Control

‘openness’ often enables systemic exploitation of developers’ and creators’ labor while maintaining the infrastructural and ecosystem dominance of the largest firms. In the context of high levels of corporate concentration and gatekeeping over the ingredients necessary to build AI systems, ‘open’ AI as currently operationalized is primed for corpor... See more

As Luis Villa phrases it in his review of the paper, “”open” is not a magic bullet to the heart of power.”

These enormous players have absolute roles and responsibilities in how things work. The medium is the message. We are living in Marshall McLuhan land where the medium forms how we think about things. The way the web is coded determines a lot of how we live our lives online. It’s now not just the web, it’s how Facebook is coded, how Google is coded.

We’ve digitized 2.5 million books. Google has as well, but they’re locked up. They locked up the public domain, which we think of as a sin. The library sort of made elite services around it just for themselves.

If we allow those who control the present to control the past then they control the future. That’s George Orwell. We need to know what came before. Because the web flips on and off, actually most of the best of the web is already off the web.