[License-discuss] Cases that forced the AI industry to recognize the misuse of Open Source

[Rob Landley]

On 11/1/23 09:44, Shuji Sado wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Let me tell about an incident that occurred in Japan.
...
> CC BY-NC is a non-commercial license, so it is not Open Source. In the
> immediate aftermath,  Matsuo Lab was criticized by Open Source
> advocates on Twitter/X.
> However, AI is now national policy for Japan,

A little context for that: the billionaire who owns Softbank got a huge black
eye as the main backer of WeWork:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-07/wework-saga-cost-masayoshi-son-11-5-billion-and-his-credibility

Which wasn't remotely his only bad call recently:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/11/softbank-full-year-2022-earnings-vision-fund-posts-32-billion-loss.html

And this year he publicly pivoted from cryptocurrency to backing AI:

https://news.bitcoin.com/softbank-looking-to-invest-billions-in-ai-after-pausing-crypto-investments/

So it might be politically embarrassing over there to point out that spicy
autocorrect may not do what they want in the long run. There's probably a
certain amount of "wounded bear, emperor has no clothes" going on from that faction.

Other factions have their own concerns. It turns out a lot of Japan's government
was quietly owned by the Moonies (religious cult from Korea) which only came out
in the wake of Abe's assassination:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/10/how-shinzo-abe-ties-to-moonies-unification-church-blindsided-japanese-politics

https://time.com/6322931/japan-unification-church-disbandment-shinzo-abe/

Meanwhile Abe's successor's big project he staked all his political capital on
was holding the olympics in the middle of Covid to appease real estate
speculators who wanted to steal the land under the Tokyo fish market:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-tokyo-fishmarket/tokyo-olympics-plan-hits-roadblock-over-fish-markets-relocation-idUSKCN11Z34P

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/26/2021-tokyo-olympics-japan-covid-pandemic-nationalism/

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Property/Tokyo-could-see-5bn-plus-stadium-project-at-former-Tsukiji-market

He only lasted a year and they've got a third prime minister now. This one's
rearming the navy. (Ever see "Star Blazers", or Gate, or the various "anime
girls who are also battleships and/or jet fighters"? Japan likes their navy, but
they'd agreed not to have one for a while after World War II, until Emperor Xi's
wolf warrioring gave them an excuse to get back into the game...)

Anyway, Japan's government MIGHT be a bit more complicated than usual right now,
and I would not personally expect their AI policies to respond to external
pressure in a simple way. You might want to rope in some locals for very long
talks. (This is all just "visited tokyo for business a dozen times since 2015,
and there was stuff on the news channels of various hotel room TVs, which I
asked coworkers to explain". Recognizing that domain expertise is required is
not the same as having it.)

Rob

P.S. All sorts of stuff on local Japan news doesn't make it over here. The
engineering delegation Tokyo invited from the netherlands to explain how they
keep cities below sea level dry and livable sustainably for centuries was
particularly interesting, but I couldn't find any english coverage of that, just
in-passing mention on the daily news while it was happening locally...