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but because the tech is intrinsically born out of theft

Two thoughts:

A. That's only true (to any extent) if you hold the extremely myopic view that 'AI == Generative AI'. For my part I'd posit that "AI" at large is not "intrinsically born out of theft". Not unless you think that linear regression, or a genetic algorithm, etc., inherently involve theft somehow.

B. It's an open question whether or not copyright infringement should be considered "theft" at all. It's curious though, that historically hacker oriented communities tended to lean towards "No" being the answer to that. But the scale at which GenAI affects things may be the reason that sentiment seems to be shifting a bit?

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I think it should be fairly obvious by now which form of AI people refer to when they talk specifically about theft. It gets a bit old and repetitive to expand the shorthand in every conversation possible. If people are genuinely curious about other forms of AI, that information is readily available.

When Tesla FSD was in the zeitgeist, theft never entered the discussion, because it was clear that form of AI was not predicated upon theft.


It only takes three extra characters to say "GenAI" instead of "AI". It's just lazy use of language to not disambiguate what one means.

A lot of this discourse is intended for a wider audience than just us technical folk, and so the vocabulary used mirrors that of news headlines. If I were to guess, I would say it distracts from the discourse of the sociopolitical and socioeconomic impacts of generative AI providers and their products.

It is understood which forms of AI are at play here when the discussion revolves around the massive companies, capital investments, datacenters PR campaigns, and mandates required to create and sustain them and their usage.


Telling people they are myopic isn’t going to convince them of your point.



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