06/12/2023
AI has been a useful and helpful tool, able to clarify questions and provide answers; create AI generated art pieces and music; and many more possibilities that may fit to our tasks and needs, but there are legal and ethical implications in using such tools where it may infringe the rights of an author or maker, either it may be intentional or not.
For example, we know that Leonardo da Vinci is the author and originator of the āMona Lisaā painting. Now letās say the scenario is that he was born in a time and age where AI technology has become the norm and necessity, where he would be able to publish and advertise his artworks online and be able to benefit and earn rightful reputation and pay to his numerous masterpiece, but the issue of others able to leech from his works has also become a possibility and danger to his original works, also with reasonable concern or fear that he wonāt be able to get the credit he rightfully deserves.
Nowadays, we have solutions able to address these concerns such as the copyright law set in place to guarantee protection of the original works of the author and that the law may be able to identify, prevent, discourage and capture any violators who infringes the rights of the owner, whereby this law the author may be able to enjoy full protection of his/her works, but even such law wonāt be able to fully ensure 100% protection because there are those who were able to exploit loopholes in the law, where copyright infringers are able to get away.
So thus comes the question, when will come the time that weāll be able to definitively come up with a solution to this legal and moral problem?
The search and creation for the protection of intellectual property has since begun in the 1790s, it was in that year that the very first copyright law came into place under the new United States constitution. At first the law was only limited in its protection to books, maps, and charts, but as the years go by where new tools, ideas, inventions, and technologies were created, the law further molded into shape to encompass the new realities and abundance of many forms of intellectual property, especially in our day and age.
Even though this law may act as a safeguard to anyoneās original works, it isnāt enough to completely protect oneās works, because as technologies continues to improve and grow exponentially, we might soon see and witness copyright law struggling to catch up to balance itself to the bullet-train-like growth of technology and there will be no way of stopping or slowing the progress of the things which we have created.
Let me sum up with a statement in this matter, āthe law was made to protect oneās works from falling into wrong hands, but technology was made as a tool not only for the good, but also for the wicked to be able to leech off their works.ā
In ethical matters, artificial intelligence or AI was made and taught by us human beings that it may serve as a tool to our specific needs, so it would be of no surprise that it would be able to replicate and create things that may be of varying similarities to the original works of numerous individuals where their rights to their works may be infringed. It is a complicated issue and that requires a deep dive in this moral question.
Now that I've delved beyond the reach of my understanding as to the ethical implications of AI, it is quite fascinating though that as AI continues to grow, we also continue to adjust, define, and improve further on areas whether that be on legal grounds or in instructions to chastise AI in acting in areas that may be able to protect the intellectual properties of the rightful individuals.
