How China is Supporting AI & Creative Freedom Better Than the West
Does freedom mean the same thing in different cultures?
Does freedom mean the same thing in different cultures?
You live in the land of the free right? If you live in the West.
But not everyone lives in the West.
Have you wondered if the answer to that question might depend on the kind of culture you’re from?
What I mean is, do you think freedom means the same thing in different cultures?
Put another way, do you believe people from different cultures value different freedoms?
I’ve been reading about some recent legal judgements in China about AI and creative ownership and was shocked at how differently they are dealing with it to the West.
China seems to be supporting creative freedom & AI better than the West.
Makes no sense to you right?
But with a different perspective, I believe it might make sense to you…
AI & copyright: West v China
Let’s have a look at how creative ownership & AI are being dealt with in the West and the East.
West
In the West, the main focus on AI and creative ownership in the legal system seems to be the conflict between artists and the companies that are creating these AI models.
I’ve written about this in Originality on Trial: AI’s Challenge to Creative Ownership.
Originality on Trial: AI’s Challenge to Creative Ownership
Do you feel outraged over AI stealing artist’s work? Or could this be a tragic misunderstanding?pub.towardsai.net
In summary, the main focus in the West seems to be a conflict between the artists who claim generative AI models trained on their work are infringing copyright.
Meanwhile, AI companies in the West and many legal judgements have been saying AI does not infringe the artists copyright.
China
The South China Morning Post recently reported on a landmark case on AI and creative ownership.
Unlike in the West, the focus doesn’t seem to be on artists claiming generative AI is stealing their work or infringing copyright.
Rather, the focus seems to be on something different, if people who use AI to create artwork can claim copyright on the works they make with AI.
In a landmark case, the Judge ruled in favour of people using AI to create work can claim copyright for these AI-created works.
As they report:
In the first judgment of its kind in mainland China, the Beijing Internet Court last November ruled that a picture, generated via the text-to-image software Stable Diffusion, should be considered an artwork under the protection of copyright laws, because of the “originality” and intellectual input of its human creator.
And why this case was brought:
The intellectual property infringement lawsuit was initiated in May last year by the plaintiff surnamed Li, who used the US start-up StabilityAI’s Stable Diffusion program to create an image of a young Asian woman…Li sued a blogger surnamed Liu for allegedly using that image without permission…
What we can see is in the West the fight is over protecting the ownership of human artists of their work, whereas in China the fight has been about protecting the ownership of AI creations.
In both countries, AI-created content is winning.
But in the West human artists are fighting it, in China it seems more about who should own the AI-created content.
Why is China dealing with this differently from the West?
The reason for this I believe is different cultures & values.
In Originality on Trial: AI’s Challenge to Creative Ownership, I argued that in the West the reason for the clash with artists believing copyright was infringed by AI was related to our individualistic Western values.
So in the West, because we are more individualistic, we have a bigger focus on the value of our own unique human creativity.
Whereas, my theory is that because China is less individualistic and more collectively minded, that’s why their human artists don’t seem as worried about AI stealing their ‘unique human work’.
Indeed Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous dissident artist - free to live in the west, is not worried about AI infringing copyright like western artists.
Furthermore, in China they seem to have a stronger sense of doing what’s in the collective interest, as opposed to the West which perhaps is less so.
For example in the Chinese case, the judge intended to set a precedent which helped support and encourage more use of AI-created content to support people to use it.
Judges in the West seem not especially interested in ruling to help encourage and support the freedom and rights of AI content creators.
It’s a subtle but important difference.
And I believe these very different focuses and judgments in the West and China reflect a very different attitudes in the West and China regarding AI.
In China, there generally seems to be a wider acceptance and enthusiasm to fully embrace AI and explore its potential.
The West, while on the one hand leading the development of AI, has also run into more conflict about it within its societies.
These conflicts about AI in the West seem due to our individualistic values.
This leads the West to fear more how AI might infringe on their individual rights & ownership, even though in many cases these fears seem baseless.
This is why, at least regarding generative AI and creative ownership, it seems China is more supportive of that freedom than the West.
Freedom in the Egypt vs The West
I’d like to share with you an example from my life of how I saw freedom means very different things depending on what culture you are from.
I was Freediving in Dhab, Egypt shortly after the revolution of the arab spring around 2013, and just after the military had deposed democratically elected president Morsi.
The Western media & governments at the time were raging on about how democracy had been overturned e.g. Western Powers Calling for Democracy in Egypt.
From a Western perspective, the Egyptian people had lost their freedom after democracy had been overturned.
But I wondered, what did ordinary Egyptians think?
I asked many Egyptians working in my resort, shops and bazaars, and restaurant staff.
What did they think? were they also outraged like the West that democracy had died in Egypt?
Every single one of them said the same thing — they were pleased the military had taken over again.
I was amazed — how could this be? Why would people be happy to lose their democratic freedoms so many had died for?
They said to me:
What is the point of democracy if we can’t feed our children and families?
As you might remember, when President Morsi was elected as president of Egypt, there was ongoing civil violence for various reasons.
The transition to democracy was not calm, it was violent.
Egypt is an economy heavily dependent on tourism.
So despite achieving democracy, the ongoing violence and political instability caused tourism to collapse.
Millions of ordinary Egyptians were suffering because of this, having no income to feed their families.
By listening to what Egyptians said, I began to understand them.
What’s the point of democracy if it doesn’t provide the kind of stability that allows people to survive?
There is freedom to vote, and the freedom to be able to work and feed your families.
Which is more important to you if you had to choose one?
This year we have many important elections in the West, and fears of increased social division, instability & conflict.
I wonder what we in the West can learn from other cultures about the freedom to vote if democracy doesn’t provide the kind of stability that gives ordinary people the freedom to survive and feed their families?
What freedom means — depends where you are from
What I have continued to learn from my experiences, is that freedom doesn’t mean the same thing to people from different cultures.
It can mean something very different in the West, in China or in Egypt.
It’s something people in the West often don’t seem to understand.
Would you agree?
Don’t get me wrong, there are many things I value about living in the West.
But it’s helpful for us to understand that freedom can mean very different things in different cultures.
The AI and creative ownership issue is a good example of this, where China seems to value some freedoms more than the West.
I think the overall effect is going to lead to very different outcomes.
Because of China’s stronger support for AI-created content, it’s more likely to thrive and develop there.
In the West, even though we have the best AI companies, the negative reaction by many to AI content such as by artists, will not allow AI-generated content to thrive as well as it can in China.
That’s how China is supporting AI and creative freedom better than the West.
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But what’s your perspective? Do you agree? Do you think the West has more freedom with creative ownership and AI? Or do you have a very different perspective?
I’d love to know what you think whatever that is, let me know in the comments and let’s continue this important discussion about AI, creative ownership and different cultures.