Bond...James Bond

or Envious Mediocrity

Many of you will know about the ongoing copyright battles between writers, artists, creators of all kinds, and Tech Bros who want to take our work for free, and feed it to their machines as ‘data.’ Tech Bros really don’t read - unless Blinkist helps them, though occasionally, there’s a bit of Fantasy fiction in the mix (PayPal/Palantir anti-democrat Peter Thiel loves Tolkien, but cannot see that no character on the Good Side resembles him). But we do know what happened to one Tolkien character who wanted his very own palantir

World domination in Silicon Valley has been a lot about taking folks’ data and reselling it (yes, you Zuck - never understood why we have to travel all the way to the last letter of the alphabet, to pronounce his name, when letter number 6 would work just fine). Jeff Bezos acts like he’s just selling us stuff, fast and cheap, when the real money and power is in ‘collecting’ our data - shopping habits, viewing preferences, interactions with Alexa, the photos on your Ring doorbell system, your Kindle choices - and are you a fast or slow reader? Do you buy recommendations?

We could go on down the Google road for cookies and snooping noses everywhere, but you understand all this stuff, and we all know this stuff, and we went along with it, because we still somehow think that society is OK, and we don’t want to be in the conspiracy-zone, and then, well, now, we find that these guys, and they are guys, they want everything. Everything you got. They want to own you. No, they believe they already own you. It’s not theft, you dumbfuck, (to quote Zuck)

It’s sharing.

So, when we create a piece of work, it doesn’t really belong to us, it belongs to them. Respectfully, of course.

‘It would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without the use of copyrighted materials.’ Sam Altman. Open AI.

That is true. So pay up, you motherzucker.

Journalism is in the mix here too. Legacy media is disliked by Tech-Land, unless one of them happens to own the newspaper. The problem with legacy media is that it has legally enforceable standards to uphold, and it is accountable to the facts - and that sounds like regulation to a tech-bro. It’s important that online platforms can broadcast any old garbage without any fear of paying the price for disinformation. These guys never want to pay for anything they do. They talk about investment but they are only investing in themselves. When there is an external cost - to the planet, to the community, to the folks whose work they are stealing… that’s suddenly not their cost.

You know, I have never been interested in those earnest bro-discussions about aligning AI with human values. What values? Greed? Vanity? Theft? Lying? Arrogance? Secrecy? Cruelty? Punishment?

My hope for humanity is for a just-in-time AGI that doesn’t align with our ‘values’.

But more of that another week. I promised you James Bond!

It’s not so far down the booby-trapped train-track from stealing other people’s work.

A button-faced Austrian businessman that no-one has ever heard of, is challenging the Bond Trademarks so that he can grab them for himself and stick the icon on his gated home developments, ‘luxury’ hotels, range of merch, (ready-mix Bond martini? AI-enabled Bond Girl in bikini? Gun that fires pink condoms?) Stuff that will make other button-faced non-entities feel like they are super-fit, witty, fearless, attractive to women, can ride a motorbike across roof-tops, and shoot people without going to jail. Maybe Don Trump Jr will be investing. Maybe Greenland could become the new Home of James Bond.

Look, I know the franchise is now partly owned by Amazon, since their MGM buyout, and we shed no tears for them, but the Broccoli Family via EON Productions (UK) have built the movie brand since the 1960s - and developed it with humour, style, and even something like self-reflection, which for a Trad Hero is saying a lot. If only Trad Wives could manage as much.

Tons of creativity goes into Bond. Creativity is the lifeblood of being human. Then along comes an envious-eyed businessman wanting to cash in on what is not his.

To make money, for sure. But also to destroy. That’s the revenge of mediocrity. Mediocrity is driven to make everything as small and pointless as itself.

I hope the Broccoli’s boil him dry and feed him to the chickens.