How are publishers addressing Knowledge Theft through AI and who is winning?

Candid Conversations with Lisa Watts

Hosted by Dr Marianne Broadbent

For decades, websites like The Conversation, Wikipedia and many academic publishers use Creative Commons licensing. This enables sharing of information as the path to knowledge equity with billions of works freely accessible and reusable across so many areas of research, education, and cultural domains. 

But AI has weaponized that openness. What was built to democratise knowledge now trains models that concentrate power and profit, driven by open data scraping and closed model development. This paradox forces us to confront an impossible question: How do we keep knowledge open without enabling theft through AI?

In this session Lisa will share her insights about the global moves to ensure developments like Creative Commons Licensing can continue to evolve in an era of AI. How can we balance open access and unfair and reasonable use of the knowledge for the commercial profit of others? Lisa will also share the approach The Conversation takes, as a publisher, with a four-pronged approach to the use of AI.
 

Lisa Watts is CEO of The Conversation Media Group, responsible for strategy, funding and operations, and the technology team serving the international group. Lisa has played a key role in the global growth of The Conversation which now operates in eight countries around the world. Previously Lisa was CEO of ArtsHub, CEO of a search marketing firm, and GM online employment for Fairfax Digital. Lisa has been a Director of Vertical Networks Group and Chair of Midsumma Festival. She is currently Deputy Chair of the University of Melbourne’s Engineering, Computing and Information Technology Industry Advisory Group. Lisa is a Deloitte Outstanding 50 LGBTI Leader.

Please join Lisa as she delves into the impossible question of AI theft versus AI ownership.