Interesting piece. If copyright protection for code is weakened, other forms of legal protection may fill the gap. Trade secrets, for example. It is also worth noting that copyright protection for code is already significantly thinner than copyright protection for other creative works. AI may eliminate it. If this is the death of code copyright, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It could be a return to the free software ideals of the 1990s. Well, at least in some ways.
Nice initiative but I would personally prefer adding some kind of padding, which is an easier solution to the problem, not as drastic, reversible, and less controversial. Unless doing something controversial is one of the goals here, which is also fair.
Thin padding? Removable padding? Squishable padding? (Is that a word?) I assume that filing the edge leaves an ugly gap when closing the lid, so that is not ideal either.
If the court buys the argument that model weights are protected speech, this is a big deal. It turns the First Amendment into a shield against the application of any kind of consumer protection or anti-discrimination law to AI models. Could even apply to other forms of liability. This is just a claim right now and it is not the Supreme Court, but it may get there.
In cases of AI-assisted plagiarism and similar issues, the interesting question is who is responsible, not in the legal sense, but in the broader context. Saying that it is all the author's fault is selling it short. What about the NYT editors? the AI model and its designers? The Guardian, if it allowed/sold its content for LLM training?
Just a quick note to say that it is not AI slop. That particular line is out of my PhD dissertation about the legal implications of VR, submitted over a decade ago. I'll take it as a compliment though, assuming you meant the piece is well researched.
It is not about the technology being cool (although I think it is). It is about its being intimately linked to human psychology, philosophy, and culture. That makes it, in my view, a very human technology. It allows us, in theory, to break out of our physical environment, bodies, and limitations.
> It allows us, in theory, to break out of our physical environment, bodies, and limitations.
Or one could, you know, go for a walk outside. There is a reason phrases like "go touch grass" have become popular, or that the prescient Nickelodeon ad from the 90s about putting down VR so you can experience the wonders of "actual reality" has gone viral again.
For the past 30 or so years we've seen an explosion of tech that was supposedly going to make humanity more connected, yet somehow in many ways I've seen the exact opposite happen.
Until I see folks "max out" on the amazing experiences available in our natural world, I'm extremely skeptical that VR is the solution to our natural limitations.
These are good points. I don’t think the dev side was the main issue, though. If they had managed to achieve a substantial user base, developers would have adapted and found ways around the limitations, as they always do.
The main issue is that the user experience is not good enough. The headset is heavy, glitchy, you bump into things, and you look awkward using it. It didn’t have to be like this, and it may still improve in the future.
A very light standalone headset that works out of the box, along with something like a compact treadmill setup you can put in the corner, could change things. If enough users start using this, developers will make do with any limitations.
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