TIMOTHY LEE: Copyright Will Strengthen, Not Weaken AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies require access to enormous amounts of data, including valuable creative works protected by United States copyright and other laws.

It’s therefore no surprise that the biggest AI companies have been lobbying President Trump for months to weaken or override those intellectual property (IP) laws, claiming that requiring them to negotiate for rights to “training data” (that’s the AI companies’ term for what you and I call “books,” “newspapers,” “movies,” “art,” and other creative works) will somehow slow them down and forfeit leadership on AI to less scrupulous countries like China.

That’s just false.  Protecting America’s IP won’t hinder progress on AI, it will strengthen and accelerate it by putting the power of property rights and free markets to work steering investment and innovation in smart, sustainable directions.

And that’s precisely what the Founding Fathers intended when they enshrined IP rights in the US Constitution, empowering authors, artists and all creators to bargain over the use of their work. Those IP rights ensure that the parties with the most knowledge and the greatest interests (on both sides of the deal) ultimately determine price and other terms through free-market negotiations.

Accordingly, protecting IP doesn’t prevent AI companies from using creative works, it simply requires them to cut a deal and pay fair market value to do so.

On the other hand, if we override creators’ property rights and give developers the free pass they seek, that really would undermine American AI over time.

Most immediately, taking away individual creators’ bargaining power would drain income