‘Nothing will come of nothing.’
William Shakespeare (King Lear)
Each Monday at 9 am, BBC Radio 4 kicks off with ‘Start the Week’; on 11th March there was a particularly interesting episode called ‘Time Passing: Ageing, Memory and Nostalgia’. The programme’s contributors included Californian neuroscientist Dr. Charan Ranganath who has just published a book called, ‘Why We Remember: The Science of Memory and How It Shapes Us’.
The human brain is extraordinarily efficient at processing information, and the discussion included an explanation about how it blends and shares experience, achieving a level of creativity much greater than would be possible by following down a logical chain — similar to the contrast between painting and photography. Dr. Ranganath accepted, however, that science has not yet unwrapped the physical medium of memory storage.
This blending and sharing process is increasingly emulated in generative artificial intelligence. It’s no longer possible to trace all the origins of information, and the extraordinary breadth and depth of AI’s feeding process is generating a rash of copyright challenges across the world. There is an irreversible convergence of human and technological information processing, and we are fast reaching the point when a wholesale revision of 300 year-old copyright legislation is needed.
Across the world, fewer than one in six people consider that there is nothing beyond our human experience. Of course, large numbers are agnostic about faith, including many scientists, but the great majority of people envisage that there is some form of spiritual dimension which awaits us after death.
For that existence to be individually meaningful, it has to include the ability to recognise at that stage who we were during life on earth: there would be little purpose if self-identification were not possible. That requires memory, which takes us back to Dr. Ranganath's dilemma. For those who subscribe to belief in a spiritual existence of some kind, logic must conclude that the memory is held in the soul, not in those neurons which will ultimately turn to dust.
The human brain can therefore be seen as an amazing router and processor of information, and various phenomena bear out this logic: for example, that long-term recall is much better than short-term recall for old people, since it only has to pass once through the weakened state of the brain, compared with both input and output for short-term experiences. Or consider the ability for memory to ‘regrow’ following brain trauma and partial removal, as the neuron link to the soul's memory bank is re-established.
Cloud computing has provided an increasingly close metaphor for this understanding of memory, and listeners may recall Rosie Harper's talk on this subject on 3rd April last year.
However, if human information processing can be seen in the context of modern technological networks, there is no doubt that technology is itself drawing closer to the processing functions of the human brain in its ‘modus operandi’.
On Tuesday 12th March, Hugo Rifkind wrote a deeply insightful article for The Times, about the gargantuan appetite of generative AI for information. No doubt his sub-editor drafted the title for the article which was, ‘AI companies must own up to their sources’. That might have been the preferred media statement, but Hugo Rifkind's text spoke of the increasing impossibility of achieving that aim. He correctly referred to the impracticality of sourcing all inspiration for creative work, effectively recognising that different forms of media are merely intermediaries for the wealth of knowledge developed across humanity.
He therefore also, albeit sub-consciously, put forward a strong argument for a complete overhaul of copyright law as generative AI starts to model the creativity of the human mind.
Whether in terms of copyright or some monetary reward for data input through technology, the prospect of developing algorithms for crediting its value is already nigh-on impossible, as the law courts are no doubt beginning to realise. Meanwhile, as the future of general work availability slips away, think tanks are increasingly toying with ideas of universal basic income: a recipe for mass subservience if ever there was one. If universality can be envisaged in this respect, why not use it for stock issuance in return for general human data input and creativity?
In order for everyone to participate in the wealth creation made possible through data harvesting, the research currently being undertaken by Dr. Heloïse Greeff for King’s College, Cambridge into a system of individual stock issuance in data harvesters (which could explore universal application) will therefore provide an alternative approach, which could enable all to enjoy a share in technological wealth creation, including capital gain, dividend flow, and corporate governance.
The original source of memory and creativity is the human mind; so rather than see intermediating organisations squabbling over their claims to copyright, let’s consider recognising this fact by enabling a share in ownership participation for everyone.
Memory may belong to each individual soul, but copyright should belong to us all.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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