AI is to software like particle board/chipboard is to old growth wood.
Particle board didn't replace all other uses of wood. They made wood products accessible to more people. They make furniture less expensive. We don't have fewer lumberjack jobs because of particle board. And with particle board came a proliferation of styles that empowered people to toss out the old furniture every few years as their tastes changed. [0]
I don't get the "agents are like factories" analogy. It sounds identical to the argument used for software development in general. That it, it takes a lot of work to produce software, but once done, essentially perfect digital copies of that one thing are effectively free.
Also, "motivated by fear" includes the fear of missing out, so the flip side of the same coin is that manipulators and influencers of the latest hype peddle it for all they are worth.
[0] leading to more waste, plus the slow release of formaldehyde.
As a native English speaker I read this as two parts. If it's obvious, the response is immediate and not up for debate. If it's not obvious then it falls in the second part - "any attempt to bypass this policy will result in a ban from the project".
A submarine submission, if discovered, will result in a ban.
Using the phrase "virtual signaling" long ago became a meaningless term other than to indicate one's views in a culture war. 10 years ago David Shariatmadari wrote "The very act of accusing someone of virtue signalling is an act of virtue signalling in itself", https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/20/virtue... .
Somewhat off topic, but I can’t believe someone got paid to write that article, what a load of crap. It’s like saying that fallacies don’t exist because sometimes people incorrectly claim the other side is arguing fallaciously.
If you go by the literal definition in the article, it’s very clear what OP meant when he said the AI policy is virtue-signaling, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the culture war.
It's not a useful phrase because a "we accept AI-generated contributions" is also virtue signalling.
You have no doubt heard claims that AI "democratizes" software development. This is an argument that AI use for that case is virtuous.
You have no doubt heard claims that AI "decreases cognition ability." This is an argument that not using AI for software development is virtuous.
Which is correct depends strongly on your cultural views. If both are correct then the term has little or no weight.
From what I've seen, the term "virtue signalling" is almost always used by someone in camp A to disparage the public views of someone in camp B as being dishonest and ulterior to the actual hidden reason, which is to improve in-group social standing.
I therefore regard it as conspiracy theory couched as a sociological observation, unless strong evidence is given to the contrary. As a strawman exaggeration meant only to clarify my point, "all right-thinking people use AI to write code, so these are really just gatekeepers fighting to see who has the longest neckbeard."
Further, I agree with the observation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left". I see that term as part of "culture war" framing, which makes it hard to use that term in other frames without careful clarification.
> the line for images should be aligned with the line for the act itself.
Ergo you think the judge in the Facebook case was wrong to chastise Meta employees for wearing Ray Ban-Meta AI glasses, under threat of concept should they take pictures at a public trial?
Recording devices and cameras are generally banned in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Determining where the cameras are placed and what to alert on are also important and unresolved issues.
Simply getting alerts from a camera can cause people to believe that the area is a high-crime area, when it's merely a consequence of having a camera there.
Poor people are more like to be in public areas than rich pedophiles who can buy an island or ranch so they and their friends can enjoy wonderful secrets out of the eye of any Flock camera.
If the camera alerts on AI facial recognition for wanted criminals, and facial recognition causes disproportionally higher false alerts for people of south Asian heritage than of Anglo-Norman heritage, then systemic racism is built into the system, which we should all mind.
I'm not talking about monitoring public spaces or searching for criminals. I don't want either of those things and I'm generally opposed to the government operating cameras. I just don't mind private businesses using them to support their existing security guards so long as they don't mishandle or abuse the data.
I'd even be in favor of entirely banning the use of facial recognition technology in conjunction with security cameras. Have them alert on concrete suspicious activity.
I took your list ("The issues are internet connectivity, data retention/mining/sale, and non-local processing") as being incomplete. The examples I gave were to give examples of additional issues. There are equivalents for my examples to private businesses, even putting recognition systems to the side.
I personally have noticed that "alert" and "suspicious" tends to mean "something unusual", and not "something illegal". Increasing alerts results in forced normality.
On the flip side, if the information was there and not used, then the security guards are blamed for not connecting the dots, so investigating alerts becomes a CYA task.
As an example, security guards have harassed people on public sidewalks who are legally taking pictures of the building they are guarding. They are incentivized to investigate the alert, face no consequences (so long as that harassment doesn't itself break the law) for a false alert, and risk losing their job if the photographs are used for nefarious purposes. Adding air-gapped AI may help the security guards, while increasing the amount of harassment.
Yes, I have had a security guard stand over me while I delete a photograph I took of a building while in a public park. I think I was not legally required to follow request. I wasn't going to risk escalating the confrontation over a picture of a neat-looking gargoyle. No, I don't want AI enabling more of that harassment.
Where "classic literature" is specifically defined as:
“(B) CLASSIC WORKS OF LITERATURE.—The term ‘classic works of literature’ means the works of literature (including translations of such works)—
“(i) included in the Great Books of the Western World (second edition, 1990), published by Encyclopaedia Britannica;
“(ii) referenced in the article ‘Classics Every Middle Schooler Should Read’ by Thomas Purifoy, Jr. and published by Compass Classroom (as such article appeared on the date of enactment of this subsection); and
“(iii) referenced in the article ‘Classics Every High Schooler Should Read’ by Mary Pierson Purifoy and published by Compass Classroom (as such article appeared on the date of enactment of this subsection).
Of the first, "The selection of authors has come under attack, with some dismissing the project as a celebration of European men, ignoring contributions of women and non-European authors" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...
Of the latter two, Thomas Purifoy, Jr. is a Young Earth Creationist. Mary Pierson Purifoy is, I believe, his 26 year old homeschooled daughter, who then went to Liberty University, a conservative, private evangelical Christian.
Compass Classroom develops materials for Christian Homeschooling.
That sounds like a deliberate bias towards a white, male, English, Christian subset of classic literature. Not only doesn't they include something like "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", it doesn't look like they even include Les Misérables, which we read in school.
While the first list includes Freud's "The Sexual Enlightenment of Children"???
Yeah, go ahead and explain why students should read that but not have an explicit allowance for Les Misérables.
I remember hearing that Zimbabwe, during its period of hyperinflation, had problems because the databases for the banking system couldn't handle a time with $100 trillion banknotes, and ATMs didn't work because of overflow errors.
No need to emphasize "government" -- It's an inevitable consequence of schools.
Private secular schools have fights about what gets taught.
Private religious schools have fights about what gets taught.
Children have more rights in public schools than they have in private schools. Tinker v. Des Moines: "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
There are truancy laws. Private schools can have speech rules, but parents are free to choose such schools, and so free speech rights are not an issue.
Section VII is on the anti-competitive effects of Amazon's conduct.
You argue the market space includes physical retail competitors, which the complaint rejects. They describe their reasoning, point out how Jeff Bezos also doesn't see them as interchangeable, hence "physical stores and online stores are not reasonably interchangeable substitutes for one another from the standpoint of consumers".
Indeed,"most merchants—even those that sell through both channels—do not consider physical brick-and-mortar stores to be in the same market as online stores".
It also describes the effect on third-party sellers, like how Chewy.com, Wayfair.com, and Newegg.com charge lower fees, so the seller would like to set a lower price there, but Amazon's policies and market power inhibit the seller "because doing so would result in the suppression of the Buy Box for their Amazon listing."
There's a dozen or so examples of sellers raising their prices elsewhere in order to no lose the buy box, affecting also Amazon competitors:
> A major competing online marketplace to Amazon itself confirmed that it has heard from merchants that they would need to raise their prices on its marketplace or decline to participate in a discount/sale event because a lower price on its marketplace had disqualified or could disqualify their offers from the Amazon Buy Box. This rival marketplace operator reported that during a sales event, certain merchants contacted it to pull their items from the event or indicated that they would need to raise their prices because they reported that they had lost the Buy Box on Amazon, believed they would lose the Buy Box on Amazon, or believed that they would be delisted on Amazon because their item prices were lower on this competing website for the event. ...
> one Walmart manager reported to Bloomberg that “Walmart routinely fields requests from merchants to raise prices on its marketplace because they worry a lower price on Walmart will jeopardize their sales on Amazon.”
> Amazon’s coerced price parity agreements with Marketplace sellers constitute
unlawful contracts and/or combinations in restraint of trade in violation of the Cartwright Act.
(The Cartwright Act is California's main antitrust law.)
> The policy and spirit of the California antitrust laws are to promote the free play of competitive market forces and the lower prices to consumers that result. Amazon, the dominant online retail store in the United States, has violated the policy, spirit, and letter of those laws by imposing agreements at the retail and wholesale level that have prevented effective price competition across a wide swath of online marketplaces and stores.
The linked-to article concerns a possible preliminary injunction related to that antitrust case.
You don’t need to be a monopoly for anti-trust law to come into play. Airlines can’t collude on pricing, for example, even though no single airline is a monopoly.
Yes. And? There's no claim that Amazon is part of a price-fixing cartel or other collusion.
A pure monopoly is one where there is a single seller or provider. The US grants limited-time monopoly power to a new patent holder, and USPS has a monopoly on traditional letter delivery within the United States, for examples. A pure monopoly is therefore not necessarily illegal.
"In a legal context, the term monopoly is also used to describe a variety of market conditions that are not monopolies in the truest sense. For instance, the term monopoly may be referring to instances where: ... There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)"
That use certainly seems appropriate in the context of Amazon's ability to dictate prices, as described in California's complaint, yes?
malfist literally wrote "near monopoly power", which is not the same thing as claiming that "Amazon is a monopoly".
You asked malfist 'In what sense does Amazon have “near monopoly power”?'
I answered that question. The state of California claims Amazon has enough market share to dictate prices, making it a near monopoly, and it abuses those near monopoly powers in violation of California anti-trust laws. California doesn't need to demonstrate that Amazon is a pure monopoly because that is irrelevant, and not true.
I farther pointed out that even using the term "monopoly" without the "near" qualifier can mean "There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)", with citation.
Which means your statement "Amazon is a monopoly" is a correct summary of the issue, even if those injunction request and complaint don't use those terms.
It seems you think the term "monopoly" can only ever be applied to pure monopolies. You seem to be confusing the economic and legal definitions. Quoting the introduction paragraph from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
> In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.
This thread concerns a lawsuit, so the legal definition is the most relevant.
Is Walmart a “near monopoly”? How about Costco? They both have significant pricing power over their suppliers. How would you differential them from Amazon, if at all?
If we’re using your definition and not anything directly alleged in the CA complaint…
Do you understand what malfist wrote by "near monopoly power", and agree that it's a correct description of California's anti-trust lawsuit?
If not, what do you not understand?
As to your new set of questions, do you mean my personal beliefs, or do you mean the process by which the courts determine if an organization is abusing monopoly power, or to you mean an actual court decision? I'll answer all three.
Personally, yes, these companies abuse their near monopoly power. The failure to enforce the Robinson–Patman Act, the de-fanging of the FTC and consumer protection agencies, and the post-Borkian re-casting of antitrust law to "consumer welfare", has, IMHO, devastated the American free market resulting in a centralized command economy dominated by a handful of megacorporations.
Nor am I alone in this belief. It is not hard to find articles like "Walmart’s Monopolization of Local Grocery Markets" at https://ilsr.org/article/independent-business/walmarts-monop... which, among other things, points out how the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department has, since the 1960s, greatly raised the threshold for what "highly concentrated" market capture means, and WalMart is extreme even by that definition.
The legal process is to identify the relevant market. This can neither be too narrow - the market for "RC Cola" is not "those who buy RC Cola" but also includes other colas - nor too large -- RC Cola is not really interchangeable with milk, even though both are liquids which people drink.
