> The opposite of that is some massively funded company taking my content, training a model off of it, and then reaping profits while the authors don't even get as much as an acknowledgement.
Taking out the "training a model" part, the same thing could happen with a human at the company.
Oh, 100%. I mentioned this in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42582518) - I've dealt with a fair share of stolen content (thankfully nothing too important, just a random blog post here and there), and it definitely stings. The difference is that this is now done at a massive scale.
But again - this doesn't stop me from continuing to write and publish in the open. I am writing for other people reading my content, and as a bouncing board for myself. There will always be some shape or form of actors that try to piggyback off of that effort, but that's the trade-off of the open web. I am certainly not planning to lock all my writing behind a paywall to stop that.
Taking out the "training a model" part, the same thing could happen with a human at the company.