Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4

[andii@mas.to]

@aburka @cwebber
My question too.
And of course it wouldn't be IP...

[ukeleleeric@mstdn.social]

@cwebber Surely, if you consider that an AI agent is an user, then those agents should have the same liabilities and responsibility as other users? And considering them as employees means that the employer should take the same responsibility for their actions? So, sue the employers for their users' theft of copyright data, and the agents' makers for the same? Either they are tools or users, you can't have it both ways.

[ukeleleeric@mstdn.social]

@AG7GM @cwebber yeah, how many AI agents will 'hallucinate' their own licences?

[shwell@mastodon.au]

@cwebber I still haven't found a medium-large org bulk buying co-slop. Has anyone?

[slothrop@chaos.social]

@cwebber LOL they’ve finally found a way to make money from AI

[ysegrim@furry.engineer]

@AG7GM @cwebber It's not pirating! We just let our agents reimplement it clean slate after we've shown them the entire source code!

[itnomad@ruhr.social]

@cwebber All Children of God must obey the law!!
https://www.heise.de/en/news/AI-a-Child-of-God-Anthropic-meeting-with-several-church-leaders-11253800.html

[mxk@hachyderm.io]

@cwebber isn't that obvious?
If AI has the chance to lead to fewer humans having to use Microsoft products, there needs to be some compensation, right?

[grahamdowns@mastodon.africa]

@cwebber I can't read the article without creating an account, and I'm not in the mood right now.

But tell me... Was that article published on 1 April, by any chance?

[sl1200@nixnet.social]

@cwebber fuck Microsoft

[tseitr@mastodon.sdf.org]

@cwebber they don't need the license if it is for training purpose.

[ichderfisch@ruhr.social]

@cwebber let him cook. They are going to figure out how to properly identify an AI agent, and then we use that same method to make AI agents pay taxes.

If they take all our jobs, let's at least make them pay for it.

[expertenkommision_cyberunfall@mastodon.social]

@canleaf @cwebber

And vote?

[canleaf@mastodon.social]

@expertenkommision_cyberunfall @cwebber naw. companiesshould pay taxes on their AI usage fo fund UBI.

[carquint@wien.rocks]

@cwebber - if AI agents can buy software licenses they should pay taxes as well.

[moah@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@cwebber the agents trained on stolen code?

[janantos@f.cz]

@Brokar @cwebber anyway, majority of software in terms of micro services is running in Linux using open source tools, even copilot cli is written in node-js. So this is just smoking mirrors. Agents will run in docker or whatever container (tbh they should be there anyway) and no seats needed. In fact agents work with text files, they don’t give a shit about IDE. So if he implying they shall play for seats for paid SDKs that will not hold at court I believe, or companies will shift to opensource alternatives and pay for enterprise support where needed, and that’s usually seatless. Et the end who will be beaten, are the big software houses, who sells such proprietary SDKs

[erebus_amauro@ohai.social]

@EdCates @wordshaper @cwebber They probably have already worse ones.

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@cwebber @AG7GM "Make no mistakes. Don't hallucinate."

[janantos@f.cz]

@AG7GM @cwebber as AI strategist I have a solution, so let’s have agentic AI, let’s say theirs suggestion 20 of them, they do the “monkey work” and when needed some seated pricing interactions, they delegate to single dedicated agent that does what’s needed. The agentic orchestration on top of it shall be fairly trivial. It is really easy to use it against them. I believe AI can be helping tool to humans and I mean helping tool not replacement. Just another fancy tool in someone’s toolset.