The Truth About AI Part 1

Stefan Molyneux

Stefan Molyneux looks at the philosophical and moral sides of artificial intelligence, particularly where it crosses with copyright laws and its effects on society. He points out how AI draws from copyrighted materials without getting permission, which brings up issues around intellectual property. Molyneux draws a comparison between standard ways of learning and what AI can do as a customized tutor, noting its ability to deliver information suited to individual needs. He cautions that AI could lower the worth of conventional media and put authors' incomes at risk by turning their creations into commodities. Molyneux calls for an approach where AI firms get approval from the original creators, stressing the importance of acknowledging authors' work as AI becomes more common.  GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00Hi, everybody. This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain. So, AI. Let's talk the philosophy

00:07and morality of artificial intelligence and its effects on your life to come. It's going to be a

00:14huge, huge effect. So, let's look at the ethics of copyright. Now, copyright is a complicated

00:23topic as a whole, but let's just take the current existing legal framework. AI cannot function

00:31without violating copyright. AI cannot be trained on anything particularly useful

00:38without violating copyright. So, for instance, AI has hoovered up my books, I mean, most of which

00:46are available for free, but I still haven't handed over with any particular permission use in that.

00:53Now, I want you to think about the difference between hiring a tutor and buying a book. So,

01:04let's say that you want to make a meal. You've never made it before. So, normally what you do

01:12is you would, back in the day, like prior to all this sort of stuff, you would go and you

01:17would

01:18buy a cookbook. And then you would thumb through that cookbook. You'd say you want to make some

01:22Mediterranean dish. You would buy a Mediterranean cookbook and you'd pay 30 bucks or whatever.

01:27And then you would get a bunch of recipes and you would use those recipes. And that's how you

01:34would gain knowledge of that recipe. Now, if you think about hiring a chef to instruct you on the

01:42recipes, that's sort of a different matter, right? So, what would you rather do? Would you rather buy a

01:48book where you have to do the work to look it up, to follow the steps and so on? Or

01:53would you rather

01:55hire someone to walk you through whatever recipe you wanted? Now, of course, if you buy a cookbook,

02:04often, not always, but most often, they will not have all of the list of ingredients and so on,

02:10right? And so, an AI model, you can say, okay, so I want to make, I don't know, a Greek

02:21salad with

02:22feta and olives or whatever. Feta, as my wife always says, not feta, feta. So, if you ask AI, AI

02:30will say,

02:30okay, well, here's what you need to do. You say, well, what do I need to buy? Oh, you need

02:33to buy this.

02:34Where's the best order to buy it? Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it may even, at some point,

02:38to be able to produce a list, which you can just feed into some online grocery provider and order

02:42this, whatever you need, right? So, that's more like a personal assistant. Would you rather buy a

02:49book on how to make, I don't know, what's a complicated lobster bisque, right? Or baked Alaska

02:56or something like that? Would you rather buy a book? Or would you rather have a coach, a tutor,

03:04to teach you step by step everything you needed to do to produce that meal, right? Now, if you look

03:13at AI, AI is like a coach. It's like a tutor. It's like a personal assistant. It's like an expert

03:20in

03:21your kitchen telling you everything you need to do to make that perfectly, even to the point like the

03:27cookbook will not remind you of things, but the AI will remind you of things. Oh, I just put the

03:33baked Alaska in the oven, remind me when it's got to come out to be best, whatever it is, right?

03:38And so, you have a complete personal assistant, expert chef, tutor, and everything in AI. Would you

03:50rather buy a big book of exercise on exercising? Or would you rather have AI, like you input your stats

03:59or whatever? And would you rather AI create, design, track, and monitor a complete exercise

04:06regime for you based upon your goals, right? So, one is a book. The other is a very detailed

04:13fitness coach, can even give you encouragement, can even help you correct form if it's video.

