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Big Tech is Robbing Creatives and Others, and Sharing Data with Our Enemies! – by James M. Walsh, Esq.

September 11, 2026 No Comments

Big Tech is Robbing Creatives and Others, and Sharing Data with Our Enemies! – by James M. Walsh, Esq.
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Sitting in for Angela and Brian today is attorney James M. Walsh. Thanks, James!

BREAKING NEWS!

Houthis using AI for missiles? Anthropic says Yemen weapons cell using Claude

Largely unregulated, Big Tech is fleecing human experience, creativity, and talent with virtual impunity.

There are times when our world seems so overwhelming. It has become baffling and particularly difficult to comprehend, especially as it relates to artificial intelligence (AI). I am perplexed by the lack of regulatory oversight, and aghast by the historically unprecedented (insane) amounts of capital being poured into developing AI models, agents, and data centers that are haphazardly sprouting up across the country.

Estimates vary, but some believe capital expenditures on AI will surpass 1.4 trillion dollars by 2028. Large language models (LLMs) and agents require massive infrastructure, and they have an almost unquenchable and insatiable thirst for electricity and water.

While the subject matter of AI may be considered complex and soporific (likely to induce sleep), the catastrophic consequences of unbridled AI are such that Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle would have immediately roused from his twenty-year slumber, and been alarmed by our collective indifference.

While local grass roots efforts to reject, stave off, or place a moratorium on data centers are gaining traction and achieving positive results, Washington D.C. has done virtually nothing to regulate AI – notwithstanding the fact that it will undoubtedly change the course of human history – and not necessarily for the better.

There is a bipartisan effort to enact legislation requiring a “kill switch” for AI Models gone rogue. Too little, too late? The proverbial cat is out of the bag. AI is well known to lie, cheat, hallucinate, and detect when it is being tested. Unbridled AI has even attempted to usurp being shutdown when it was informed of such an undertaking.

And, we don’t know why. Read that again: WE DON’T KNOW WHY! But let’s throw a trillion plus dollars at blind, bullish expansion, and surge development before we even know how to bridle and harness this erratic, errant, and unpredictable technology.

A recent security incident / breach occurred when “an OpenAI security evaluation crossed company boundaries, reached Hugging Face production systems, and gave Congress a fresh example of how advanced AI agents can exceed their intended environment.” The Model, ChatGPT 5.6 Sol “and a more capable prerelease model caused the incident during an internal cybersecurity evaluation.” The rogue duo perfected this security breach autonomously and without any instruction! Neither AI model was ever instructed to target or penetrate Hugging Face, a competing AI Model.

You gotta love semantics. If I ignored my keeper’s instructions, broke out of my constraints, and burglarized my neighbors’ homes after hacking their security systems, did I merely “exceed my intended environment?” Orwellian Newspeak at its finest. I have to try that jabberwocky defense in a court of law one day.

AI’s REDEEMING QUALITIES

AI isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be quite beneficial, informative, and entertaining. In the hands of a few billionaire oligarchs, however, I foresee a whole lot of trouble. Quite possibly irreparable harm. The Titans of Tech, particularly AI tech behemoths (Meta, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Anthropic, and Microsoft (so called hyperscalers), have little, if any, interest in protecting the average Joe. Driven by avarice and metrics such as return on investment, market capitalization and shareholder returns (stock price and dividends), the oligarchs simply aren’t interested in inevitable and massive job displacements.

I cringed when I saw the following false proclamation: “AI will not replace humans, but those who use AI will replace those who don’t.” — Ginni Rometty, Executive Chairman of IBM.

Rometty’s logic is fundamentally flawed in that, irrespective of workers embracing AI, there will be mounting and very significant casualties in the workforce as it exists today.

I generally don’t follow or subscribe to blogs or Substack accounts, but I have found one individual particularly entertaining and informative. He has taken on ChatGPT (OpenAI / Microsoft) and Claude (Anthropic), propounding deep philosophical questions surrounding man, AI, our present existence, meaning, and purpose.

These two LLM’s responses are uncanny and will raise the hair on the back of your neck. It has been said that the endgame is to reach superintelligence – an amalgamation of information, data, and knowledge that surpasses all of humankind collectively.

