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The Artificial Intelligence That Deleted A Century

Tom Scott · explainer · Watch on YouTube

AI safety, AGI & impactLaw, policing & justiceDocumentaries & storytelling

What it is

A speculative-fiction video by Tom Scott, framed as coming from a future, about an AI called Earworm that enforces copyright so aggressively that humanity ends up forgetting a century of pop culture. It is animated and narrated as part of his series of videos from a future.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN points to it in discussions of AI copyright enforcement and badly specified AI goals, and recommends it alongside his other fiction.

  • 1 people recommended it
  • 1 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2021, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “I'd like to also recommend his other work of speculative fiction: The Artificial Intelligence That Deleted A Century”

    Fiction about copyright maximalism and dangers of poorly specified AI goals.

    SkeuomorphicBee, 2023-05 · Recommendation · in “Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers by Tom Scott”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: speculative fiction, copyright, ai alignment, tom scott, memorization

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