I agree that the article exhibits unmerited grandiosity,
The article does not use the term.
“quantum activity” is a real thing insofar as it is a shorthand for quantum coherence extending to a (relatively) macroscopic scale
I'll need a source for that.
This actually goes along with your underlying point, which is that it is not clear that we need fancy mechanisms as a sort of magic touch to explain all of these things.
If you look closely enough, everything is "quantum". Something being "quantum" is simply a matter of not being able to get away with using a simplification. I don't really see why that would matter. That this question has nothing to do with consciousness is obvious.
It's interesting how this talking point works. Someone shills for the copyright industry against the interests of the average person. And the justification is that the copyright industry persecuted Aaron Swartz. That doesn't make sense, does it?
I don't see how this fair use case is different from those in the past. There's a tech company defending. Organizations like the EFF or the Internet Archive issue supporting statements.
I don't see the hypocrisy. The content industry is suing tech companies now just like they have in the past, and just like they sue individuals now and in the past.
If I had to guess at the cause of the difference, I'd say that there is a lot of money being spent on social media PR. But perhaps it also is a result of the right-ward shift of society. I wonder how much that has to do with propaganda by the content industry.
Trademarks have valid uses but they, too, are perverted. Think about luxury goods. The purpose of the brand name is simply to signal that the owner is able to afford the brand. These brands have nothing to do with consumer protection.
I consider them parasitic. Whatever utility someone gets from signalling with an exclusive brand is provided by society, not the company.
The public domain is not just useful but unavoidable and necessary.
You could imagine a world where all available physical matter is owned property. But intellectual property is an arbitrary legal creation. It is not finite.
EG Trademark law. Only the owner of a mark may use it to trade. The mark proclaims who is responsible for a product. If there were no unowned trademarks, you could not start a business without first paying off some owner. This would clearly be economically disastrous. So having unused, potential trademarks is necessary.
EG Patent law. Only the patent owner may use a certain invention; some trick of doing something. The patent is published so that others may learn from it and perhaps come up with other ways of achieving the same end. After (usually) 20 years, everyone may use the invention. Scientific theories, mathematical theorems, and other such things are always public domain.
If patents were broader and/or lasted for longer, you'd eventually not be able to do much business without having to pay off some owner. The owners could basically demand a tax on any kind of economic activity and deny consent for anything that might threaten their status. Progress would grind to a halt. It would be a new kind of feudalism.
So, a public domain is not just useful but absolutely necessary to our civilization.
Anything could be made into intellectual property. For example tax farming in ancient Rome and elsewhere. Monarchs granted special privileges, such as granting the East India Company a monopoly on trade. Or they might grant some person the monopoly on opening coffee houses in the country or a certain city. A title of nobility could be seen as a kind of intellectual property. Such titles were traded in a limited way. Anything that can be allowed or forbidden by the government could be turned into intellectual property.
That's not correct. There are other forms of IP besides copyright, such as trademarks, patents, or even trade secrets.
What you are saying is somewhat true for US copyrights (and patents) per the copyright clause in the US Constitution. But mind that typically copyrights are owned by the employer of the creator, who may be a writer, even a programmer, photographer, or any other such professional who may not be considered an "artist".
You would probably not consider yourself an artist for writing comments here, but you get copyright nevertheless.
European copyright has a very different philosophy behind it, which does not consider the public at all. It's quite harmful to the public, actually.
Here's a great talk by a guy who worked on a 1982 game for the Atari 2600, a game console first released in 1977. It's a fascinating insight into the early evolution of computing. They didn't work around limitations. They used a machine to do whatever it could.
If anyone has ever wondered by what standard C is a high-level language, this is for you. Or if you want to know how we ever could have developed something to connect the abstract logic of some algorithm with some glowing pixels on a screen.
Generally no, but I wouldn't rule out that it might be possible in a limited way in very specific circumstances. You wouldn't be able to stop others from using certain colors.
A specific color scheme might also be used as a trademark.
That didn't exactly look like animation. Looks like they trained an AI to control a humanoid figure in a virtual environment. It learned completely new and inhuman means of locomotion. Not very impressive from the technical angle, but the pitch about using it as a model for Zombie movement was clever.
You can use that for CG animation, of course. But those bi- and quadrupedal robots are also trained that way.
I feel the filmmakers manufactured some drama there. Knowing the real context of the quote makes it much more sensible.
Academic publishing is dominated by for-profit giants like Elsevier and Springer. Calling their practice a form of thuggery isn’t so much an insult as an economic observation. Imagine if a book publisher demanded that authors write books for free and, instead of employing in-house editors, relied on other authors to edit those books, also for free. And not only that: The final product was then sold at prohibitively expensive prices to ordinary readers, and institutions were forced to pay exorbitant fees for access.
I've seen academics complain about AI training being Fair Use, while being completely aware of this. I can't fathom how ideologically brainwashed someone has to be to support that system. They know it's an entirely parasitic industry that makes fantastic profits by plundering research budgets. And yet, "ethics" demands that property owners be paid off.
The article does not use the term.
I'll need a source for that.
If you look closely enough, everything is "quantum". Something being "quantum" is simply a matter of not being able to get away with using a simplification. I don't really see why that would matter. That this question has nothing to do with consciousness is obvious.