It rewards the lazy and the dishonest while punishing the talented.
So Mr Suleyman was asked: have the AI companies effectively stolen the world’s IP?
No, he replied, explaining: “With respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the Nineties is that it is fair use.
“Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it: that has been freeware, if you like.”
There you go. Everything is in the air, and everything is free.
Not free for us, but for Mr Suleyman and his employer, a company worth $3 trillion (£2.4 trillion).
However, the argument is as baseless as that offered to me from Kentucky.
‘Fair use’ meaningless in most countries
The doctrine of “fair use” is not what Suleyman thinks it is.
It’s a peculiarity of US law, an affirmative defence, rather than a formal copyright exception.
It only applies in quite narrow circumstances, and it’s meaningless in most other countries.
Even more remarkable is the “social contract” that Mr Suleyman evokes.
Judges are rarely impressed with defendants bringing their own, imaginary laws into the courtroom as they are obliged to interpret what’s on the books.
Microsoft employs a great many thoughtful people, who deliberate about the ethics of and consequences of their actions.
Mr Suleyman does not appear to be one of them.
The Londoner dropped out of Oxford where he was studying philosophy and theology because “it felt so abstract and impractical to me,” he once said.
Luck intervened: his brother was best friends with Demis Hassabis, the chess prodigy, former games entrepreneur and neuroscientist.