04:18Now, the transformation of a recipe book or an exercise book into a very sophisticated personal

04:29coach gets past or bypasses copyright laws under the aegis of, it is transformative. If you transform

04:39the work enough, then it is not a copyright violation. And that's how they kind of get around

04:48this. It's one of the ways they get around it. The other is that it's kind of impossible to

04:53pay every author for everything that you're hoovering up and so on. But the way that I

04:59look at it is something like this. If you have a cookbook, let's say a Mediterranean cookbook,

05:07right? And you're going to make Spanicopata or something like that. Something, you know,

05:10kind of complicated. You got your Mediterranean cookbook in the bookstore and then right in front

05:15of it, there's a guy saying, I mean, look, you can spend 30 bucks on this cookbook or forget the

05:23cookbook. I'll come to your house and show you step-by-step how to make the meal and remind you

05:27of everything and tell you everything you need to buy. And, you know, within a month, of course,

05:31of me doing this as often as you want, you'll be familiar with this. And you can look up any

05:36of the

05:36recipes and learn it all and all of that kind of stuff, right? And you don't have to buy a

05:40bunch

05:40of recipes that you don't want, right? Let's say you don't eat dessert. Well, in the Mediterranean

05:45cookbook, there's going to be a bunch of dessert recipes you don't want, right? You're buying singles,

05:49not albums and so on, right? Now, this is competition, right? Because the AI people also say,

05:55look, our AIs don't harm book sales, which I would disagree with. I'm sure that there's data going

06:04both ways, but I would disagree with it in the same way that if you have a personal fitness book

06:11on sale for 30 bucks, but when someone goes to buy it, you know, someone puts his hand on your

06:19forearm

06:20if you go to buy the fitness book and says, no, no, no, listen, this fitness book is like 60

06:25bucks.

06:26I will give you months of, you know, you can tell me your blood work, your weight, your body fat

06:31percentage, what it is that you want to achieve. And I will design for you a personal, exact,

06:38tailored fitness routine. I'll track your progress. I'll tell you how far you are from your goals.

06:44I'll make sure that, you know, and all of that. Oh, you could just buy some dead book that you

06:48have

06:48to do all the work and set it all up, right? Would a personal trainer for free relative, right?

06:55Because, you know, you can get a lot of free AIs. I know that there's some that cost some money

06:59or whatever, right? You can get some free AIs. So, would you rather have a dead book or a

07:06detailed, personalized life coach? Well, most people would rather have a detailed, personalized

07:12life coach. So, to me, if you can get the value, right, if you can get the value of a

07:21book without

07:22having to read the book, right? So, I've got these books on voluntarism, like practical anarchy,

07:26everyday anarchy. I've got The Handbook of Human Ownership. I've got my novel, The Future,

07:31which goes into this in more detail. So, let's say you have a question about voluntarism.

07:35And your question is, well, how would national defense work in the absence of a government?

07:40It's a pretty common question. Or how would Rhodes function in the absence of a government?

07:44Well, you could, let's say my books were for sale, you could go and spend, you know, say 40 bucks

07:50or 50

07:50bucks buying a bunch of my books. And then you would have to go to the index, hoping the index

07:55worked,

07:56you'd have to say, okay, here's the, okay, the Rhodes, I'm going to go read that. And then you

08:00would get your answer. And it would cost you like 50 bucks. And you'd have a bunch of books that

08:04you'd

08:04have to sort of have in your house and manage. And 95% of the books would not be answering

08:11your

08:12question. So, if you have a question, how would Rhodes function without a government? Then you want

08:20to answer it. Would you buy my books? Or would you just ask AI, knowing that AI was trained on

08:25my

08:25books? Would you rather read UPB? Or if you have a specific question about UPB, well, how does UPB

08:33handle abortion? Or how does UPB handle self-defense or whatever? You could grab my book and plow through

08:39it, hoping that the answer is somewhere in there. And maybe you have to skim it till you find it's

08:44very inefficient. Or you could just ask an AI as trained in my books. Or if you wanted to learn

08:50UPB,

08:51universally preferable behavior, my rational proof of secular ethics, if you wanted to learn that,

08:55then you could either read the book and puzzle it through and ask questions of people who might know.

