Ethical language models are on the way. But the state of Denmark, which likes to criticise tech giants, prefers Microsoft’.
All government employees will be equipped with Microsoft’s generative artificial intelligence, CoPilot, according to the news media DataTech. Already, 63 out of 98 municipalities use CoPilot or ChatGPT, writes Version2. This not only costs money but also comes at a time when several public municipalities are struggling with the monopoly’s rapidly rising prices. Both services can be characterised as unethical, environmentally wasteful, and, by all accounts, illegal.
The biggest and most acute challenge is copyright. CoPilot is based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT (Microsoft is a major investor), which is created using content on the internet, including the copyrighted without asking for permission. As a result, the American news media The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, and Danish media has collectively recently announced their intention to follow suit in Wired magazine. If OpenAI will not enter into a collective payment agreement with the Danish media and pay for its original sin; the use of their content to create ChatGPT, there will be a lawsuit. It would be the first of its kind in Europe, which is a good idea, as EU copyright law does not have a so-called fair use doctrine, which the New York Times risks losing to in the US.
Trying to Stop The Global AI-Theft
The media is not alone in the battle to secure its economic foothold with AI. Photographers, graphic designers, actors, and most other artists are also trying to stop the global AI theft from Microsoft, Google, and Meta in particular. What few people realise is that alternative AI services exist. Services that have been developed in agreement with copyright holders. Further, there are several European and Nordic services on the way that aim to be ethically responsible. For example, the Danish Chamber of Commerce is involved in the development of a Danish language model.
Musicians’ livelihoods are also under threat. US record labels are suing two AI apps that have scraped all music from the internet without authorisation and are selling services that allow anyone to create ‘new’ music. According to the lawsuit, the investors behind the two apps have said that they would not invest in them if they had to pay for the use of the original music, according to the podcast Hard Fork.
Other Huge Issues
Copyright in generative AI is only one challenge. We know that you can’t trust what comes out of the services. They are ‘hallucinating’ as they are probabilistic machines that guess what the next word is in the sentence. EU data protection authorities question the legality and ask OpenAI over 30 questions about their GDPR compliance while the Austrian non-profit Noyb.eu has complained that you can’t access your data and have it corrected. The technology greatly impacts the climate as it consumes massive amounts of water and electricity. It is used for deepfakes and to manipulate voters in democratic elections, such as in India, partly because it is deliberately designed to be human-like.
Along with all the problems, the technology is also promising. Especially when it comes to the environment, health, and science. The problems will be solved so that we can eventually use it for the benefit of people, planet and democracy. But it may take time. It’s simply incomprehensible that the state should take the lead and be the first mover here.
The state should in stead lead the way as an ethical role model. Let a few selected employees experiment with the still immature tools that the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has just concluded. And then wait for ethically responsible tools. Not least because the government is constantly busy criticising the tech giants. But no. While the media and others are fighting for their copyrights and survival, and the government is giving them millions of euros in subsidies, the government is undermining them by giving all employees CoPilot.
You could call that a true double standard.
Translated by Deepl.com / Photo: Alex Shuper, unsplash.com
