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AI’s Ethical Dilemma: ‘What If?’ in the NYT vs. OpenAI Case

Robert Maciejko
2 min readJan 9, 2024

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Graphic: Midjourney

The question about rights and AI is much broader than the New York Times / OpenAI case.

AI affects the rights of any human + many legal entities. Almost all own copyrights, personality & privacy rights, etc.

I built out a thought experiment:

Why does the act of putting something on the Internet make it free game for AI developers?

What about stuff that isn’t online? Is that somehow magically protected or also free to use for model training if someone can capture it?

What if someone copies the contents of your phone and publishes that online? Is using that content fair use?

What if all the content ever created, online or not, was used?

What if there is only one AI company?

What if that AI company was in another country?

What if that country is a country you don’t trust — e.g., “North Korea”?

What if “North Korea” limits AI access to those that agree to move there, pledge their lifetime income and their first born?

What if everyone else in the world was thereby unemployable and fully dependent on “North Korean” generosity?

Are you still ok with them scraping the Internet and everyone’s private data to build the AI?

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All stories with extensive human writing, edits, improvements, fact-checking and changes.

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Robert Maciejko
Robert Maciejko

Written by Robert Maciejko

Entrepreneurial Leader & International Change Driver who delivers. Co-founder of the 1500+ strong global INSEAD AI community. Opinions are personal.

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