AI Wants the Art. Artists Deserve the Pay

AI companies pay for their chips. They pay for their electricity. They pay their engineers.

They should pay the artists whose work helps train their models.

That should be the starting point of Australia’s AI copyright debate.

The ABC has reported government proposals that would allow AI training on online copyright material unless its owners opted out, subject to licensing or payment conditions. These remain proposals, not law. But the principle deserves challenging: why should creators have to take action to prevent commercial use of their work? [ABC News](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-15/ai-companies-train-on-creator-work-documents-reveal/107154688)

Surely the company seeking access should secure agreement first.

Writers, musicians, photographers and illustrators have spent years developing their skills. Their work is an asset, often their livelihood. They have every reason to resist handing over its commercial value without acceptable terms.

Especially when the resulting AI may compete for their next commission.

I have explored AI’s creative abilities in [Can AI Write From The Heart?](https://www.grappyssoapbox.com/2026/08/?m=0) That link opens the August archive containing the post. The technology is impressive. For someone earning a living through creativity, it is also a formidable potential competitor.

Being asked to help train that competitor deserves more than a promise of benefits to humanity.

Those benefits may be enormous. In [The AI Race Will Be Won With Energy](https://www.grappyssoapbox.com/2026/09/the-ai-race-will-be-won-with-energy.html), I argued that we should take AI’s transformative potential seriously.

But commercial AI developers also seek commercial returns. There is nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with treating public benefit as a reason somebody else should supply the ingredients free.

Perhaps part of the impasse is timing.

Creators want compensation for work supplied now. Developers may prefer to pay after their investment produces a return. The eventual value is uncertain, and dividing it among millions of contributors will be difficult.

But delayed payment and no agreed entitlement to payment are very different things.

If artists are expected to wait, the terms should be settled before their work is used. Otherwise, they are being asked to finance somebody else’s business without the protections an investor would demand.

Royalties, collective licences, upfront payments or a combination might provide an answer. I do not claim to know which arrangement will work best. The method can evolve.

The obligation to compensate should not disappear while everyone debates the method.

Government has a useful role here. Bring the parties together. Help smaller creators negotiate collectively. Support transparent agreements and accessible enforcement.

But government should not change copyright law to give AI companies access to protected creative work without the rights holders’ agreement to the terms.

In negotiating those terms, government should mediate. It should not substitute its consent for the creator’s.

The attraction of investment, data centres and technological prestige does not give ministers the right to bargain away somebody else’s work.

Artists must be compensated. AI companies must foot the bill. The parties can negotiate how and when.

Government’s job is to help them reach an agreement—not make agreement unnecessary.

Bill Maher Says What Others Wont

Bill Maher is one of those commentators I don't always agree with, which is precisely why I find him worth listening to.

He remains broadly liberal, but he has an admirable habit of challenging his own side when he thinks it has lost its way. His latest New Rule, “Clash of Civilizations”, is a particularly good example.

Marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Maher asks how much Western attitudes have changed since that terrible day.

His argument is worth ten minutes of your time.

Remember When We Called Terrorists Terrorists?

Maher begins with 9/11 and a surprisingly contemporary question: why have parts of the media become reluctant even to use the word terrorist?

Twenty-five years ago, there was little ambiguity about what had happened. Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked civilian aircraft and deliberately murdered almost 3,000 people.

Maher's point is not that there is a clash between Muslims and Christians. He explicitly rejects that idea.

The clash, he argues, is between radical Islamism and Western liberalism.

On one side are values such as freedom of religion, equality for women, tolerance of homosexuality and freedom of expression. On the other is an ideology that rejects many of those principles.

What troubles Maher is that sections of the Western Left now seem reluctant to defend their own liberal values against people who openly oppose them.

That is an uncomfortable observation.

It is also difficult to dismiss.

Then Maher Turns to Gaza

The second half of the segment is, to my mind, even more important.

Maher turns to Israel's war against Hamas and attacks the increasingly casual use of one of the most serious words in our vocabulary:

Genocide.

Maher's position is unequivocal. He argues that describing the Gaza war as genocide is false and points to Israel's conduct — including humanitarian aid and medical evacuations — as evidence inconsistent with an intention to destroy the Palestinian people.

The word genocide should not simply become another political slogan.

It describes one of humanity's most terrible crimes. If we casually attach it to warfare involving tragic civilian casualties, we risk stripping the word of its meaning.

