Intellectual Property in the Age of AI

A Necessary Protection, Not an Obstacle

This is, after all, a philosophy blog.

A recent TechCrunch article caught my attention—Jack Dorsey posted “delete all IP law” on social media, with Elon Musk quickly responding “I agree.” In pre-Trump America, this might have been dismissed as Silicon Valley provocation. But now, with Musk embedded in the administration through his Department of Government Efficiency, such casual musings carry weight that demands examination.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And casual calls to eliminate intellectual property protections deserve more scrutiny than they're receiving.

This conversation isn't happening in a vacuum. As the article notes, it emerges “at a time when AI companies... are facing numerous lawsuits alleging that they've violated copyright to train their models.” The timing suggests not a principled stance on creative freedom, but a response to legal challenges that might limit how these companies use others' work without permission or compensation.

I've always been an advocate for open source software and creative commons approaches. During my time in the tech industry, I witnessed firsthand how these models can foster innovation and collaboration. But what makes these approaches powerful is precisely that they operate within intellectual property frameworks rather than against them—they depend on creators having rights they can then choose to share under specific terms.

Intellectual property isn't primarily about protecting Disney's Mickey Mouse or pharmaceutical patents, though these corporate applications often dominate the conversation. At its core, IP law provides the legal framework through which individual creators—writers, musicians, artists, photographers, developers—maintain some agency over their work in a digital landscape where reproduction and distribution are essentially frictionless.

The article quotes Nicole Shanahan arguing that “IP law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations.” This gets to the heart of the matter. Without legal frameworks recognizing the unique value of human creativity, we move toward a world where creative work becomes infinitely reproducible raw material —with no inherent value and no protection.

Dorsey's response that “creativity is what currently separates us” misses the point entirely. Without legal protections, that creativity becomes freely exploitable, no matter how distinctive or personal. Our capacity to own our intellectual products is critical in a digital age. The right to say “no, you may not use my likeness in service of your ends” seems fundamental to human dignity and agency.

What troubles me about this exchange is how it presents a false binary: either maintain our current flawed IP system or eliminate protections entirely in favor of some vague future where “creators will be paid” through unspecified “better models.” This framing deliberatively obscures a crucial truth: without some form of intellectual property rights, individual creators have virtually no leverage against platforms that can aggregate and monetize their work at scale.

The implications extend beyond economics. A world without intellectual property protections is one where truth becomes even more malleable as content can be freely repurposed without attribution or permission. It's a world where creative professions become increasingly precarious, further hollowing out the middle class. It's a world where individuals lose control over their personal expressions, images, and identities, which can be appropriated and manipulated without recourse.

This is not about defending the status quo. Our intellectual property system certainly needs reform to better balance individual rights with collective access, to limit corporate overreach, and to establish clear frameworks for emerging technologies. But elimination is not reform—it's abdication.

What we're witnessing is not a brave stance for creative freedom but the final phase of a project to transform human creativity into another resource to be harvested, processed, and monetized by technological systems. It represents not liberation but the final enclosure of the creative commons—not by traditional copyright holders, but by tech platforms that will become the de facto gatekeepers of all digitized expression.

As Ed Newton-Rex notes in the article, this amounts to “Tech execs declaring all-out war on creators who don't want their life's work pillaged for profit.” Lincoln Michel pointedly adds that “none of [their] companies would exist without IP law,” highlighting the fundamental hypocrisy at play.

I believe in holding tensions rather than eliminating them. We need not choose between absolute ownership and no ownership at all. The challenge is to create systems that acknowledge complexity while maintaining core commitments to human dignity and creative agency—that balance innovation with respect for human creativity and labor.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And in a world increasingly mediated by digital institutions and artificial intelligence, the question of who controls our intellectual creations is too important to be settled through casual social media pronouncements.

The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold.