is just like everything from the past and must not be treated differently, and it must be assumed outcomes from it are just like historical outcomes'. No it is a completely different beast, and the differences are becoming more pronounced as the above 10Xs over and over.
FridayoLeary 8mo ago
Sounds like you just want some of their money.
- triceratops 8mo ago
  Yes, especially since they're talking about wiping about most or all white-collar jobs in our lifetimes. What's wrong with that?
  - FridayoLeary 8mo ago
    Why drag your dead ancestors into the debate? On that note they say oil is dead dinosaurs, maybe have a word with Saudi Arabia...
    - dekhn 8mo ago
      Oil comes from algae (and other tiny marine organisms) not dinosaurs.
    - triceratops 8mo ago
      Was this reply intended for a different comment? Or do I need more sleep?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- blactuary 8mo ago
  If they want to abandon noblesse oblige we can certainly go back to the old way of evening things out. Their choice
- mackeye 8mo ago
  some would say their money is our money via the ltv :-)
mrwaffle 8mo ago
Is this technically a form of retroactive mind rape? If so, at least we have the right oligarchic friends experienced in this running the big show. (Apologies if I just any broke rules here).
- mrwaffle 8mo ago
  This seems to be a touchy subject for YC people with 500+ karma. Not a repudiation but an 'invisible hand' downvote to avoid a response or exposure of an opinion. My ancestors fought in the revolutionary war and like them, I'll die on this very subtle rolling hill of a question. I loved you all as brothers, this may be the end for mrwaffle.
relaxing 8mo ago
What should?
mediaman 8mo ago
How? They are all losing tens of billions of dollars on this, so far. Open source models are available at highly competitive prices for anyone to use and are closing the gap to 6-8 months from frontier proprietary models. There doesn't appear to be any moat. This criticism seems very valid against advertising and social media, where strong network effects make dominant players ultra-wealthy and act like a tax, but the AI business looks terrible, and it appears that most benefits are going to accrue fairly broadly across the economy, not to a few tech titans. NVIDIA is the one exception to that, since there is a big moat on their business, but not clear how long that will last either.
- TheColorYellow 8mo ago
  I'm not so sure thats correct. The Labs seem to offer the best overall products in addition to the best models. And requirements for models are only going to get more complex and stringent going forward. So yes, open source will be able to keep up from a pure performance standpoint, but you can imagine a future state where only licensed models are able to be used in commercial settings and licensing will require compliance against limiting subversive use or similar (e.g. sexualization of minors, doesn't let you make a bomb etc.). When the market shifts to a more compliance-relevant world, I think the Labs will have a monopoly on all of the research, ops, and production know-how required to deliver. That's not even considering if Agents truly take off (which will then place a premium on the servicing of those agents and agent environments rather than just the deployment). There's a lot of assumptions in the above, and the timelines certainly vary, so its far from a sure thing - but the upside definitely seems there to me.
  - tru3_power 8mo ago
    What’s the purpose of licensing requiring though things though if someone could just use an open source model to do that anyway? If someone were going to do those things you mentioned why do it through some commercial enterprise tool? I can see maybe licensing requiring a certain level of hardening to prevent prompt injections, but ultimately it still really comes down to how much power you give the model in whatever context it’s operating in.
  - 8mo ago
derektank 8mo ago
Isn’t the reason we have a public domain so that people aren’t in a perpetual debt to their intellectual forebears?
- gruez 8mo ago
  Copyrights last a very long time. Moreover nothing says it has to be open. The recipe to coke is still secret.
  - edoceo 8mo ago
    A recent copy-cat https://www.reddit.com/r/CopyCatRecipes/comments/1qbbo6d/cocacola_coke_copycat_recipe/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CopyCatRecipes/comments/1qbbo6d/coc...
  - daveguy 8mo ago
    The recipe of coke is not a copyright, it is a trade secret. Trade secrets can remain indefinitely if you can keep it secret. Copyrights are "open" by their nature.
    - gruez 8mo ago
      In the context of this discussion though, what makes you think openai can't keep theirs a trade secret?
      - daveguy 8mo ago
        I was agreeing it could last a very long time, even longer that copyright. But specifically because it is not copyright. But as an AI model, it just won't have value for very long. Models are dated within a 6 months and obsolete in 2 years. IP around development may last longer.
  - bandrami 8mo ago
    The recipe to Coca Cola is not copyrighted (recipes in general can't be) but is protected by trade secret laws, which can notionally last forever. The recipe also isn't that much of a secret, they read it on the air on a This American Life episode and the Coca Cola spokesperson kind of shrugged it off because you'd have to clone an entire industrial process to turn that recipe into a recognizable Coke.
simianwords 8mo ago
Why do you see it as zero sum? I don’t care if big tech is accumulating intellectual wealth. I’m getting good products.
adolph 8mo ago
> reaping the benefits of the intellectual wealth accumulated over many thousands of years Do we not all stand on the shoulders of giants? Will "big next" not take up where "big tech" leaves off one day?

