I am appalled that an article can mention “Anthropic” and “ethics” (“Anthropic aims to go public — with ethics,” Business, Oct. 30) without noting that Anthropic’s genAI models were trained on works stolen from thousands of authors and artists. Increasing evidence shows that these genAI models are putting authors and artists out of business, with thousands of illustrators and animators losing their jobs, while author revenues are going down as the number of AI slop book titles goes up. This directly undermines the “fair use” doctrine, which a federal judge this year ruled was not violated by the training.
Anthropic is about to make as much as $100 billion in their IPO on the backs of those stolen works, while authors and artists are increasingly unable to make a living at all. While the settlement against Anthropic will toss authors a few grand, Anthropic is already causing “rapid job losses and significant economic dislocations” for the creative people it has disenfranchised and stolen from. The company may be worth more than $1.5 trillion, while authors, artists, and increasingly tech workers turn to crowdfunding to pay for health care. But yes, let’s talk about their ethical commitment, because they’re off to such a great start!
Elaine Isaak
Nashua