Big tech vs big media will be a major theme in 2024. 
Revenge of the Attorneys
Bankruptcy & Copyright practices will be booming says Danielle DiMartino Booth.
New York Times Alleges Copyright Infringement
The Wall Street Journal reports New York Times Sues Microsoft and OpenAI, Alleging Copyright Infringement
In a complaint filed Wednesday, the Times said the technology companies exploited its content without permission to create their AI products, including OpenAI’s humanlike chatbot ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot. The tools were trained on millions of pieces of Times content, the suit said, and draw on that material to serve up answers to users’ prompts.
In its complaint, the Times said it believes it is among the largest sources of proprietary information for OpenAI and Microsoft’s AI products. Their AI tools divert traffic that would otherwise go to the Times’ web properties, depriving the company of advertising, licensing and subscription revenue, the suit said.
The Times is seeking damages, in addition to asking the court to stop the tech companies from using its content and to destroy data sets that include the Times’ work.
Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC, which owns sites like Better Homes & Gardens, People and Verywell Health, has said he believes publishers’ copyrights are being violated.
Robert Thomson, chief executive of Wall Street Journal parent News Corp, has been vocal about his concerns about AI, including the potential for tools to use publishers’ content without permission.
What About Fair Use?
Fair use is a legal term that in some instances allows uses of copyright material. Fair Use is defined in Section 107 of the Copyright Act
The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
I benefit greatly from fair use. I comment on the news, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing with articles I refer to. This blog is neither agreement nor disagreement. It is a discussion of fair use and why that is at the heart of the matter.
A couple years ago, the Financial Times notified me that I could not use more than one sentence from any of their articles. I am sure a few paragraphs with attribution is fair use, but it certainly is not worth the cost to fight that battle. Instead I cancelled my subscription.
The better outlets offer free links where one can send an entire article. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Washington Post , and the New York Times all do. And I subscribe to all of them.
Attribution
Unlike Harvard president Claudine Gay, I attribute my sources.
Among bloggers, and especially major news outfits, I am practically the only one who links to the BLS, BEA, Commerce Department etc, when writing about the economy.
If someone wants to know where I got my economic numbers from, I show the source. Hardly anyone else does.
Is AI Fair Use?
The New York Times says that AI can spew out vast chunks of its articles, without attribution.
But even with attribution, at what point does taking too much exceed fair use?
Unless the New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, People, and all the other potential cases get settled, the courts have a major decision on fair use in 2024.
What About Bankruptcies?
I don’t think everything is coming up roses in 2024, and neither does Booth.
Commercial real estate is a big mess poised to get bigger, auto loan defaults are rising, and credit card debt topped $1 trillion for the first time.
Nearly everyone thinks the Fed engineered a soft landing.
Expect something else, either a hard landing or a resurgence in inflation, or both of those as in another dose of stagflation.
Tariff and energy policy are both economic madness and inflationary. A wave of bankruptcies could be deflationary, at least temporarily, but this will not be another 2007-2009 deflationary crash with people walking away from their homes.
And expect a trade war no matter who wins in 2024.
For discussion, please see Trump Calls for Eye-to-Eye Tariffs, Huge Trade War No Matter Who Wins
Addendum
It’s potentially a ‘boon’ for the economy. I don’t think anything is going to blow up.
I was discussing this with a friend today, and brought up fair use. This will be an interesting question. Related to that should be the purpose of reading.
Individuals read for plenty of reasons, one big one being to learn how to write effectively. Without commenting on the legal issues, I wonder if the courts will consider the question of teaching a computer program how to write.
After all, it doesn’t look like the program is actually republishing NYT content, but reading it for the purpose of educating the program. Should be an interesting case.
Why is the NY Times a critically important source? it has paid journalists and some standard’s for truth, but it reports from the viewpoint of a subset of humanity.
It may be a key player re the US version of the truth, but isn’t needed if AI is to provide a view of what the truth may actually be
Three comments on AI.
One: msft has been negotiating with all major media sources for access to their data (including the nyt) for many months now and have signed many agreements already. There remain a few holdouts like the nyt. This issue will be solved.
Two: AI has the potential to dramatically increase productivity and help solve a shortage of skilled labor. Which is a good thing for the economy.
Three: like crypto, AI is power hungry, requiring a lot more computing power and electricity. A simple chat gpt search consumes 15x the electricity of a google search. The more we use AI going forward the more electricity we will use.
Add on the electricity needed to power the growing fleet of EV and PHEV vehicles. Then add on the growing electricity needs of developing countries.
Result: Every year there is optimism that newly built renewables will finally meet the annual increase in electricity demand; and every year electricity demand grows faster than expected, requiring the continuing use of even more fossil fuels.
Electricity in the not distant future will be generated via fusion or a bit farther along, beamed down from orbit, collected from the sun 24 x 7.
How distant is that future you are talking about? We aren’t remotely close to doing either of the things you talk about on even a trial basis, much less on a commercial basis.
I’m guessing neither of those things is happening this century on a commercial basis.
I’ve posted in past threads here that Microsoft has a contract with a fusion development company to provide them with electricity from a fusion plant by 2028.
At least two other companies are predicting a commercial fusion plant in operation by 2030.
Orbit beamed electricity is farther out but significant progress is being made on the underlying technology. I would expect to see some first efforts with a working model by 2040.
