AI will just become copyright trolls

But unlike some utilitarian approaches, virtue-based ethics does not pretend to offer mathematical answers to complex value questions, nor does it issue prescriptions that hang in the middle of an ethical vacuum. Consider, for example, the consequentialist work on AI authorship and copyright discussed in Section II.B.3. It is unlikely that any empirical study could demonstrate, with any degree of confidence, that affording copyright authorship to narrow AI as a de jure legal entity would result in a net increase in valuable copyrightable works. The variables are impossible to specify and are notoriously slippery. What would an ex ante "incentive" mean to a narrow AI? Would the system be programmed to want to make money from copyright royalties? Would the AI have other competing incentives like a human author? Many copyright scholars believe the incentive of copyright royalties only motivates creative work in certain fields where big money is to be had - such as pop music and commercial movies - to the detriment of other artists. Would programming an AI with a bias toward maximizing copyright royalties produce negative spillover effects, such as AI copyright hogs and AI copyright trolls? Would a proliferation of AI-authored copyrighted works, and the enforcement of those rights, chill fair use and free expression?

Empirical legal scholars can try to study and model such questions, but the notion that any studies could provide global answers is overly idealistic and Quixotic at best. Perhaps one day an AI system will possess the horsepower to create more reliable models and predictions about complex normative value questions. Perhaps that system will also be capable of tweaking legal rules applicable to other AI systems on the fly, so the entire mechanism is continually optimized. Presently, that kind of societal utilitarian computer is only science fiction. In my view, it is dystopian science fiction in which human agency is destroyed.