justarandomname 8mo ago

yeah, but zero chance of that happening unfortunately.

pear01 8mo ago
well practiced cynicism is boring. imo there are actually too few answers for what a better path would even look like. hard to move forward when you don't know where you want to go. answers in the negative are insufficient, as are those that offer little more than nostalgia.
- smallmancontrov 8mo ago
  It's interesting that the prosperity maximum of both the United States and China happened at "market economy kept in line with a firm hand" even though we approached it from different directions (left and right respectively) and in the US case reversed course. We could use another Roosevelt.
- stemlord 8mo ago
  people have been pretty clear about a positive path forward - big tech should pay for the data they extract and sell back to us - startups should stop forcing ai features that no one wants down our throats - the vanguard of ai should be open and accessible to all not locked in the cloud behind paywalls
- greesil 8mo ago
  Well practiced criticism of cynicism is boring
- FridayoLeary 8mo ago
  But op is frankly absurd. It sounds reasonable for about 1 second before you think about it. What sets tech apart from every other area of human innovation? And why limit it to that? What about mineral exploitation? Oil etc. It's just not a well thought out comment. If we focus on the "better path forward", the entrance to which is only unlocked by the realisation that big techs achievements (and thus, profits) belong to humanity collectively... After we reach this enlightened state, what does op believe the first couple of things a traveller on this path is likely to encounter (beyond Big Techs money, which incidentally we take loads of already in the form of taxes, just maybe not enough)?
  - _DeadFred_ 8mo ago
    Tech is the most set apart area of innovation ever. First you have tech's ability to scale. The ability to scale also has it creep new changes/behaviors into every aspect of our lives faster than any 'engine for change' could previous. Tech also inherits, so you can treat it as legos using, what are we at, definitely tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of human years of work, of building blocks to build on top of. Imagine if you started every house with a hundred thousand human years of labor already completed instantly. No other domain in human history accumulates tens of millions of skilled human years annually and allows so much of that work to stack, copy, and propagate at relatively low cost. And tech's speed of iteration is insane. You can try something, measure it, change it, and redeploy in hours. Unprecedented experimentation on a mass scale leading to quicker evolution. It's so disingenuous to have tech valuations as high as they are based on these differentiations but at the same time say 'tech is just like everything from the past and must not be treated differently, and it must be assumed outcomes from it are just like historical outcomes'. No it is a completely different beast, and the differences are becoming more pronounced as the above 10Xs over and over.

FridayoLeary 8mo ago

Sounds like you just want some of their money.

triceratops 8mo ago
Yes, especially since they're talking about wiping about most or all white-collar jobs in our lifetimes. What's wrong with that?
- FridayoLeary 8mo ago
  Why drag your dead ancestors into the debate? On that note they say oil is dead dinosaurs, maybe have a word with Saudi Arabia...
  - dekhn 8mo ago
    Oil comes from algae (and other tiny marine organisms) not dinosaurs.
  - triceratops 8mo ago
    Was this reply intended for a different comment? Or do I need more sleep?
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
blactuary 8mo ago
If they want to abandon noblesse oblige we can certainly go back to the old way of evening things out. Their choice
mackeye 8mo ago
some would say their money is our money via the ltv :-)

mrwaffle 8mo ago

Is this technically a form of retroactive mind rape? If so, at least we have the right oligarchic friends experienced in this running the big show. (Apologies if I just any broke rules here).

