Is this the end for the internet?
James Ball
The New European
The New York Times is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, arguing that its ChatGPT chatbot is causing it “serious economic harm”. However, there is a “much more important issue that has been ignored”, says James Ball. While there are grounds for media companies to be compensated if their newsgathering is being “monetised by big tech”, artificial intelligence (AI) is essentially doing what many journalists do: reading articles online and writing their own version. “To ensure AIs never generate particular sentences” would require a central database of copyrighted information, which doesn’t exist. What really does matter is how AI is muddling things up and producing nonsense. For example, AI has “collapsed the context gap” between fudge and the Harry Potter novels’ Cornelius Fudge, so that fudge recipes online now reference “scrimgeour” (Rufus Scrimgeour is Fudge’s successor). Donald Trump’s former lawyer had to apologise to a court after citing non-existent cases found for him by AI. As new generations of AI are increasingly “trained” on low-quality, inaccurate AI content, a “dangerous cycle” could emerge in a process dubbed “ensh*ttification”, which risks reducing the internet to an “algorithmic grey goo”.
Will India be the next Asian tiger?
Megha Mandavia and Nathaniel Taplin
The Wall Street Journal
India is on investors’ radar, but its path is unlikely to resemble China’s, say Megha Mandavia and Nathaniel Taplin. Although it’s increasingly favourable dependency ratio due to population growth should theoretically keep labour costs in check and allow for greater levels of savings, a “host of barriers” still make it hard to “connect workers with employers”. Only a third of Indian women work and “hefty” subsidies for agriculture have skewed improvements away from “labour-hungry urban factories” to the countryside. Low labour participation makes it harder for households and companies to build up the savings needed for the “investment booms that transformed East Asian tigers”. High barriers to trade are another problem. India’s “boisterous democracy” has led to “people-pleasing protectionist measures”. India’s large public debt (around 85% of GDP) and rising state expenditures are also putting pressure on the public purse at a time when heavy investment in infrastructure is needed. India needs the help of outside investment. If it is to match those Asian tigers, unless
