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Comment by omoikane | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to tell if what Eric Schmidt was saying was a joke, an observation, or a recommendation.

One interpretation from the context of the transcript seem to be "AI can make/steal stuff and manual intervention (lawyers) can clean those up later". Another interpretation from the context of Eric Schmidt being a savvy businessman is that people should go ahead and solve all the technical challenges first, and everything else can come later because if the technical problems aren't solved successfully, the other things won't matter. I can't tell if he is mostly responding to the room or not.

This whole transcript[1] is more than 10k words, everyone will probably find an interpretation from random snippets that matches their perceived reality.

[1] https://github.com/ociubotaru/transcripts/blob/main/Stanford...

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He’s dead serious.

Uber got its start by flouting taxi rules. By the time the backlash started uber/lyft were too popular for governments to shut down so instead most governments created an awkward different category for them, so there’s at least some regulation applying to them.

If Uber had tried to work thru the regulation they would have never gotten off the ground or have been as loved by users. Taxis in many ways suck, and that was their opening.

Speaking of which…Uber is a master of regulatory influence. When California threatened to classify their drivers as employees, they successfully passed a proposition (prop 22) with the California public that promised more benefits for drivers…but kept them as independent contractors.

Not really. Taxi medallions are required to let you pick up someone else that hails you on the street. It is not required for a drive scheduled elsewhere like over the phone or the Internet. They weren't breaking laws, at least in the US.

Most of the regulations applied to Uber were new regulations introduced after their ride to popularity, often crafted with the express purpose of curbing Lyft and Uber.

> Not really. Taxi medallions are required to let you pick up someone else that hails you on the street. It is not required for a drive scheduled elsewhere like over the phone or the Internet. They weren't breaking laws, at least in the US.

Maybe not in the US, but Uber was (at one point) banned in multiple locations in (at least) Europe because they flagrantly ignoring existing laws.

In some locations, like Netherlands, Uber was fined and told it was illegal, but continued service anyway up until their offices were raided, then they finally shut down.

You're definitely misremembering history, then. Hailing is certainly a "category definer", but what Uber was doing in the beginning was definitely not kosher in many US jurisdictions.

Ordering on-demand in an app was seen by regulators as much more taxi-like than scheduling a black car for a particular date, time, and place.

Uber was originally called "Ubercab", and changed their name specifically to attempt to distance themselves from traditional taxi service.

> Ordering on-demand in an app was seen by regulators as much more taxi-like than scheduling a black car for a particular date, time, and place.

Regulators tried to reinterpret existing laws to placate an interest group. Most cities has explicit laws around this: responding to someone hailing on the street required a medallion. Scheduling a ride via the internet did not.

This is why they had to pass new laws to try and stamp out taxi's competition.

But is it really "scheduling" a ride if the target time is "right now"?

It sounds to me like what they cared about was the distinction between "now" and "plan for later", and the way this was actually implemented in the laws turned out to be based on inaccurate assumptions.

> But is it really "scheduling" a ride if the target time is "right now"?

The ride is usually at least a few minutes from the present time. And again, the medallions are only required to respond to people hailing on the street. This is why cities trying to obstruct Uber had to pass new laws, not just enforce existing ones.

What about Google itself? Store content from billions of websites in your own index without permission and show snippets from those sites to your own users, making yourself into “the source” of all answers when, in reality, it’s all just scraped from other people’s sites? Imagine pitching that idea to copyright lawyers back in 1999.

Yes, and that was litigated and ruled in favor of Google, because search engines provide links back to the original content, so there’s a mutual benefit. Using copyrighted material for AI does not provide links back to the original sources, so that’s where it is not covered under the ruling.

So... move fast and break laws.

Yes, and just pay the law makers off

>Uber got its start by flouting taxi rules.

No they got their start because the yellow cabs were late, never arrived, started their timer before I even got into the car, took me a long routes to my destination. It was waaaay worse with yellow cabs. And when I first heard of Uber, I immediately switched.

I may be in the minority, but I’m a happy Uber/Lyft customer.

Taxis only got that way because of the rules that created an artificial scarcity / monopoly on Taxi rides. Uber flouted those rules, and it was much better than a Taxi, so their lawyers cleaned up the mess later.

I don’t think your statement conflicts with the other users statement.

It's not specifically about technical problems. He's saying that you need to just go all in on getting traction and not constantly be worrying about things that aren't going to matter if you never get it. It's the same thing as people who just opine about how they'll handle the big server bills, or how they'll scale to a billion users, or how they'll deal with regulations, when they haven't gotten their first user yet.