mrwaffle 8mo ago
This seems to be a touchy subject for YC people with 500+ karma. Not a repudiation but an 'invisible hand' downvote to avoid a response or exposure of an opinion. My ancestors fought in the revolutionary war and like them, I'll die on this very subtle rolling hill of a question. I loved you all as brothers, this may be the end for mrwaffle.

relaxing 8mo ago

What should?

mediaman 8mo ago

How? They are all losing tens of billions of dollars on this, so far. Open source models are available at highly competitive prices for anyone to use and are closing the gap to 6-8 months from frontier proprietary models. There doesn't appear to be any moat. This criticism seems very valid against advertising and social media, where strong network effects make dominant players ultra-wealthy and act like a tax, but the AI business looks terrible, and it appears that most benefits are going to accrue fairly broadly across the economy, not to a few tech titans. NVIDIA is the one exception to that, since there is a big moat on their business, but not clear how long that will last either.

TheColorYellow 8mo ago
I'm not so sure thats correct. The Labs seem to offer the best overall products in addition to the best models. And requirements for models are only going to get more complex and stringent going forward. So yes, open source will be able to keep up from a pure performance standpoint, but you can imagine a future state where only licensed models are able to be used in commercial settings and licensing will require compliance against limiting subversive use or similar (e.g. sexualization of minors, doesn't let you make a bomb etc.). When the market shifts to a more compliance-relevant world, I think the Labs will have a monopoly on all of the research, ops, and production know-how required to deliver. That's not even considering if Agents truly take off (which will then place a premium on the servicing of those agents and agent environments rather than just the deployment). There's a lot of assumptions in the above, and the timelines certainly vary, so its far from a sure thing - but the upside definitely seems there to me.
- tru3_power 8mo ago
  What’s the purpose of licensing requiring though things though if someone could just use an open source model to do that anyway? If someone were going to do those things you mentioned why do it through some commercial enterprise tool? I can see maybe licensing requiring a certain level of hardening to prevent prompt injections, but ultimately it still really comes down to how much power you give the model in whatever context it’s operating in.
- 8mo ago

derektank 8mo ago

Isn’t the reason we have a public domain so that people aren’t in a perpetual debt to their intellectual forebears?

gruez 8mo ago
Copyrights last a very long time. Moreover nothing says it has to be open. The recipe to coke is still secret.
- edoceo 8mo ago
  A recent copy-cat https://www.reddit.com/r/CopyCatRecipes/comments/1qbbo6d/cocacola_coke_copycat_recipe/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CopyCatRecipes/comments/1qbbo6d/coc...
- daveguy 8mo ago
  The recipe of coke is not a copyright, it is a trade secret. Trade secrets can remain indefinitely if you can keep it secret. Copyrights are "open" by their nature.
  - gruez 8mo ago
    In the context of this discussion though, what makes you think openai can't keep theirs a trade secret?
    - daveguy 8mo ago
      I was agreeing it could last a very long time, even longer that copyright. But specifically because it is not copyright. But as an AI model, it just won't have value for very long. Models are dated within a 6 months and obsolete in 2 years. IP around development may last longer.
- bandrami 8mo ago
  The recipe to Coca Cola is not copyrighted (recipes in general can't be) but is protected by trade secret laws, which can notionally last forever. The recipe also isn't that much of a secret, they read it on the air on a This American Life episode and the Coca Cola spokesperson kind of shrugged it off because you'd have to clone an entire industrial process to turn that recipe into a recognizable Coke.

simianwords 8mo ago

Why do you see it as zero sum? I don’t care if big tech is accumulating intellectual wealth. I’m getting good products.

adolph 8mo ago

> reaping the benefits of the intellectual wealth accumulated over many thousands of years Do we not all stand on the shoulders of giants? Will "big next" not take up where "big tech" leaves off one day?