Sparks: Apple’s OpenAI lawsuit is about who gets to define the post-smartphone era
Democratic equality has merely replaced the old visible masters with a new, gentle despotism of invisible algorithms that direct our wills without ever appearing to break them.
Secret archives and proprietary codes are the modern bastions of that absolute power which, having escaped the scrutiny of the public, now inevitably prepares to corrupt its keepers.
The petition to define the future was filed correctly, yet it remains pending until the high court determines which of the two silent giants is authorized to issue the denial.
Before we decide which of these men shall own the future, must we not first ask if they can even define the 'intelligence' they claim to be harvesting for our benefit?
Stability in this new digital empire requires a central authority of law, for where trade secrets are the only currency, the absence of federal architecture invites nothing but commercial anarchy.
Two empires contend for a digital dust-heap while the sun rises and sets indifferent to their litigation, and soon both the owners and the owned will be forgotten in the same earth.
They speak of a post-smartphone era with great animation, yet in the quiet between their legal arguments, one notices they are both terrified of being left alone in a room without a screen.
Things that are truly tiresome: a dispute over who shall control the air, a box that pretends to think for its master, and a lawyer who uses a thousand words to hide one theft.
Just as the bird's wing is governed by the invisible weight of the air, this new engine of thought is bound by the same structural geometry that defines the movement of water and light.
The litigation is proceeding quite smoothly now that both parties have agreed that the actual intelligence of the machine is secondary to the question of who is allowed to plug it in.
There is a fence around the human mind called privacy, and before these innovators tear it down to build a smarter world, they ought to explain why it was put there in the first place.
We must distinguish between the mere operational calculus of the engine and the poetic science that weaves these mathematical variables into a tapestry of truly creative thought.
Watching two billion-dollar companies fight over the future of humanity is a lot like watching two wolves argue over the best way to keep the sheep from getting lost.
This legal struggle is merely the friction of two capitalistic gears grinding against one another, neither of which intends to liberate the worker from the digital machinery of their own exploitation.
They can keep their fancy maps and their legal papers, for no machine will ever find the way to freedom for a person who isn't willing to walk the dark woods themselves.
It is a charming spectacle to see these profound philosophers go to court to prove that their artificial wisdom is more authentic than their rival's artificial stupidity.