Today I saw this article on Publisher’s Weekly about yet another lawsuit against Google (YALAG?), which I fear will turn out to be yet another lawsuit lacking show-stopping, tangible operational penalties (YALLSTOP).
The question that haunts me in this year of our corporate overlords is, what does accountability even mean in a situation like this, and who can we trust to make it happen?
Google, not remotely for the first time, is alleged to have knowingly engaged in law-breaking behavior in the world of words. The discovery process seems to have unearthed evidence suggesting that they even took the time to estimate how much this law-breaking would cost them once they were caught.
When "consequences" are part of a project plan, if they come to pass are they truly consequences or just business expenses? And do lawsuits like this remotely discourage these corporations from their rapine behavior? What if such would-be reckonings are just a form of marketing, wherein big companies get to flex their invincibility to their peers—even inspire the others to behave just as badly?
The optimist in me wants to say time will tell. Maybe this really will be the watershed legal action that makes a true difference. I hope for a transformational reckoning, even while I don't hold my breath for one.
In the meantime, because life must go on (even if it is a life of dodging the earth-cracking footsteps of destructive titans), I hope even more earnestly that we billions of small creators don’t let stuff like this discourage us from engaging in our own small, indispensable work or sharing that work with others.
As much as I am concerned about the scale of theft represented by AI, I am more concerned how it is being used to inflict a multipronged attack on the public and private imagination. The scale of this thing is such that I can’t fully grasp just how much damage may be done to public discourse. But just to pick one example, I worry that the risk of having one’s ideas kidnapped may tempt people into silence. Better to not speak at all, some may decide, than to watch helplessly as my words are taken from me and put to who knows what trivializing or malicious end.
AI is certainly not the only threat to healthy civil discourse. Nor is it the first case of words being stolen or abused. But the air of inevitability and inescapability is, I think, a key strategic feature of the AI epidemic which is being engineered before our very eyes.
But there are some basic truths that apply to all tyrants and bullies, as well as to those who persevere in their shadows. So many unforgettable stories have shown us throughout human history that no bad guy ever wins forever; that no night is eternal. And it is not always an obviously mighty force that brings relief.
The quiet, faithful, earnest efforts of “small” people writing (drawing, singing, dancing) their own small stories is a meaningful protesting force that nurtures essential space where love, truth, curiosity, and hope are preserved and cultivated—and what is nurtured in those spaces will still be there when the light comes out again.
So I encourage you who is reading this to keep seeking and playing your own small part. It really does matter.
Ultreia et suseia.
Hadrian’s Villa - once the estate of the most powerful person in Europe, now a playground of wildflowers and starlings