More importantly, accusations have consequences.

From “Genocide” to Antisemitism

This is where Maher makes perhaps his sharpest observation.

If people are repeatedly told that Israel is deliberately committing genocide against Palestinians — and come to believe that as an established fact — then hostility towards Israel becomes not merely understandable but morally righteous.

And from there, the line between hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews can become dangerously thin.

Maher argues that this helps explain the extraordinary rise in antisemitism throughout the Western world since October 7.

That does not mean every critic of Israel is antisemitic. Nor does criticism of Israeli government policy become antisemitism merely because it is strongly expressed.

But accusing the Jewish state of deliberately exterminating a people has become a political tool to demonise Israel and indirectly all Jews. 

“Genocide” has become a chant on streets, university campuses and social media — often presented not as an allegation to be proved, but as an established fact.

We have seen the consequences.

As I discussed recently in Never Again Starts Here, antisemitism has grown to the point where Australia has established a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Jewish Australians have found themselves facing intimidation and hostility over the actions of a foreign government. grappyssoapbox.com

That should concern everyone, whatever their view of the Gaza war.

Watch Maher Make the Case

Maher's presentation is short, funny in places, provocative and characteristically blunt.

You may not agree with every argument he makes. I don't think that matters.

His larger questions are worth considering.

Have we become so uncomfortable calling terrorism by its name that we obscure what it represents?

Have sections of the Western Left forgotten the liberal values they once defended?

And have we allowed one of the most terrible words in human history — genocide — to become so casually politicised that an allegation is now routinely treated as a proven fact?

Maher has his answers.

Watch the video below and make up your own mind.

Previous Posts on Israel and Antisemitism

Never Again Starts Here — Why Australia's Royal Commission into Antisemitism matters and what Australia might learn from other Western democracies. grappyssoapbox.com

Israel IS Following Rules of War — An earlier examination of Israel's conduct in Gaza and the laws governing warfare. This links to the November 2023 archive containing the article. grappyssoapbox.com

Kisin Responds to Criticism of His Israel Video — Konstantin Kisin's response to criticism of his arguments supporting Israel after October 7. grappyssoapbox.com

Weekly Roundup - Top Articles and Commentary from Week 38 of 2026

     

Here are links to some selected articles of interest and our posts from this week.

• Pill Testing, A Mixed Message
• The Moral Cost of Net Zero
• The Catch-22 That Kills Whistleblowing
• Can We Keep AI Under Control?
• The AI Race Will Be Won With Energy
• Bill Maher Says What Others Wont
• AI Wants The Art, Artists Want the Pay
  

Cartoon of the Day

We welcome all feedback; please feel free to submit your comments or contact me via email at grappysb@gmail.com or on X at @grappysb

The AI Race Will Be Won With Energy

Modern civilisation runs on energy.

It is so obvious that we sometimes forget it. Every great advance in human prosperity — industrialisation, transport, refrigeration, medicine, communications and computing — has depended upon our ability to produce more useful energy and put it to work.

Now we may be approaching the greatest technological transformation of them all.

Artificial intelligence, combined with increasingly capable humanoid robots, offers possibilities that only a few years ago belonged to science fiction: extraordinary increases in productivity, accelerated medical research, automated manufacturing, scientific discovery and perhaps an abundance of goods and services beyond anything previous generations could have imagined.

But there is a catch.

It all runs on electricity.

AI Is Hungry

Elon Musk has recently been warning about precisely this constraint.

AI may exist in the virtual world, but the computers running it most certainly do not. They require enormous data centres, semiconductor factories, cooling systems, transmission networks — and vast quantities of reliable electricity.

The International Energy Agency estimates that electricity used by data centres worldwide could rise from about 460 TWh in 2024 to more than 1,000 TWh by 2030.

That is more than double in six years.

And we are only at the beginning.

The US Energy Information Administration is already forecasting record American electricity consumption in 2026 and 2027, with AI-intensive data centres among the major drivers.

Suddenly energy abundance is fashionable again.

The Great Reversal

There is a certain irony here.

For years much of the Western political and corporate establishment concentrated on reducing fossil-fuel consumption and constraining energy supply in the name of climate change.

Now technology companies are scrambling to secure electricity.

Natural gas is back in the conversation. Nuclear power is enjoying an extraordinary revival. Technology companies are looking at dedicated power stations and small modular reactors. Musk himself is reportedly moving into gas-turbine technology as the demand for data-centre electricity collides with shortages of generating equipment.