09:00Or you could say to AI, you know, create a 10 course or a 10 lesson course in how to

09:08best understand UPB,

09:10assuming I have very limited training in philosophy. Break it down for me at, let's say,

09:17a grade 10 level. Well, then that's all personalized. If you ask me to do that, it would,

09:23you know, obviously, if you hired me to do that, it would be expensive and so on. But you can

09:26get

09:27that for free from AI. So, if you look at AI, I mean, the first question is, why does it

09:35exist at

09:35all? Now, you could say, well, AI would be trained on all books, you know, what is it, 75 years

09:41old or

09:42whatever, it's the life of the author plus 50 years or whatever it is, right? So, you would have all

09:47books from the sort of early 20th century, maybe 1940s. You would train AI on those books, but that

09:53would not be particularly helpful because that's not what people want. They don't want answers to

09:58questions that were relevant 75 years ago, right? So, the only reason that AI has particular value

10:07is that the AI companies are able to hoover up millions and millions and millions of books

10:14and transform them into personal coaches, trainers, consultants to specifically answer questions

10:23that people have, and they don't pay a penny for it. They don't pay a penny for it. So, when

10:31I was a

10:32kid, we bought, and I used, of course, for many, many years, we bought a second-hand copy of the

10:40Encyclopedia Britannica. In fact, I once dated a girl who was selling encyclopedias. She sold

10:48encyclopedias for a while, as did I, actually, briefly. So, I had an old copy of this. That's one

10:56of the reasons why my beliefs are probably somewhat old-fashioned, is that this was an Encyclopedia

11:00Britannica, which we bought in the late 60s, which was like, I don't know, 20 years old or whatever,

11:06right? So, it was like late 40s that the Encyclopedia came out. And, of course, when I had a

11:14question, I would go and look up things in the Encyclopedia. Now, of course, 99% of the Encyclopedia,

11:21or 95% or whatever it would be, I never used, because I didn't want to look up those things,

11:27or I didn't have any need to look up those things, or I didn't have any interest in those things.

11:32So, they can hoover up that entire encyclopedia, and if I were to ask it, say, well, gee, what was

11:39the cause of the Great Depression, right? You can go and look it up in an encyclopedia, which gives

11:44you a bunch of information you have to parse out and won't answer any further questions, or you can

11:48say to AI, right, which has hoovered up the whole encyclopedia, what were the causes, and tell me more

11:53on cross-references, this, that, and the other, right? So, it's the difference between if you have a word

11:59that you don't know the meaning of, and your father wrote a dictionary, an entire dictionary,

12:06his name is Oxford, right? So, your father wrote an entire dictionary, would you go and buy a dictionary,

12:13or would you just ask your father? I don't quite understand that meaning. Can you give it to me in

12:17another context? Like, AI will do all of that. So, AI exists because of violations of copyrights. You

12:28say, ah, well, but it's transformative, and it's like, yes, it's transformative in a way that makes

12:33the book much less valuable. Makes the books much less valuable. You know, what are the top five

12:40lessons that Stefan Molyneux has in his book The Art of the Argument? Well, are you going to buy the

12:46whole book if that's all you want? Synthesize, compress, oh, use the book The Art of the Argument

12:52to create a 10-course study program on how to improve my argumentation, and combine it with

13:00the arguments put forward in the book Essential Philosophy? Well, are you going to buy the source

13:08material if you have the AI? If you have a personal coach who will teach you every step you need

13:15to do

13:15to make the recipe, including what ingredients to buy, when to thaw them, when to prepare them,

13:21and it's going to coach you along every step of the way, are you going to buy a cookbook? Well,

13:25no.

13:25So, the cookbook transformation has reduced the value of the book by extracting, compressing, and

13:35individualizing the information that people want to get out of the book, right? I mean,

13:39just look at it these days, right? If you don't know the meaning of a particular word,

13:45then you will not drive out and buy a dictionary, or even go and look up a dictionary that you

13:51might

13:51have, but you instead will go and ask AI, or go to the web and ask for that, right?

