This isn’t true. A rich person and a poor person can train LLMs on copyrighted material in 2026. How they acquired those materials matters. Wealthy corporations hold no legal advantage in this space. For example, Anthropic recently settled for $1.5 billion due to acquiring books via piracy: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/technology/anthropic-sett...
My understanding is that an individual could likely pirate the same books without paying a dime (not due to differing legal standards but simply due to the fact it would be hard to identify them in many jurisdictions). In a practical sense it seems corporations are held to a higher standard in this regard.
The discrepancy is that some people equate training a model with piracy even though they are not the same thing. This is typically due to intellectual laziness (refusal to understand the differences) or willful misrepresentation (due to being an ideologically opposed to generative AI). No need to make such a mistake here though.
I doubt many individuals actually changed their opinions. Just that a large crowd of previously-silent people decided AI is a threat to them and they can attack it on copyright grounds. The AI revolution is a great argument against copyright law. The US's lax enforcement means that the incredible, world-changing tech could be built before the luddites got organised to try and stop it. The productive path appears to be illegal, but they took it anyway and we're all the better off for it.
According to Jevon's paradox[0], this would lead to more consumption of resources. We're already straining at the limits of the Earth. Depletion and collapse won't be good for anyone.
> provide higher quality advice to everyone at an absurdly low cost
Given every LLM's propensity to hallucinate, the only quality advice is that which can be followed back to a human expert-vetted source. But we already have people who don't check sources and get bad advice.
> revolutionise research
Maybe, but AI is also being used in a mass spread of misinformation.
> a step-change improvement in the quality of economic management
I don't know exactly what you mean by this, but from what I'm seeing so far, this looks like it will massively increase wealth disparity, which is bad for most people.
That isn't a change. Both claims are true.
Technolibertarians confuse free market capitalism via copyright-enabled businesses as a viable strategy for individual freedom, and we find with time that only bastards win in a competition with loose rules and high stakes. Those concerned for the continued flourishing of human creativity in the face of LLMs confuse copyright as a means for small creators to have some ownership over their work, when it actually just seems to be a cudgel that can only be wielded by the wealthiest. Same losing fight, different flavor. I ask: why do we continue to allow “ownership of ideas” to underlie the moral basis of our conversations to begin with?
To me, the biggest sin of cyberlibertarianism is the assumption that "cyberspace" is de facto another universe, separate from material reality, that doesn't need to be affected by the mundane and vulgar rules of "meatspace." John Barlow refers to "your governments" as if using a computer actually separates him from the state in some meaningful way, as if he has ascended beyond the flesh and now looks down upon the world as a being of pure Mind. But of course, "cyberspace" is just computers, servers, infrastructure using power and resources and thus is inextricably subject to government and systems of law. Zion was never an escape.
So yes, because cyberspace doesn't actually change the rules of the game, we have to play the game, crooked as it is, with the hand we're dealt. The legal pretense of ownership and copyright is all we have. If you want to abandon the idea of "ownership" altogether, then the wealthiest and most powerful still wind up controlling everything by virtue of their wealth and power. What do you suggest?
Lawyer: "When was the first time you met IRL?"
Peter Sunde: "We don't use the expression IRL. We say AFK."
Judge: "IRL?"
Lawyer: "In real life."
Peter Sunde: "We don't like that expression. We say AFK — Away From Keyboard. We think that the internet is for real."
— Peter Sunde, The Pirate Bay trial (as shown in TPB AFK)
TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard; Directed by Simon Klose (2013).
https://archive.org/details/TpbAfkThePirateBayAwayFromKeyboa...