Every now and then when I consider Copyrights and Artificial Intelligences and Publishing Rights and… I wonder…

Whose knowledge is it anyway?

We have a civilization that is presently built on locking away information in various ways, metering it out for money. The system has downsides as well as upsides, and discussing it isn’t all that fair for the downsides since the downsides don’t have marketing departments selling us on them.

I don’t know that the present system we have is as good as we can do. Yet this lawsuit related to ChatGPT has me wondering about this again.

I looked to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While knowledge isn’t there, education is.

Article 26

1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights – English, United Nations, accessed on 30 Jun 2023.

Education, by a loose definition, is the attempt to share knowledge. That’s what teaching is and that’s what schools try to do. Yet the knowledge itself is not something that everyone is allowed to get.

In this brave new world we’re imagining, is there room for the knowledge of mankind being a birthright?

And if so, how will that impact society as a whole?