13:59So, why does AI exist at all? Because AI gets to hoover up all of the millions of books of

14:07incredibly

14:08hard-earned work. Like, to write a book can be brutal and is brutal on many people. It has taken

14:15all of that, extracted all of the knowledge and wisdom, and can tailor it to every individual,

14:20and you can even say, you know, explain UPP to me as if you were Snoop Dogg or something like

14:24that,

14:25can make it funny, and so on. So, AI only exists because millions of books, right? I don't know what

14:33it is. Let's say 10 million books. Well, the average writer takes about two years to write a

14:38book, in many cases. Depends on the kind of book and so on, right? So, that's two million years of

14:43human labor that's taken without paying anyone a thing. Without paying anyone a thing. So, again,

14:53the question of intellectual property is interesting and different, but, you know, I won't sort of get

14:59into the anarcho-capitalist views of intellectual property, but the question is, would writers or are

15:08writers happy that people can get tailored lessons from all of their books and specific answers to

15:15specific questions without having to consume the whole book or buy the whole book through AI? Are

15:20writers happy about that? Well, I assume not. I assume not. And, of course, AI is very, very

15:31aggressive. Most AI companies are very aggressive if other people use their AIs to train their AIs,

15:38which is the old Bill Gates and Steve Jobs thing, you know? Like, Steve Jobs said that Bill Gates was

15:45copying him and, like, bro, we're both copying Xerox, right? AI exists because of violations of

15:51copyright law, or at least copyright morality, in that the writers were not consulted. The writers

15:59were not consulted. Now, if you write a book, then you expect that people are going to get the value

16:08of

16:08your book by buying the book. If they can get more tailored and specific value from your book by asking

16:13AI,

16:14that is not a transformation that any writer in the past would have reasonably been expected to have

16:21occurred, right? That you just don't expect that to happen. And because nobody expected that to happen

16:29in the past, and they were not asked, right? You go to the writers' organizations, you go to Penn,

16:35you go to other writers' unions, and you say that you need to poll your writers on whether they are

16:41okay

16:42with their works being absorbed by AI. And I think most writers would say, well, no. I don't want

16:49other people profiting off my work, which they are. You must be clear about that. The AI companies are

16:55profiting off millions of person years of incredibly difficult labor. You know, Alexander Solzhenitsyn

17:04risked life and freedom to bring us the Gulag Archipelago, and AI has just hoovered that up and

17:11reproduced it to whoever wants it. Now, not the original text, but arguably an even more important

17:16version of the text, which is summaries and specific questions and show me the contradictions and show me

17:21the responses and ask follow-up questions and all of that. You get to interrogate an intelligent

17:28expert about the contents of a book. You get a teacher of the material without having to purchase

17:35the material. Because if you become an expert in a particular writer's books, it is assumed that you

17:43have bought those writer's books. I'm an expert in Hemingway. Well, I assume you bought some Hemingway

17:46books. But this way, you get to consult an expert, and that expert never had to pay for any of

17:52the books.

17:53It's a kind of theft, in my view. Like, morally, it's kind of theft. The way that copyright law

17:59works in a free society is that it's the commons license, right? You can choose to open source your

18:05book. You can choose to not enforce copyright. But if you want to enforce copyright, that's totally

18:10fine, right? You simply include something in the book which says, if you purchase this book, you agree

18:16not to, you know, resell it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which, you know, isn't, that's not without

18:21precedent, of course, right? So, you say, when you write the book, you say whether other people are allowed

18:27to use it without payment, whether they're allowed to transform it or whatever it is, right? And transformation

18:35of a book is not supposed to displace the value of that book. And the fact that writers have all

18:43of their

18:43work transformed into something which is profitable for others without them getting paid for that

18:49process is wretched. It's terrible. But, of course, the courts think that they're in some kind of arms

18:55race and so on, right? So, the question is, why does AI exist at all? Well, AI exists because the

19:03government has refused to enforce, in my view, again, I'm not a lawyer. This is just my particular view,

19:08and I would certainly make a case for it morally, that people cannot hoover up your work

19:13and use it for their own profit without paying you. That's wrong. Unless you're fine with it.

19:20If you're fine with it, that's fine. I mean, but that's true of anything. Like, if someone steals a

19:25car from your parking driveway, someone steals a car, and you want that car to be gone, then you

19:33don't press charges, and it's fine. But if you do want that car to stay with you, and somebody steals

19:38it,

19:38then you press charges, and you're not fine. So, of course, it should be up to each individual rider.

