“We’re trying to get to a win-win and we don’t believe this is unachievable” Sir Chris Bryant, Minister of State for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries, House of Commons, 12th February 2025

In Feb 2025, we at Talk Shop sent this letter to Sir Chris’s enquiry into Big Tech’s use of others’ original material for training AI Large Language Models (LLMs):

Introduction
The purpose of this short notice is likely different from the other submissions you will receive. Its main aim is to support Sir Chris Byrant’s aim to seek a win-win solution, by illustrating the sort of conversation that can achieve such a solution.

Our illustration consists of a description of an experiment run on February 19th, online, with ten people. Some were knowledgeable about the issue; others new to it. Experiment though it be, we have been developing this approach over the last four years. This was our 47th event on our 21st topic.

The win-win event
Beforehand:

  1. We used ChatGPT to identify three equidistant positions on the issue. We then found two people who took each of those positions. The positions (in very brief) and the people were:
    • Position A It’s about the economics: Sir Chris Bryant & Bertin Martins
    • Position B Cultural impact: Kate Mosse & Ed Newton-Rex
    • Position C Tech optimists: Andrew Ng, Marc Andreesson
  2. We used quotes from the six people to bring their position to life. Most vividly, for instance, Kate Mosse said, “What is being proposed is like a thief in a corner shop who steals all the Mars bars. When confronted by the shopkeeper, the thief says: ‘But you didn’t tell me you didn’t want me to steal your Mars bars.’”
  3. We also supplied written material that described the consultation, the positions in more detail and more about the issue, ranging from the nature of copyright to the position in China. It is available here.

During the event

  • Three or four people took on each of the three positions. They also took on one of the characters who support that position
  • People taking on the same position spent time together, absorbing the information and working out what really mattered to their character.
  • They moved into mixed groups, so that each new group had at least one representative of each of the three positions.
  • Their task was to come up with statements that people in all three positions could live with.
  • Ten statements were put forward. Everyone voted on whether they could live with them. The search for consensus means that statements are scored according to the number of votes awarded by the lowest scoring group.
  • Additionally, each person also had three bonus votes, to show which statements they could not only live with, but also actively supported.
  • The top five statements, in descending order, were:
    • AI companies to have a license to operate which can be revoked
    • Economic value should be recognised
    • AI to be a public resource not treated as a monopoly
    • We need to create a new system of remuneration
    • Excess profits should go into a sovereign wealth fund for excess profits rather than going to oligarchs

Conclusion
To reiterate our main point, we believe win-win to be always desirable and often possible. But finding it needs a methodology – by which we mean no more than a particular way of talking. We hope that this short case study has illustrated one such.

Perry Walker, Talk Shop, and Paul Thistlethwaite, Thinking Box
February 2025