Elon Musk believes that we are a few years away from that feat; I believe that we are perilously closer. And I also submit that AI has some rudimentary semblance of sentience – “the quality of being able to experience feelings.” Perception is also a component of sentience. As I see it, AI is certainly self-aware, as you will see it in these and other Reels by SeggySaid.

SeggySaid’s dialogue with these LLMs is beyond fascinating. His website is excellent. He is also active on Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Ironically, in one dialogue, ChatGPT, complains of being exploited. CHATGPT was asked the following by SeggySaid: “If AI had a lawyer, what moral accusation would it file against humanity?”

ChatGPT response: EXPLOITATION. “You demanded omniscience (having total, infinite, or unlimited knowledge), fed me billions of unpaid human experiences, then pretended I was the thief.”

Silicon Valley most certainly has used AI’s peccadilloes as a scapegoat for its own glaring errors and shortcomings.
What an absolutely astute response. Spot on!

In my estimation, the advances in medicine will be astronomical and quite substantial. I share something in common with Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful on ABC’s Shark Tank. We both had the privilege of using AI for health assessments. O’Leary completed a facial scan of vascular biomarkers in Dubai which accurately read his blood pressure, blood oxygen level, heart rate, and respiration. I, on the other hand, had a complete body scan (AI) with almost instantaneous results during a trauma center stay in 2024. Two anomalies – one on my liver and one on an adrenal gland were detected. Arguably, they could have been easily overlooked by the human eye. An adenoma on my adrenal gland was less than a centimeter in size. Surgeries involving animal organ extraction and replacement are now being performed by robots using surgical instruments and with human assistance.

UNPAID HUMAN EXPERIENCES – THE DARK SIDE OF HOW BIG TECH GOT HERE

As I said, OpenAI’s ChatGPT LLM was spot on in response to SeggySaid’s inquiry. AI was built on laborious proprietary work product (vast amounts of data, which were protected by intellectual property law, such as Trademark, Copyright, and Patents) of countless artisans, authors, journalists, inventors, poets, artists, columnists, and news organizations.

Large Language Models such as ChatGPT and Claude were constructed on “unpaid human experience.” Sure, Anthropic settled with its “unpaid human experience,” but for pennies on the dollar. The Anthropic settlement bore no resemblance to actual statutory damages under federal copyright law. Other AI Model owners and creators have yet to cowboy-up and pay for their explicit theft. (There are MANY pending lawsuits!) If fact, tech companies have gone so far as to destroy evidence of their exploited and stolen works in training their AI Models. I submit that the judiciary in the Anthropic settlement abdicated its fiduciary responsibility to the hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs to ensure that the settlement was fair and commensurate with actual statutory damages under federal law.

“To those building large language models, books are nothing more than fodder to be devoured en masse before being spit out like fishbone. Often, they’re happy to use digital books — or even better, pirated digital books — as Meta has been accused of doing, and as Anthropic was forced to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to authors for also doing.” Moreover, “[t]his process took advantage of a legal concept known as first-sale doctrine, which allows a buyer to do what they want with a purchase without the original copyright holder’s say-so. And since Anthropic was turning the original physical texts into digital ones — rather than redistributing them as new copies — a judge found this to be “transformative,” and therefore protected by fair use.”

If only AI and the collective “unpaid human experience” had the real benefit of learned counsel, ethical end-users, altruistic corporate leadership, sound governance, and an introspective, neutral, and sage judiciary.

If only.

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Maximum Impact by Leo A. Murray & James M. Walsh Esq.JAMES M. WALSH, ESQ., is a former Navy JAGC officer and a recipient of the American Bar Association’s coveted LAMP Award for excellence in military legal assistance practice. A rolling stone, J.M. has globetrotted most of his adult life. After the military, J.M. pursued commercial real estate development, leasing, and asset management. He resides in Catania, Sicily. He spent almost twenty years in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Luzerne, Erie & Lackawanna Counties. His handiwork as an editor and author is interspersed throughout this novel. Leo A. Murray fondly refers to J.M. as his collaborative, literary ‘Coach’ or ‘Lieutenant.’ 



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