19:43But, of course, there should be a process in AI where, as a writer, you say, even if you allow

19:51them to hoover up these books, you then inform the writer, right? And you send them an email,

19:56and you say, we have absorbed your books. If you're not okay with this, if you're not okay with this,

20:03send us a message. Send us a message, and we will either pay you, or we will take your books

20:09out of

20:10our AI metric. Of course, it should not be opt-out. It should be opt-in, right? Your books have

20:16been

20:16selected to be absorbed into our AI. If you're okay with this, reply. If you want to be paid, here's

20:22the

20:22payment. If you don't accept any of those, we won't do it, right? That would be the rational process,

20:27again, for stuff that's still under copyright law or whatever, right? Like, under the current sort of

20:31legal system. So, AI exists because of broad theft? And AI could not exist without that.

20:41It's sort of like COVID vaccines only existed because of immunity from liability, and nuclear

20:48power only exists because the government removed liability. So, the first and most important

20:56question, and I get that this doesn't change how AI affects people over time, but the first and most

21:00important question is, why is there even AI? It's because the government allowed AI companies to

21:06pillage millions of years of human knowledge without paying a penny. And there's no opt-out,

21:15and there's no enforceability. I mean, Aaron Swartz was facing decades and decades in jail

21:22for just downloading stuff. There was no intent. He didn't seem to have any intent to profit from it.

21:27And of course, a lot of the AI companies said, well, there's an AI race, and if we don't win

21:31it,

21:31other countries are going to win it. And also, it's a non-profit, you know? This is some of the

21:36stuff with AI companies that they set up as non-profits, and then they turn to a profit model

21:40and say, well, this is good at humanity, and it's a scientific experiment. It's essential for human

21:44progress. And then they put ads on and start making money, all this kind of stuff, right? So,

21:48it's all kind of shady as a whole. So, that's the first thing to understand, that the issue with

21:57AI only exists because of a violation of property rights. People expect somebody to be who's an

22:05expert on their books, who at least bought some of their books, but AI companies don't have to do

22:09any of that. They can just go and hoover it all up. Now, again, for stuff outside of copyright,

22:14who cares? And if it's in the public domain, that's fine. If it's open source, fine. If it's

22:21Creative Commons, that's fine. Again, unless there are transformation issues, right? And so,

22:27AI companies are very hypocritical, of course. Like the band U2, right? The band U2 got mad at people

22:33sampling their music, and then in, what was that, the Achtung Baby Tour, I mean, they sampled lots of

22:41people stuff, right? So, it's just this kind of hypocrisy that AI companies will hoover up millions

22:47of years of sweat and blood human labor without paying a penny, but the moment that somebody else

22:53tries to use their algorithms to train their own AI or use their data to train their own AI,

23:00they get really angry and say, well, that's stealing our intellectual property. It's like,

23:04come on, bro. Oh, it's sad. It's sad. So, I'll do another part to this. I just really wanted to

23:13talk about, like, AI is a government program. It is an artificially created pseudo-monopoly

23:20that is brought into being by the government, refusing to protect the sweat equity of millions

23:29of years of human labor and allowing it to be hoovered up for free and turned into profit

23:36for others. It is really terrible, in my view. Writing is a very hard and often very thankless

23:44job, and for AI companies to be making their billions off the sweat of writers and thus rendering

23:51the value of the writer's books much less valuable. I mean, it's less the case, of course,

23:55with things like fiction and so on, right? Because, you know, who wants to say, well,

23:59give me a summary of Catch-22 or something like that, unless it's sort of a book report thing.

24:03But with regards to facts, reason, arguments, evidence, and all of their textbooks, non-fiction

24:09works, and so on, it's brutal. And so, people would just stop writing books. Because why? Why would

24:16you? You're just going to get it hoovered up, and people then don't have to buy your books to get

24:19the value, and it's going to enter a great age of less literacy. So, let me know if this makes

24:25sense. I really do appreciate your time and attention. I'll keep going with the series.

24:28I assume it's going to be helpful. Let me know. You can always email me, host at freedomain.com,

24:33and freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show, freedomain.call to set up a call-in show

24:37with me, shop.freedomain.com for your merch, and freedomain.com slash books for all of the tasty

24:43material. All right. Thank you, my darlings. Take care. Talk to you soon. Bye.

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended