ChatGPT and AI must pay for the news it consumes: News Corp Australia CEO

Michael Miller said generative AI is a move by digital companies to take the creative content of others "without remunerating them for their original work."

The creators of artificial intelligence (AI) fuelled applications should pay for the news and content being used to improve their products, according to the CEO of News Corp Australia.

In an April 2 editorial in The Australian, Michael Miller called for “creators of original journalism and content” to avoid the past mistakes that “decimated their industries” by allowing tech companies to profit from using their stories and information without compensation.

Chatbots are software that ingests news, data and other information to produce responses to queries that mimic written or spoken human speech, the most notable of which is the ChatGPT-4 chatbot by AI firm OpenAI.

According to Miller, the rapid rise of generative AI represents another move by powerful digital companies to develop “a new pot of gold to maximize revenues and profit by taking the creative content of others without remunerating them for their original work.”

Using OpenAI as an example, Miller claimed the company “quickly established a business” worth $30 billion by “using the others’ original content and creativity without remuneration and attribution."

The Australian federal government implemented the News Media Bargaining Code in 2021, which obliges tech platforms in Australia to pay news publishers for the news content made available or linked on their platforms.

Miller says similar laws are needed for AI, so that all content creators are appropriately compensated for their work.

“Creators deserve to be rewarded for their original work being used by AI engines which are raiding the style and tone of not only journalists but (to name a few) musicians, authors, poets, historians, painters, filmmakers and photographers.”

More than 2,600 tech leaders and researchers recently signed an open letter urging a temporary pause on further artificial intelligence (AI) development, fearing “profound risks to society and humanity.”

Meanwhile, Italy’s watchdog in charge of data protection announced a temporary block of ChatGPT and opened an investigation over suspected breaches of data privacy rules.

Miller believes content creators and AI companies can both benefit from an agreement, rather than outright blocks or bans on the tech.

I respect the concerns but am not gonna sign this. LLMs won't become AGIs. They do pose societal risks, as do many things. They also have great potential for good. Social pressure for slowing R&D should be reserved for bioweapons and nukes etc. not complex cases like this.
— Ben Goertzel (@bengoertzel) March 29, 2023

He wrote that with “appropriate guardrails,” AI has the potential to become a valuable journalistic resource. It can assist in creating content, “gather facts faster,” help to publish on multiple platforms and could accelerate video production.

The crypto industry is also starting to see more projects using AI, though it is still in the early stages.

Miller believes AI engines face a risk to their future success if they can’t convince the public that their information is trustworthy and credible, adding that “to achieve this they will have to fairly compensate those who provide the substance for their success."

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Public filings reveal a B crypto trader who still lives with his mom

Aussie crypto trading

While living at his parent's house in Sydney, Australia, this crypto trader took home over $7 million in profits in 2021, according to public records.

A 25-year-old crypto investor who traded nearly $2 billion (3 billion Australian dollars) worth of crypto in 2021 ran his crypto empire from the comfort of his parent’s home in Sydney, Australia, according to public records.

The young gun in question, Darren Nguyen, has not spoken about the achievement of his small trading business, PO Street Capital, but a Jan. 2 article in The Australian highlighted it via public filings.

Registered at his parent's house in Guildford, Sydney, Nguyen’s crypto business took home AU$10.41 million in after-tax profit for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021, according to filings from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

This came from a total of AU$2.98 billion worth of crypto trading over the 12-month period.

It was a huge increase from Nguyen’s previous year’s takings, which totaled around AU$692,182 in 2020.

PO Street Capital’s auditors wrote that the results show his net profit increased by 1,404.12% in 2021, compared to the previous year.

According to the filings, PO Street Capital had AU$4.3 million worth of short-term provisions in June 2021, alongside an AU$1.3 million loan it was paying back to Nguyen, but had no other debts on its books.

Nguyen also received AU$873,200 in dividends from the profits of that year.

The report from The Australian suggested this indicates that PO Street Capital was self-funded to conduct such a high amount of trades at AU$3 billion, though the publication didn’t add leveraged trading into the equation, which is likely to have been a massive contributor to the inflated trading volumes.

The family has kept silent about the crypto trading business run by Nguyen, with hismother declining to comment on what she knew about the trading activity that occurred under her roof.

Meanwhile, Nguyen has kept his lips sealed about the business too, including his trading strategies and how PO Street Capital performed for the last financial year, which ended on June 30.

Notably, PO Street Capital's massive uptick in performance in 2021 coincided with a meteoric rise in crypto prices between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021. For example, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) boomed 296% and 865% apiece during that time frame, as per CoinGecko data.

However, with the markets down since then, it is unclear how that has impacted Nguyen and PO Street Capital.

The Australian