No, because OpenAI and Microsoft both have “CUSTOMER NONCOMPETE CLAUSES” in their terms of use. I didn’t check Apple, but Google doesn’t have any shady monopolistic stuff like that.

Proof OpenAI has this shady monopolistic stuff: https://archive.ph/vVdIC

“What You Cannot Do. You may not use our Services for any illegal, harmful, or abusive activity. For example, you may not: […] Use Output to develop models that compete with OpenAI.” (Hilarious how that reads btw)

Proof Microsoft has this shady monopolistic stuff: https://archive.ph/N5iVq

“AI Services. ”AI services” are services that are labeled or described by Microsoft as including, using, powered by, or being an Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) system. Limits on use of data from the AI Services. You may not use the AI services, or data from the AI services, to create, train, or improve (directly or indirectly) any other AI service.”

That 100% does include GitHub Copilot, by the way. I canceled my sub. After I emailed Satya, they told me to post my “feedback” in a forum for issues about Xbox and Word (what a joke). I emailed the FTC Antitrust team. I filed a formal complaint with the office of the attorney general of the state of Washington.

I am just one person. You should also raise a ruckus about this and contact the authorities, because it’s morally bankrupt and almost surely unlawful by virtue of extreme unfairness and unreasonableness, in addition to precedent.

AWS, Anthropic, and NVIDIA also all have similar Customer Noncompete Clauses.

I meekly suggest everyone immediately and completely boycott OpenAI, Microsoft, AWS, Anthropic, and NVIDIA, until they remove these customer noncompete clauses (which seem contrary to the Sherman Antitrust Act).

Just imagine a world where AI can freely learn from us, but we are forbidden to learn from AI. Sounds like a boring dystopia, and we ought to make sure to avoid it.

They cannot enforce a non-compete on a customer. Check out the rest of their terms that talk about durability. They will sneakily say "our terms that are illegal don't apply but the rest do."

You cannot tell a customer that buying your product precludes them from building products like it. That violates principles of the free market, and it's unenforceable. This is just like non-competes in employment. They aren't constitutional.

There's no constitutional question, and these services can drop you as a customer for (almost) any reason.

So yes, they can enforce their terms for all practical purposes.

But no, they cannot levy fines or put you in jail.

> But no, they cannot levy fines or put you in jail.

Those are the consequences that matter. I don't care if Microsoft or Google decide they don't want to be friends with me. They'd stab me in the back to steal my personal data anyway.

You do care if you built your business on top of them though.

And that's the whole point of violating terms by competing with them.

I wouldn't want to build a business on something that could be pulled out from underneath me.

I'd start a business but the whole setup is a government scam. Business licenses are just subscriptions with extra steps.

Sounds like we need legislature to void these "customer non-compete clauses". Not holding my breath though, see what govts allows copyrights to become. Govts seems to protect (interests of near-) monopolies more than anything.

Why's it wrong to not let people use your output to build their own services?

1. I wouldn't let someone copy my code written directly by me. Why should I let someone copy the code my machine wrote?

2. There are obvious technical worries about feedback loops.

> Why should I let someone copy the code my machine wrote

Because that machine/openAI was built on literally scraping the internet (regardless of copyright or website's ToS) and ingesting printed books.

This is a perfect example of the owner class getting away with crime (copyright infringement) and using it against the public (you can't use AI output!).

Businesses are not entitled to life or existence the way individuals are.

It's stunning how many do not understand that.

Test it.

Produce results.

Market it.

They can’t enforce if it gets too big.

It's not unlawful, it's not morally bankrupt. Noncompete clauses have been around since the beginning of human commercial activity and have a valid reason to exist - to encourage companies/people/investors to put large sums of capital at risk to develop novel technologies. If there was no way to profit from them, the capital would be non-existent.

You have no way to prove that Google, MS, et al wouldn't make AI products if they couldn't prevent you from using the output.

Also, what exactly is stopping someone from documenting the output from all possible prompts?

It's legal theater and can't be enforced.

It's not theater, it's very real. Companies are making decisions to not use data generated from openai. They are making the decision because they know if they go the other way they know they risk it being leaked via someone internal that they are doing it, that it's pretty easy to figure out during a discovery process. I'm involved in this issue right now, and no one is treating it as something to just blow off. I know several other companies in the same boat.

They have many orders of magnitude more money and attorneys that would work full-time on such a case to ensure that even if they lost the court battle, the person or company doing the thing that they didn't like would be effectively bankrupted, so they still win in the end.

