Even "natural" property rights can be understood in similar terms. Eg, Hume argues that we give people rights to the fruits of their labor/land because we want people to make long term investments like agriculture. If you knew you probably wouldn't get to reap what you sow (because bandits might steal it), you would do a lot less sowing. But world where nobody tills, sows, etc, is a much poorer world than one where people do. So I totally agree IP law regarding AI should be approached from a broadly consequentialist perspective, by thinking about what incentives we want to create. I'd just say that's true of regular property too.
Even as someone who's come to view IP law as a balancing act between tradeoffs, much like you, pro-copyright arguments are so maddening.
If I study enough portraits or song lyrics, I can take a stab at painting or songwriting and create some middling, somewhat derivative work, and no one bats an eye. But if a computer studies them and does the same thing, it is suddenly offensive.
Echoing Daniel Greco: I'm not sure you're going to succeed in adopting instrumentalism re intellectual property rights while embracing a kind of natural rights libertarianism re real/moveable property that is grounded in the right to exclude. Consider rights to a natural resource like water or oil: an entity can possess cognizable property rights in the profits of a lake or oil well even if the underlying resource is so large that the entity's access to the profits is not [and may never be] rivalrous with others. While it might be true that incentives counsel loosening intellectual property rules in the face of LLMs, it's not obvious that result is a product of a fundamental difference between intellectual and real/moveable property.
So if we say the lake provides endless water, in your view, is 100 people accessing the lake (instead of 1 person) equivalent to 100 people accessing an idea?
I'm unable to articulate my point but something about the latter seems more multiplicative in welfare benefits rather than additive.
Even "natural" property rights can be understood in similar terms. Eg, Hume argues that we give people rights to the fruits of their labor/land because we want people to make long term investments like agriculture. If you knew you probably wouldn't get to reap what you sow (because bandits might steal it), you would do a lot less sowing. But world where nobody tills, sows, etc, is a much poorer world than one where people do. So I totally agree IP law regarding AI should be approached from a broadly consequentialist perspective, by thinking about what incentives we want to create. I'd just say that's true of regular property too.
I love this last paragraph - any think tanks commissioning grants in this area? Seems really important at the moment.
I haven't heard of any but I'd be interested!
Good take!
Even as someone who's come to view IP law as a balancing act between tradeoffs, much like you, pro-copyright arguments are so maddening.
If I study enough portraits or song lyrics, I can take a stab at painting or songwriting and create some middling, somewhat derivative work, and no one bats an eye. But if a computer studies them and does the same thing, it is suddenly offensive.
Echoing Daniel Greco: I'm not sure you're going to succeed in adopting instrumentalism re intellectual property rights while embracing a kind of natural rights libertarianism re real/moveable property that is grounded in the right to exclude. Consider rights to a natural resource like water or oil: an entity can possess cognizable property rights in the profits of a lake or oil well even if the underlying resource is so large that the entity's access to the profits is not [and may never be] rivalrous with others. While it might be true that incentives counsel loosening intellectual property rules in the face of LLMs, it's not obvious that result is a product of a fundamental difference between intellectual and real/moveable property.
So if we say the lake provides endless water, in your view, is 100 people accessing the lake (instead of 1 person) equivalent to 100 people accessing an idea?
I'm unable to articulate my point but something about the latter seems more multiplicative in welfare benefits rather than additive.