AI is consuming human knowledge. It should learn how to pay for it
When an OpenAI researcher told company president Greg Brockman about “a hack to get around nytimes paywall,” Brockman replied, “ah nice,” according to newly unsealed court filings in The New York Times’ copyright case against OpenAI and Microsoft.
TL;DR
- AI agents are becoming large consumers of human knowledge, necessitating a system for them to pay for it.
- Agentic payments and micropayments offer a potential solution, allowing AI to conduct automated, granular transactions for content.
- This system would preserve creators' rights, credit, and compensation, addressing copyright issues at internet scale.
- Existing payment infrastructures like Mastercard's Agent Pay and Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol are emerging building blocks.
- The goal is to create an operational layer for AI that respects intellectual property and sustains the incentive for original knowledge creation.