This advice kind of feels like "Don't pay your taxes. Just go all in on enjoying your life and not constantly be worrying about things that aren't going to matter if you die. Worry about it later if the IRS goes after you."

You really should be preparing for the future and operating above board, even from day one.

You don’t have to pay income taxes until you record profit, at least, so that really is like what he is saying. The IRS is not going to think this is weird, many (most even) startups never get to the point of paying taxes, and non-profits by definition don’t.

Obviously I'm not talking specifically about corporate taxes, here. In fact the example was about personal taxes. It's a generality about the attitude of "Ignore the rules, do what you have to now, and worry about the consequences later."

No, it more like “rewrite the rules” either by litigation or politics.

I don’t understand how we went from talking about “companies not worrying about success problems until they have success” to talking about individuals where none of that applies and is just a bad analogy.

If something is clearly illegal or immoral to you don't do it. This is more about if its ambiguous or you believe your companies goal is a good thing and it's unclear if you will get sued for it.

>If something is clearly illegal or immoral to you don't do it.

You're posting on a forum run by a group that asks applicants when they've skirted the law to get something done. Your use of the modifier "clearly" here is pointless. Remember; you've literally lived through companies funneling in investment dollars into things like Project Greyball, which was entirely intended to gaslight law enforcement/regulators.

Or who have regularly tried to financial engineer or corporately structure their way out of culpability long enough to successfully execute on pump-n-dumps. Or who birthed the entire sector of "totally not a bank/financial institution" that is the cryptocurrency space.

Another interpretation is that (1) copyright interests are over-protected (at least) in US law because publishing industries are very influential, and that this policy overweights their short-term profit motive and underweights other interests that might benefit from looser enforcement (as the Constitution puts it: "promot[ing] the progress of science and useful arts.")

And simultaneously, (2) if you can actually demonstrate such an interest (in particular: a profitable business that cannot exist when copyright law is fully enforced), the courts and publishers won't actually shut you down, but will settle for a cut of the new revenue you created.

Note that rich people (and at least one prominent ex-President, and I don't think he's the only one) actually do operate by that principle. They go on and enjoy their life, largely don't pay their taxes, and then hire an army of lawyers and accountants to clean up the mess when the IRS goes after them.

I was raised to play by the rules and do everything by the book, but sometimes I wonder if that's just something that people who have no intention of playing by the rules say to screw over us gullible people.

>Note that rich people (and at least one prominent ex-President, and I don't think he's the only one) actually do operate by that principle. They go on and enjoy their life, largely don't pay their taxes, and then hire an army of lawyers and accountants to clean up the mess when the IRS goes after them.

While many rich people do commit tax fraud, it's worth nothing it's usually not as straightforward as "largely don't pay their taxes". It's not like they get a bill from the IRS and just refuse to pay it. Instead, they use a combination of legally gray tactics to reduce their tax obligations. eg. for peter thiel, he put a bunch of paypal stock in a roth IRA pre-IPO, allowing him to avoid taxes on much of his exit. Was this legal? Was the valuation he used when he put the stock in the roth IRA correct or artificially low? You could argue either way, so you could plausibly do it while keeping a clean conscience. The same applies to AI startups. They argue what they're doing is covered under fair use, and there's plausible legal arguments/precedent supporting that. It's not like they're doing something obviously illegal like duplicating DVDs and selling them at a shady street stall.

Also it's unclear what "prominent ex-President" you're referring to, but the wikipedia article for donald trump only says his foundation was charged, not him personally.

You're absolutely right about that. Unfortunately there is a parallel consequence-free life track for rich people. My comment wasn't about them.

I think the equivalent of

>...and hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

would be don't worry about tax at the start and hire accountants to sort it later

Do you remember Napster? They went all in on getting traction, succeeded, then got crushed by the music industry. Ignoring the law only works if you are bankrolled. Don't try this at home, kids.

Yes, but how did things work out for the founders?

Or the founders of Uber and Lyft?

Legal gray area. They could have waited years and years and tried to get laws passed to allow their business to function with a clean slate of legality, but bureaucrats would have never allowed it.

This is kind of an amusing point to consider since we were talking about Kim Dotcom's extradition just moments ago.

So is the point to try it if you've got Napster level success but not Megaupload level success?

And since there is no way to know which level of success you are going to achieve beforehand, the note of caution still makes sense I guess?

Kim Dotcom made the mistake of not knowing when to quit. Napster shut down when it got told to shut down. Megaupload hopped around hoping to outsmart the law after it was told to shut down, and the executive branch doesn't let that go.

He also tried his hand at politics with musk level finesse. That didn’t help

That’s why you’ve heard of Napster, and Shawn and Sean have money.

