I have been an AI researcher for 40 years. What tech giants are doing to book publishing is akin to theft | Toby Walsh

Black Inc , the publisher of the Quarterly Essay , had asked consent from its authors to train AI models on their work and then share the revenue with those authors.

The publisher could have communicated its intent with more transparency and a little less urgency.

But all in all, I am sympathetic to where Black Inc finds itself.

Small publishers such as Black Inc provide a valuable service to Australian literature and our cultural heritage.

Imagine also that these companies use all this information to manipulate what we do and what we buy in ways that we couldn’t begin to understand. Perhaps the most beautiful part of this digital heist is that all of this knowledge is being stolen in broad daylight. Napster was a rather minor and petty crime in comparison..