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The Map is Eating the Territory: The Political Economy of AI

Mar 01, 2024 - programmablemutter.com
The article discusses the political economy of AI, focusing on Large Language Models (LLMs) and their relationship with intellectual property. The author argues that LLMs are cultural technologies that provide new ways to access, order, and remix human-generated information, but they also pose potential problems. The article also explores the concept of "the map is not the territory," suggesting that informational maps have started to engulf the territories they describe, with search engines summarizing and cannibalizing the commercially valuable aspects of the websites they link to.

The author further discusses the shift in the fights around big tech and intellectual property, noting a change in alliances and attitudes towards tech companies. The article concludes by suggesting that the monopoly control of information by big tech companies like Google, OpenAI, and Meta is seen as a bigger threat than the old enemy, Big Content. The author advocates for intellectual property systems that encourage the creation of useful knowledge and valuable art, and acknowledges the value of human-generated knowledge that LLMs summarize.

Key takeaways:

  • The article discusses the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) and how they are reshaping the political economy of AI, particularly in relation to intellectual property.
  • LLMs are seen as "cultural technologies" that provide new ways to access, order and remix human-generated information, but they also pose potential problems, particularly in terms of intellectual property rights.
  • The author argues that the rise of technologies like LLMs, which can summarize and reproduce human-generated content, is leading to economic divides between those who control these technologies and those whose work risks being summarized into non-existence.
  • The article suggests that the political coalitions around intellectual property and big tech have shifted, with left-leaning activists now more likely to side with culture producers and those who want authors to be compensated, rather than with big tech companies.
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