“Nothing’s Inevitable”: Dr. Margaret Heffernan on AI, Copyright, and Taking Responsibility
Listen to Dr. Margaret Heffernan’s powerful keynote from Cambridge Tech Week—a call to arms for anyone building or funding the next wave of innovation. She challenges the tech sector to resist “the rhetoric of inevitability” surrounding AI.
Key Takeaways:
On the myth of inevitability in AI:
“What we’re hearing is a kind of ugly, aggressive language of inevitability. AI is coming, it’s going to do what it’s going to do. If you don’t like it, get out of the way or you’ll be roadkill. You have no choice. It’s all decided. We’re done.”
The real cost to creators:
“What we’re seeing right now in AI is the greatest level of industrial ID destruction in human history… Artists’ work is all being scraped so that it can feed large language models.”
Copy, consent, and credit:
Dr. Heffernan highlights the necessity of strong copyright for artists to keep their livelihood, identity, and voice. Without it, “no income, no reputation, no control, no consent, no identity.”
The tech sector must act like grown-ups:
“We’re not an infantile adolescent industry anymore… we now have choices in front of us that we have to take with some kind of adult responsibility.”
Opportunity, not inevitability:
The big prompt: Use technology to strengthen copyright protections and ensure creators are part of the value chain.