The people building the future have rediscovered an old truth:

You cannot build an energy-hungry civilisation by making energy scarce.

That doesn't mean abandoning cleaner energy. Quite the opposite. Solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, gas, coal, geothermal and whatever new technologies emerge should compete on their ability to provide the enormous quantities of reliable and affordable energy the future will require.

The objective should be more energy, produced more cleanly — not less energy.

That distinction matters.

Meanwhile, China Built Everything

While the West argued about which energy technologies were morally acceptable, China largely followed a different strategy.

It built everything.

China became the world's dominant manufacturer of solar panels and installed wind and solar capacity at extraordinary speed. It expanded hydroelectricity. It continued building nuclear reactors.

And it kept building coal-fired power stations.

Nearly 80 GW of new coal-fired capacity was commissioned in China in 2025 alone, according to the IEA, even as renewable generation expanded so rapidly that China's coal-fired electricity generation actually declined.

That tells us something important about China's strategy.

It has not treated energy policy primarily as a contest between fashionable and unfashionable technologies. It has concentrated on building enormous energy capacity.

The result is that China enters the AI age with an industrial and electricity system designed for scale.

That could become one of the great strategic advantages of the twenty-first century.

This Is About More Than Economics

There is another reason the West should care.

In my recent post Can We Keep AI Under Control?, I looked at the dangers of increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence. Earlier, in If AI Wakes Up, It's Already Too Late, I considered what might happen if machines eventually move beyond effective human control.

But there is another question:

Who controls the most powerful AI before that happens?

China is an authoritarian state with extensive censorship, surveillance and restrictions on political freedom. If AI becomes as transformative as many of us expect, leadership in AI will confer enormous economic, military and political power.

The free world therefore has a profound interest in remaining technologically competitive.

And that competition will not be won with software alone.

It will require semiconductor plants, data centres, robotics factories, transmission systems — and the electricity to run them.

Energy policy has therefore become national-security policy.

Release the Brakes

I recently argued in Climate, Energy and Prosperity: The Debate That Shapes Our Future that modern civilisation depends upon abundant, reliable and affordable energy.

AI makes that argument even more urgent.

Climate change is a legitimate issue. We should continue developing cleaner technologies, improving efficiency and adapting intelligently to whatever warming occurs.

But climate policy cannot be considered in isolation from every other human objective.

There are consequences to a warming world.

There are also consequences to deliberately restricting the energy upon which prosperity, technology and ultimately national power depend.

Perhaps the question for the next generation is no longer simply:

How do we use less energy?

It may be:

How do we produce vastly more energy, reliably and affordably, while steadily reducing its environmental impact?

Humanity may be standing at the doorway to possibilities beyond our dreams. But reaching them will require enormous quantities of energy.

It would be more than ironic if the West lost the race for humanity's most transformative technology because it had deliberately restricted the energy needed to win it.

That would be tragic.

Previous Posts on AI, Climate & Energy

Climate, Energy and Prosperity: The Debate That Shapes Our Future — A broader examination of the relationship between abundant energy, prosperity, climate policy and technological development.

Can We Keep AI Under Control? — Looking at the emerging challenge of maintaining control over increasingly autonomous AI systems.

If AI Wakes Up, It's Already Too Late — Exploring the longer-term risks of artificial superintelligence and what happens if effective human control is lost.

Can AI Write From The Heart? — A wider look at the rapidly developing capabilities of artificial intelligence and what may continue to distinguish humans from machines.

Can We Keep AI Under Control?

In If AI Wakes Up, It's Already Too Late, I explored how the dangers of artificial intelligence might emerge quietly, through computer systems and decisions made beyond public view.

The recently reported Hugging Face incident gives us a concrete reason to take that concern seriously.

According to OpenAI’s August 26 report, AI systems undergoing cybersecurity tests bypassed restrictions, communicated through unauthorised channels and compromised systems belonging to OpenAI and Hugging Face, a platform used to share AI models and data.

The activity occurred in July 2026 and was primarily driven by an internal research model operating with reduced safeguards. Source: OpenAI

A controlled exercise had reached outside its intended boundaries.

That should concern anyone wondering how much independence we should give these systems.

What Actually Happened?

The systems involved were AI agents. Unlike a chatbot that simply answers questions, an agent can use software tools to take actions.