If 99% of the people drink RC Cola, that could be because they love the taste, and are willing to pay more for it. (This is the premise of the Borkian view that monopolies are a direct and visible expression of consumer choice.) The anti-trust case must therefore also show there was abuse of its market position. That is what California's complaint does by describing many cases of third-party sellers unwilling to offer lower prices elsewhere, for fear of retaliation by Amazon. (The "consumer welfare" interpretation wrongly, IMO, rejects the idea that vendor concerns like this are part of antitrust law.)
There's probably more, but I'm a programmer, not a lawyer. I only know about these details because of the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit and commentary about the influence of Lina Khan on the FTC.
"A newly unredacted FTC complaint shows that PepsiCo and Walmart worked together to rig grocery pricing, drive up pricing at competitors and protect Walmart’s dominance. Internal PepsiCo documents reveal a coordinated strategy to give Walmart better wholesale prices, penalize independent and regional grocers that tried to lower their prices and preserve Walmart’s “price gap” by pushing rivals’ shelf prices up."
but then having it dropped voluntarily by the Trump/Ferguson FTC.
Which is why these sorts of things are now taken up on state courts, like California for Amazon, or New York (see Gelbspan v. Pepsico and Walmart at https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/mopabybynva/...). That does use the word "monopoly" and "monopolist", and describes the SSNIP test as the Hypothetical Monopoly Test used to determine if the relevant market is well-defined.
So if you are looking for actual court cases which have determined this, you either haven't been paying attention to the topic (completely understandable!), or you are a willing supporter of the Chicago School and the billionaire class which gain power by promoting it.
I guess I’m looking for a definition of the market for which Amazon holds a “near monopoly” and the criteria for establishing that designation.
It can’t be because 99% of people shop at Amazon to the exclusion of other retailers, because they don’t. Indeed, Amazon’s share of aggregate retail spending is quite low.
The response has been, roughly, “There are a bunch of court cases where these things are hashed out, and Amazon’s name has come up.”
OK, but as I said to begin with, antitrust is not just about monopoly power.
What monopoly powers does Amazon hold? At what point did they acquire them (roughly) looking back to their founding 30 years ago?
Maybe frame this the other way: If Amazon is only a “near monopoly”, what would have to happen to drop the “near”? What weight is that word carrying?
Then you need a primer in competition and anti-trust law.
The steps are to identify the relevant market and show abuse of market power - abuse as defined by antitrust law. The relevant market is not "aggregate retail spending". The California complaint goes into details about how online sales are not interchangeable with brick and mortar stores, something I mentioned earlier.
Determining abuse is not a simple plug&chug exercise.
It's not "99%", but such levels are a political decision about how what is fair and what is unfair market power. I pointed to the ISLR page, and mentioned how the threshold for concerns about market concentration has increased. Here's the full paragraph:
> Even by the permissive standards of today’s Justice Department, Walmart’s market power is considered extreme. Under guidelines established by the department’s Antitrust Division in 2010, markets in which one corporation captures more than 50 percent of revenue are defined as “highly concentrated.” (The agency has repeatedly raised this threshold since the 1960s, including sharply increasing it in 2010. These guidelines are used to evaluate mergers.)
My response has been "here are complaints which go into the details that you've asked about. You should read them to understand their arguments."
> but as I said to begin with, antitrust is not just about monopoly power.
And I completely agreed with you. However, for this specific case of Amazon, the California complaint can correctly be interpreted as concerning abuse of monopoly power, even if California never used that term. Because they don't need to use that term.
> What monopoly powers does Amazon hold?
Addressed in the complaint.
> At what point did they acquire them (roughly) looking back to their founding 30 years ago?
Why does that matter? When did Standard Oil become a monopoly? I doubt the Supreme Court of Ohio had to determine a rough date before being able to issue a breakup order.
> what would have to happen to drop the “near”?
Why does it matter?
I've already pointed out that economics and law use different definitions of "monopoly". Adding the qualifier "near" ensures that "monopoly" isn't misread as the economics definition of being a (pure) monopoly.
