Sir Lucian Grainge, the Chairman and CEO of Common Music Group, has penned an op-ed for The Occasions calling for “acceptable guardrails” on AI expertise.
The UMG boss’s missive comes amid controversy over the British Labour authorities’s proposed adjustments to copyright legal guidelines, a part of an effort to make the UK aggressive in AI growth.
Among the many adjustments is a proposal to create an “opt-out” system for the usage of copyrighted works in coaching AI.
That proposal – much like one adopted as a part of the European Union’s complete AI regulation – would enable AI builders to make use of copyrighted content material by default, except a rightsholder expressly states that they object.
That rule “revers[es] the very precept of copyright regulation,” stated Ed Newton-Rex, founding father of moral AI certification non-profit Pretty Educated, and organizer of the “Silent Album” launch earlier this week.
Greater than 1,000 artists, together with Damon Albarn, Kate Bush, and Annie Lennox, collaborated on the silent album as a protest in opposition to the UK’s proposed adjustments.
In his Occasions column, Grainge referred to as the silent album protest “a warning in opposition to the impression of unchecked AI on the artistic arts,” and stated it asks “exhausting” questions.
“How can we greatest shield artistic and imaginative invention, and harness the ability of recent expertise with out that expertise harnessing us? How can we greatest shield the incentives that reward artistic folks for his or her labour and genius? And who wins or loses if we modify the foundations of the sport?”
Grainge burdened that he isn’t against AI expertise as such, and even its involvement in music.
“In no way am I suggesting that AI is intrinsically unfavourable. This extraordinary expertise holds the potential to revolutionise scientific and medical analysis, improve inventive creativity and make a contribution to numerous different areas that would materially enhance our lives,” he wrote.
“However expertise itself can by no means know proper from unsuitable; it’s a device to assist us, to complement us, sure, however provided that we information it with acceptable guardrails. The alternatives we make about AI now — moral, authorized and technological — will reverberate for many years to come back.”
“The alternatives we make about AI now — moral, authorized and technological — will reverberate for many years to come back.”
Sir Lucian Grainge, Common Music Group
Grainge highlighted that “change is a continuing” within the music business. “Throughout my lengthy profession, we’ve gone from vinyl to cassette to CD to MP3s to ad-funded streaming to subscriptions… However all through all these improvements and disruptions one fact has remained fixed: nice music at all times flows from human creativity. This fact ought to proceed to information us, even within the age of AI.”
Final week, Grainge joined Sony Music Group Chairman Rob Stringer and Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl in a Each day Mail-led marketing campaign in opposition to the copyright adjustments.
Earlier this week, a information report from the Guardian instructed that the music firm bosses’ marketing campaign, and the silent album protest, could have had an impression on the plans being put ahead by the federal government of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
The federal government is claimed to be contemplating adjustments to its proposals that might restrict or get rid of the “opt-out” precept. One possibility, the Guardian reported, could be to restrict the “opt-out” clause UK AI builders alone. AI firms within the US and elsewhere would want permission prematurely to make use of copyrighted supplies for coaching.
An alternative choice could be to permit artistic industries to choose out of AI coaching by default, however would enable mass media, corresponding to newspapers and TV, for use in coaching AI by default, the Guardian reported.
Strain on the federal government is coming from inside Parliament as effectively.
The heads of two parliamentary teams – the Science, Innovation and Expertise Committee, and the Tradition, Media and Sport Committee – despatched a letter to cupboard ministers this week, urging the federal government to vary focus from loosening copyright guidelines, to making sure higher transparency by AI firms within the supplies they use to coach their fashions.
Grainge concluded his Occasions column by noting that “Ingenuity has at all times been one of many UK’s superpowers, from the steam engines that powered the Industrial Revolution to the Beatles who formed international tradition by music”.
He additionally added that “’progress” is “by no means inevitable and applied sciences do go awry, normally because of unexpected penalties, the abdication of ethical accountability or a failure of leaders to ascertain affordable public safeguards”.
Added Grainge: “AI will rework society, however the way it transforms society is as much as us. That’s why governments, industries and creators should work in concord, looking for equity and compromise to chart a path towards accountable AI.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
