Dear Senator Schumer—

We at the Music Workers Alliance (musicworkersalliance.org), a NYC based workers center for indie musicians, welcome your interest in AI policy (City & State (10/23/23).  We know you have stood by NY’s creative workers (MWA worked with you for the PUA benefit that kept many of us alive during Covid), and we are writing to request inclusion in future NY conversations on AI. We were encouraged to read: "Accountability means instilling the right guardrails...to protect the (intellectual property) of creators, of businesses and of artists.”
And we hope this accountability will include robust protection of creators’ copyright.

You stated "young bright tech professionals are flocking to New York... and it’s on their shoulders that AI’s newest innovations...will stand." Unfortunately, Senator, it is on creative workers' non-consenting and unpaid backs that the tech industry's current multi-trillion dollar empire now stands. Congress’ failure to implement the USCO’s 5/21/2020 recommendation for action correcting “imbalances” in the Section 512 DMCA “Safe Harbors” has left musicians prey to mass infringement, with the proximate effect of a permanently distorted market (an example is Spotify’s $0.0038 cents per stream, a virtual starvation wage). 
 
Therefore, we find it difficult to regard unregulated AI’s projected erasure of 300 million jobs (while multiplying our carbon footprint) as progress, or the wealth the young bright tech professionals intend to earn as justly acquired: AI LLM’s produce nothing without the ingestion of our work, which is currently obtained through “data-scraping" without our consent or compensation. 

As the testimony of workers and industry people at the USCO, FTC, and Congressional Judiciary Committees AI hearings has made clear, AI poses an existential threat to creative workers.

We recognize the positive potential of AI (and indeed, already use AI tools in our recording work). Whether our culture and economy is assisted or destroyed by this sorcerer's apprentice depends entirely on Congress’ willingness to protect each human creator’s right to consent, credit, and compensation for the use of their work in training AI. (See the Human Artistry Campaign). 

These rights need protection ASAP— before AI corporations have culturally normalized yet another form of online infringement, and become “too big to fail”, or too rich to rein in. 
What makes NY unique—a place to which not only tech talent, but people from all walks of life from all over the world flock-- is the depth of our creative community. "Artists are...critical to the health of our economy. Arts and culture contribute $120 billion to New York State’s economy and are a main driver of the state’s $177 billion tourism industry. The sector also accounts for nearly half a million jobs." [Mellon Foundation’s 2022 Creatives Rebuild NY initiative].
[also see: 2017 MOME Music Report].

We look forward to working with you to protect our economy, art forms, and the human culture we all share, from non-creative destruction for AI corporate profit. 

Sincerely, 
Marc Ribot for the Music Workers Alliance