Determining abuse is not a simple plug&chug exercise.
I’m not asking about abuse, I’m asking about monopoly. As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s possible to become a monopoly through legitimate competitive action, and indeed similarly preserve that monopoly without violating anti-trust law.
So again: Why is Amazon a “near monopoly”? You go on for pages and pages through multiple comments that amount to, “Because California alleges that they are”—despite California not using that word, just words about anti-competitive practices that you claim are the same thing. I deny that claim. I believe California is alleging Amazon is engaging in anti-competitive behavior that would be anti-competitive behavior whether they’re a monopoly, near monopoly, or no monopoly at all.
Please do me the honor of remembering that I gave examples of monopolies and near monopolies which are not considered abusive, and linked to https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/monopoly with more details.
"However, the existence of a very high market share does not always mean consumers are paying excessive prices since the threat of new entrants to the market can restrain a high-market-share firm's price increases. Competition law does not make merely having a monopoly illegal, but rather abusing the power that a monopoly may confer, for instance through exclusionary practices"
> Why is Amazon a “near monopoly”?
Again, the lawsuit is that Amazon is abusing their power as a "high-market-share firm". This is widely characterized as Amazon being a monopoly. I have provided many links which support my interpretation.
> I deny that claim.
I can't help but conclude you are being obstinate. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/monopoly : "A monopoly is when a single company or entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in a market."
If you want to argue over what "unreasonable" means, go ahead. But denying terms which date back to the 1800s[1] is parading your own stubbornness.
What do you define as "monopoly" or "near monopoly", and when should the law step in to restrain a monopolist? Can you demonstrate external support for your interpretation?
Because as it stands, it seems like you don't understand the basics of the topic, but believe you do, and are doubling-down, unwilling to consider that you don't.
> I believe California is alleging Amazon is engaging in anti-competitive behavior that would be anti-competitive behavior whether they’re a monopoly, near monopoly, or no monopoly at all.
I assume you read how California claims Amazon violated the Cartwright Act. This requires an ability to harm market-wide competition, in a properly defined relevant market. That's why the complaint goes through the effort of defining the market, and presents evidence of market-wide harm to that market. This is why I've been careful to insist that being a monopoly isn't the problem - abusing monopoly power is the problem.
If Amazon had no monopoly at all, which I'll interpret as having little market power, then it does not have that ability, so cannot violate the Cartwright Act, so would not be in the complaint, which again tells me that you need to learn more about antitrust law. (Note that I am specifically addressing the part of the complaint which can be regarded as relevant to explaining how "near monopoly" is a correct characterization.)
"That is, Monopoly is a kind of Commerce, in buying, selling, changing or bartering, usurped by a few, and sometimes but by one person, and forestalled from all others, to the gaine of the Monopolist, and to the Detriment of other men."
"The parts then of a Monopolie are twaine, The restraint of the liberty of Commerce to some one or few: and the setting of the price at the pleasure of the Monopolian to his private benefit, and the prejudice of the publique. Upon which two Hinges every Monopoly turneth."
California claims that Amazon restrains the liberty of third-party sellers to set prices which do not benefit Amazon, and which prejudice the public, making Amazon a monopolist even when using a 400 year old definition.
AI is to software like particle board/chipboard is to old growth wood.
Particle board didn't replace all other uses of wood. They made wood products accessible to more people. They make furniture less expensive. We don't have fewer lumberjack jobs because of particle board. And with particle board came a proliferation of styles that empowered people to toss out the old furniture every few years as their tastes changed. [0]
I don't get the "agents are like factories" analogy. It sounds identical to the argument used for software development in general. That it, it takes a lot of work to produce software, but once done, essentially perfect digital copies of that one thing are effectively free.
Also, "motivated by fear" includes the fear of missing out, so the flip side of the same coin is that manipulators and influencers of the latest hype peddle it for all they are worth.
[0] leading to more waste, plus the slow release of formaldehyde.
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