Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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In AI circles, a “centaur” describes a certain kind of machine/human collaboration, in which “decision-support” systems (which the field loves to call “AI”s) are paired with human beings for results that draw upon the strengths of each, such as when a human chess master and a chess-playing computer program collaborate to smash their competition.
In labor circles, “chickenization” refers to exploitative working arrangements that resemble the plight of the American poultry farmer. The U.S. poultry industry has been taken over by three monopolistic packers, who have divided the nation up into exclusive territories, so that each chicken farmer has only one buyer for their birds.
Continue reading "Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs"
It’s Stealing Their Money.
Governments around the world — Australia, France, Brazil, and now Canada —have fallen in love with the idea of creating a pseudo-copyright system that requires tech companies to pay license fees to news publishers when their users quote the news.
These governments start from the (correct) premise that a vigorous, independent news sector is vital to democracy, and the (likewise correct) premise that there’s something fundamentally crooked in how the tech companies operate, and then draw the (alarmingly wrong) conclusion that the way to solve this is with a “snippet tax” (or, more charitably, a “remuneration right”).
Continue reading "Big Tech Isn’t Stealing News Publishers’ Content"
