Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry | The Verge »

This is truly the stupidest argument.

Quite a lot of voices say, ‘You can only train on my content, [if you] first ask’. And I have to say that strikes me as somewhat implausible because these systems train on vast amounts of data. I just don’t know how you go around, asking everyone first. I just don’t see how that would work,” Clegg said.

This reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”