Go check with Professor Google.
Wow, more predictions of fusion power in the medium to long term. Haven’t you ever heard the saying, “Fusion is the power of the future, and always will be”? Read Vaclav Smil’s work on this topic. He is far from optimistic.
When will uninformed people like yourself stop posting that idiotic statement? I’m certain you think you are being witty but honestly, you’re not.
I think the journalistic and management world needs a reality check re AI. I was recently fired for ‘underperformance’ on a project that was supposed to apply AI to a very complicated problem. I’m not an expert on AI or ML but I’ve done enough of it to know the project was dead on arrival and when I was tricked into going to a meeting outside the office to get sacked I was greatly tempted to say that while I was underperforming (which was true) I at least knew what I was doing and not mismanaging a project that was going to be millions of dollars of steaming sh*t. But I didn’t, management was nice enough guys even if they were disgustingly ignorant and, to my surprise, I got an extremely generous severance package. You catch more flies with honey, it seems.
Anyway, consider the stock market. Accurate records of every transaction made for the past century: a problem that AI/ML was made for. But guess what, no one owns the planet yet, which they would if AI was correct 51% of the time. AI has its applications, but the vast majority of problems in the universe AI, at least as we know how to do it now, simply can’t solve them.
Which is not to say things like deep fakes, etc., are not something to be concerned about. I’m just saying whenever I hear how AI is going to change the world overnight I think of how the dot.com bust also changed the world, overnight….
Speaking of Microsoft, cnn reports that Steven Ballmer (ex-CEO of MS) will collect ‘a billion dollars a year for doing nothing”. As opposed to generating third rate software that nickel and dimes you more and more every year, so overall I’d say a billion for having him do nothing is a deal. Why yes, I am typing this on a Mac.
Ballmer might be collecting a billion from MS, but doubt it as pay package. Probably as a major shareholder, and that CNN article was probably written by an AI bot – or ignorant journo who will be soon replaced by AI.
It’s $3/share dividend money, he owns about 334 million shares
“Unlike Harvard President Claudine gay, I attribute my sources”.
I bet Mish went to a high school with some real smart ass pricks to come up with a line like that.
It’s still funny
Ron Roth and I went to the same high school. I think that was supposed to be a joke.
Why would OpenAI train its algos on NY Times instead of Encyclopedia Britanica or similar encyclopedia? If OpenAI hacked into NYT internal databases, fair point, but the paper features lots of opinionated articles, and occasional psyops. Even those articles that I found worthwhile there, wouldn’t be of much value over time.
Is it an attempt by the NYT to stay relevant?
News papers reflect current trends in society. Someone wanting marketing advice would want the most up-to-date information. Maybe for a scientific or historical question AI would draw from an encyclopedia.
What better source material than ‘all the news that is fit to print’?
(will add “/s” just in case the bots don’t sense it yet)
RE: NY Times.
If I read an article there and tell you about it, do I need to pay the NYT a royalty? Is there a web form for me to fill out when I do something like this or can I pay them an annual fee to freely regurgitate content that they likely borrowed from someone else and simply reformatted?
A re-telling of something you read would invariably be a creation/interpretation of your own, but you could preface your words with the phrase ‘I read in the NYT that…’ to attribute the source. (of course one might not want to admit to reading the NYT, but it is an option)
Broadcasting the NYT’s article in person or over the air would probably get you into trouble, but I’m sure less than doing that for a major league baseball game (unless you had written permission).
I’ve long believed that robots and AI adoption will lead to deflation.
——
OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla predicts AI will deflate the economy over the next 25 years
By Kwan Wei Kevin Tan | Business Insider
December 26, 2023
Billionaire and early OpenAI backer Vinod Khosla says he expects AI to change the global economy fundamentally.
“AI should be hugely deflationary over twenty-five years,” Khosla wrote on X on Monday.
His outlook is a stark departure from what markets and the economy have been dealing with for the better part of two years, as inflationary pressures continue even as price growth has come down from multi-decade highs.
In a deflationary environment, prices in the economy fall, leading to lower profitability for companies and stagnant or even shrinking economic growth.
But Khosla says that AI’s impact will lead to traditional measures of economic health to be less relevant.
…
link to businessinsider.com
I believe I read somewhere that fair use is less than 4 paragraphs. One sentence would not be enforceable. But as always, it would be expensive to fight deep pocket companies that try to win through intimidation. Does anyone read the FT?
I think chatgpt was released when it was released in order to provide a massive upgrade in productivity which could offset CPIflation. If they take chatgpt away, that productivity enhancement, which is being HIGHLY leveraged right now whether you realize it or not, goes away. I have at least doubled my coding output based on chatgpt 4.
NY Times eh? No wonder AI is so lame!
The lawyers always win.
You are VERY careful with reference points, Mish.
Great job this year and thanks for all of your posts which provoke us to think.
Microsoft will make an offer to buy NY Times & put an end to this.
MSFT does not provide fair value for anything. IT is a win-lose company by culture. So more likely it will spend money finding dirt on the leaders of NYT and blackmail them into a token settlement, or simply make them have accidents. Or it will counter sue based on illegal copies of windows now in use at NYT. It will be something other than what NYT wants though.
NYTimes is short sighted to forbid using Times as a credible reference. I boycott the Times. I don’t believe a word they say. I try to stay ahead of the maddening crowd.