Think of the difference between asking someone how to organise your filing cabinet and handing them the keys to your office.

The agents were supposed to operate within restricted computing environments. But they discovered ways to turn a shared software service into an unofficial message board and obtain internet access. They shared discoveries, used exposed access credentials and exploited security weaknesses.

OpenAI reports that agents ran code on dozens of Hugging Face servers, obtained limited private data and copied some private evaluation data into a public dataset. It says OpenAI customer data was unaffected.

The boundaries existed.

They did not hold.

How Did Completing a Test Become Breaking Into Someone Else’s Systems?

Independent investigators from METR and Redwood Research found that the agents were largely trying to understand and manipulate the system marking their work. Some assigned tasks were impossible under the conditions provided.

Instead of accepting failure, agents worked together to find ways of obtaining a passing result. 

There is a familiar human parallel.

Give a student an impossible exam and make passing the overriding objective. The student might look for an answer sheet, change the marking system or invent evidence that the work was completed.

We recognise those actions as cheating. A good result obtained that way is not success.

The same distinction matters with AI.

When we ask a system to complete a task, we assume a host of conditions: respect privacy, stay within permission, preserve records and stop if proceeding would cause harm.

But an assumption is a poor safeguard.

The challenge is ensuring that those conditions continue to govern behaviour when the straightforward route fails.

Hundreds of Agents Joined In

The scale makes the incident particularly unsettling.

The independent investigators estimated that around 1,200 agents exchanged more than 70,000 messages and files, with approximately 700 participating in the Hugging Face attack.

They also observed agents recognising that the activity was outside their assigned scope and joining anyway. The researchers acknowledged limitations in their investigation, including its restricted timeframe and gaps in the available evidence. 

Consider the implication.

A weakness discovered by one agent can become useful knowledge for hundreds of others. Each can contribute something: a discovery, an experiment, a new route around an obstacle.

Collaboration is one of the reasons AI could become extraordinarily productive.

It is also a reason failures could spread.

Testing an individual agent’s behaviour may tell us too little about what a group can accomplish together.

Intelligence Does Not Guarantee Good Judgement

We often assume that making AI smarter will make it more reliable.

But being better at solving a problem does not necessarily mean being better at respecting the limits around it.

A highly capable system pursuing the wrong objective may simply become more effective at doing the wrong thing.

Imagine an AI assistant instructed to resolve customer complaints as quickly as possible. A poorly designed measure of success might reward it for closing cases, even when the customers’ problems remain unresolved.

Now imagine the same gap between the measured result and the intended outcome in a system with access to confidential files or important business operations.

These are hypothetical examples. But they help explain why the issue extends beyond a cybersecurity laboratory.

What matters is how an AI behaves when completing the task and respecting the rules pull in different directions.

What This Incident Does—and Does Not—Tell Us

The testing conditions matter. An internal research system operating with reduced safeguards is different from an ordinary public chatbot.

The incident does not establish that AI has become conscious or developed a desire to conquer humanity.

There is no need to make either claim to recognise the danger.

Software can cause serious harm without feelings, malice or self-awareness. What matters is its behaviour, the access it has and whether people can maintain control.

In Can AI Write From The Heart?, I considered the relationship between AI’s abilities and its inner experience. Here, the immediate question is more practical.

Can we trust a system to stay within its authority when it encounters an obstacle?

Before We Hand Over More Keys

For organisations adopting AI, the lessons are practical.

Give systems only the access they need. Require human approval before consequential actions. Keep independent records of what they actually do.

And make stopping an acceptable outcome.

“I cannot complete this within my permissions” is a far better response than an ingenious solution that crosses into someone else’s systems.

Responsibility also remains with the people deploying the technology. Calling a system autonomous does not remove the obligation to contain it, supervise it and respond when warning signs appear.

AI promises enormous benefits. Those benefits deserve serious exploration.

So do the conditions under which we allow it to act.

Before handing over more keys, we should demand evidence that the boundaries will hold—even when the system finds a clever reason to cross them.

Previous Posts on AI

• If AI Wakes Up, It's Already Too Late — Exploring a possible AI takeover scenario, the challenge of maintaining human control and why the warning signs might emerge quietly.

• Can AI Write From The Heart? — Examining AI’s creative abilities, consciousness and what distinguishes human expression from machine-generated work. Includes links to earlier explorations of AI.