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On Monday, as more details leaked about Ottawa’s long-delayed strategy on artificial intelligence, A.G. Sulzberger was in France delivering a speech that should be required reading for every Member of Parliament — and anyone who cares about a sustainable future for journalism.
Speaking at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress, the New York Times publisher issued a dire warning about AI companies “strip-mining” the intellectual property of news sites.
“The companies driving A.I., already among the richest and most powerful in human history, are consolidating their outsize control over our data and our attention,” Sulzberger said. “At the same time, they are failing to embrace a core responsibility that comes with this power — to ensure the public has access to trustworthy news and information.
“Their hijacking of the public square is made possible by the original sin that animates their A.I. products — a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale.
“Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the news organizations that created this work. And this happens not just once during the training process, but countless times every single day.”
There is so much in his speech that is so important as AI accelerates, iterates, dominates.
And rather than let AI summarize it for you, I’m going to leave you with links to the full text of the speech and a video replay.
But before I end tonight’s note, I want to highlight one passage that I hope those in Ottawa won’t ignore as they move forward with whatever AI strategy is eventually released:
“We cannot allow A.I. cheerleaders to dominate the public conversation without interjecting to argue for the importance of ensuring a sustainable future for original journalism.
“We cannot watch as A.I. companies attempt to permanently dismantle the rights that give us control over the work we create.
“We cannot sit by as this work is used to build replacement products that undermine our ability to earn the audience and revenue necessary to continue reporting the news.”
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