I've heard of other failed companies too; that's not saying much. Did the founders make money off Napster? How?

ostensibly Napster is the exception that makes the rule, etc.

Napster is an amazing example. They are a massive success story.

Sean Parker is doing great. It worked out for him.

So the point stands. If you get serious traction, the worst that can happen is your current company goes under, years down the line, after you have cashed out and you then fail upwards into being a successful tech celebrity.

This is all a much better outcome than nobody caring about your product, as you "followed the rules", hampered yourself, and ended up with zero users.

As Sean Parker's character in The Social Network's line reads: "You want to buy a Tower Records, Eduardo?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLgpUEpaUVs

> If you get serious traction, the worst that can happen is your current company goes under

Of course if you really piss off the wrong people, you'll get smeared and maybe even framed for more things than you actually did before being arrested.

"You wanna buy a Tower Records, Eduardo?"

https://youtu.be/pLgpUEpaUVs?si=WXciPD8BuEgP5nMe

Their problem wasn't starting like that. It's that they should have pivoted to being more youtube like - allow takedowns, pay creators etc.

Schmidt oversaw lots of “stealing” at Google, from Google Books (Author’s Guild), to Image Search (e.g. Perfect10 etc, before even Getty), the French press .. all before Viacom vs Youtube and others.

Schmidt was also notably part of the tech no-poach / wage suppression scheme ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust... ).

He knows very well the spectrum of stealing and liability. In this talk he’s pounding his chest in front of young investors and executives to celebrate what he got away with and to inflate his brand.

Contrast though with TK, who through Greyballing (among other things) wanted to “steal” the taxi market and make himself and Uber above the law.

So Schmidt’s raw ambition is no joke. But historically his actions have been perhaps more conservative than those of others.

>Schmidt oversaw lots of “stealing” at Google, from Google Books (Author’s Guild), to Image Search (e.g. Perfect10 etc, before even Getty), the French press .. all before Viacom vs Youtube and others.

At least for Author’s Guild and Perfect10, google successfully argued fair use and therefore it wasn't really "stealing". I'm too lazy to research the other cases. Despite this, you're seemingly displeased at google's behavior despite it being ruled legal. What should have they done?

Legality is the lowest bar of ethical behavior.

There's nothing ethical about calling violation of purchased IP protection "stealing" either. It's a set of laws by encumbents to protect monopolies. And you can trace a lot of US monopolies and lack of healthy competitive markets directly back to those laws.

And what is your line for "ethical behavior"? What makes your line more valid than what AI companies think is ethical?

YouTube was built on copyrighted works. Organic YouTube was an afterthought that happened to work out

If you make enough money, you just purchase laws.

No need to try and decontextualize.

> you just purchase laws.

What sort of favorable laws did google or ai startups "purchase"?

For AI startups it is too early in the cycle for them to do that. The first lawsuit on copyright infringement only just made it to discovery last week!

In this context though, The favorable laws that they will "purchase" would of course be either a favorable court outcome saying that training on other people's data without permission is fair use (in at least some circumstances), or otherwise a new law that says that explicitly.

AI startups have a couple years left of runway before even the first lawsuit is settled, so that is more than enough time to get traction and takeover the market, given how useful AI is likely to be.

Given AI’s role in the new Cold War with China, I would imagine the fix is already in. The national security folks aren’t just going to let China leapfrog them in developing this technical capability.

Here's my interpretation.

He's been asked to predict what will happen and is saying that AI will fundamentally change things.

Silicon Valley will iterate quickly, not just products but startups, and the effort will become trivial.

"That's all within the next year or two."

I think this is a prediction, more of a "anyone can clone your business model, get moving"

Honestly what google was doing - scraping websites and keeping a database of them - was probably gray area of copyright law.

So he’s probably saying that it worked out for Google.

However, websites benefit from google doing that. It’s hard to see how TikTok would be ok with that.

So I think the general rule is that if publishers benefit then you will be ok in the end.

Whether he was "joking" or not this is the playbook they have been running for years now.

Yes. Sure. But the reason this is on HN (for the millionth time) is because Eric said it, and Google bad, or whatever.

It's Heisenberg's Joke. It's both a joke and not a joke. Whether it collapses into a joke when you open the box depends on whether you agree with the sentiment.

I can't tell if techies have fused rose-colored glasses to their faces or if they really think the people who win are nice people who follow rules!

I don’t know if there are just too many kids around or if everyone has a short memory, but Eric Schmidt was in his heyday know. for awkwardly sticking his foot in it with tactless comments like this.

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