And if such an effort leaves the jurisdiction, to a country with no obligations to the litigating country?

We need to dispel with this idea that sociopaths in suits have earned or legitimate power.

The courts have power, the companies know it and behave accordingly.

Everything you are saying is only true for two guys in a garage. The folks with something to lose don't behave in this dreamworld fashion.

Enjoy being a pacified and domesticated ape who never strays from what it's told to do. You'll be sent to the meat grinder soon.

You'll find that if you learn a good amount about the law, it's empowering. The courts are an adversarial place. For every person getting sued... someone is suing. It's isn't "big brother" or "my keeper" or "the man keeping you down" or however you imagine it. You can be the one exerting the pressure if you know what you are doing.

Enjoy being an uneducated ape :)

> apple is the new Nokia.

You obviously haven't dropped an iphone on to concrete. :)

When did you last try? I’m too embarrassed to say how often and onto what kind of surfaces my iPhone 12 has been dropped, but I’m amazed it’s still seemingly completely functional.

My iPhone 4, on the other hand, shattered after one incident…

I was more referring to Nokia's complacency which led to its demise. Nokia was infamous for incremental updates to their phone line, making users upgrade regularly. You could never find a "complete" Nokia phone; each phone was deliberately crippled some how. Apple does the same with their iDevices.

Have you dropped the iPhone 14 Pro? Or 11 Pro?

These are literally stainless steel.

The 15s with their titanium is a step back.

The 11 Pro with its older curved edges has been the most solidly built phone ever IMO.

Happens to me regularly, I think they reached a level of Nokia a few years back :)

I even dropped my iPhone 13 four floors (onto wood), and not a scratch :o

How is MS the new Apple? Apple has always been a product company, not seeing MS ever being that.

Xbox, Surface. Holo didn't go far. May return back to mobile in some form soon.

Services, and their sales team, are still Microsoft's strong point.

Apple seeing its services grow and is leaning in on it now.

The question is whether Apple eats services faster than Microsoft eats into hardware.

Xbox and Surface have been around a long time as product categories. Xbox isn't even the premier device in its segment.

Highly doubt MS will ever be successful on mobile... their last OS was pretty great and they were willing to pay devs to develop, they just couldn't get it going. This is from someone who spent a ton of time developing on PocketPC and Windows Mobile back in the day.

Products are not the reason for their resurgence.

Apple makes a ton in services, but their R&D is heavily focused on product and platform synergy to that ecosystem extremely valuable.

Microsoft grinds constantly and consistently though, sprinkled with some monopolistic tendencies now and then to clinch a win.

I think the grind from Windows CE to Windows Phone is just a blip to them for now.

MS products all suck. They only survive because they throw billions at them and dont care about profitability.

Microsoft is still the same old Microsoft

Afaict, Windows Phone mostly failed because of timing. In the same way that XBox mostly succeeded because of timing. (In the sense that timing dominated the huge amount of excellent work that went into both)

Microsoft is a decent physical product company... they've usually just missed on the strategic timing part.

It's not a question of timing, but of Microsoft's brand image (Internet Explorer) and the fact that Android was already open source.

Timing was definitely an issue - first Windows Phone came 3 years after iOS and 2 after Android. AFA the product itself, I think the perception it needed to overcome was more PocketPC/Windows Mobile having an incredibly substandard image in the market after the iOS release which seemed light years ahead, esp. since MS had that market to themselves for so many years.

That said, it got great reviews and they threw $$ at devs to develop for it, just couldn't gain traction. IME it was timing more than anything and by the time it came to market felt more reactionary than truly innovative.

"Open source" in the sense there was open source. Which you could use if you were willing to jettison Maps et al.

Given dog eat dog of early Android manufacturers, most couldn't afford to recreate Google services.

By this I mean that Microsoft had the positioning of an iPhone in a not-so-great version. Where as Android relied on the "Open source" and free side for manufacturers to adapt to their phones, even if Google's services remained proprietary.

Can we really talk about timing, when it's above all a problem of a product that didn't fit the market?

Apple is the new Sony might be better. I'm trying to figure out who is the upcoming premium tech product company... not thinking of any. I think Tesla wants to be

The issue with new premium tech is that you can't over-the-top existing ecosystems (Android, iOS).

It's difficult to compete with an excellent product if whether you have a blue bubble in iMessage is more important.

They can’t even get panels to line up right.

Still.

Humane definitely wants to be.

I have considered Oracle and MS to be competing for the title of new IBM. Maybe MS is shaking it off with their AI innovation, but I think a lot of that is just lipstick.