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AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

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Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#371

Post by Dylan16807 »

alpaca128 wrote: post #352
flawi wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally what the AI does as well. It didn't walk into a bookstore and steal all the books off the shelf, it read through material made available to it entirely legally. The thing that authors are trying to argue here is that they should get to control what type of entity should be allowed to view the work they purchased. It's the same as going "you bought my book, but now that I know you're a communist, I t…

> It didn't walk into a bookstore and steal all the books off the shelf, it read through material made available to it entirely legally. Github ignored the licenses of countless repos and simply took everything posted publicly for training. They didn't care whether it was available to them entirely legally, they just pretended that copyright doesn't exist for them.

Isn't the definition of public repo that anyone is allowed to download and read it?

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#372

Post by [deleted] »

usrbinbash wrote: post #222
jeroenhd wrote: post #105

There's no part of AI that is being swallowed up by copyright. AI companies can ask for permission if they want to train their models on other people's works. It's not that hard, various image hosting sites have already added an opt-in/opt-out toggle to their services. Sites might even get away with using this stuff as compensation for free hosting. The fact of the matter is that the AI companies don't want to ask fo…

> but what the customers of AI people want isn't available under those terms. What the customers of AI want is accurate predictions of the models, and they can get that even if everyone demanding to get removed from the training set would be removed. The makers of generative AI could remove every living artist who wants to from the dataset, the model would still develop a general solution of color theory, composition…

[deleted]

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#373

Post by scotty79 »

zone411 wrote: post #173
scotty79 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently AI already passes US medical exams. I guess it deserves to be beaten into the ground by estabilished copyright behemoths and lawyers.

No, not yet.

Close enough for something that won't ever treat or diagnose a single patient in its current form:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-01-12/chatgpt-gener...

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#374

Post by usrbinbash »

b112 wrote: post #314
i_like_apis wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is superior, but it is absolutely still learning. ML can do either facsimile or imitation far better than a human mind can. You seem to be conflating both things and suggesting that ML only does facsimile, which is where the potential legal problems are.

It is superior, but it is absolutely still learning No, it is not. Memorization =! understanding. I can teach a parrot to spew the times table, good luck getting it to understand how to apply it. And a parrot is billions upon billions of times more capable than any current AI algos.

> And a parrot is billions upon billions of times more capable than any current AI algos.

I am pretty sure that GPT-3 is a lot more capable than a parrot in transpiling a function written in Python to Golang, or writing a summary to a tech-magazine article.

Same as StableDiffusion is ALOT more capable than me in drawing, painting and generally making up pretty pictures.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#375

Post by avianlyric »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #290
pvaldes wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you ask for permission when you train your mind on copyrighted books? Or observe paintings? Or listen to music? The difference is that I buy books, pay for visiting museums and buy music in several formats, or pay it accepting to receive advertisement between songs. It Is expected that If I buy a book I will be allowed to read it without asking for a permission. What I don't do is copypasting paragraphs of other…

If you pirate a book, learn from it and then create something using the information you learned, would that creation constitute copyright infringement? If so how far does the tainting go? Once you put your eyes on something which you haven't purchased, all future works could potentially be inspired by that experience and should therefore be considered infringement, following your logic.

> would that creation constitute copyright infringement?

No, obviously not, as that would clearly be unworkable and ridiculous. Mainly because we have a very unclear understanding of human creativity, and there’s no way to analyse an individuals mind to understand how they created an idea. Additionally copyrights reach generally stops at the point of “transformation”, once you take any idea an transform it “enough” it’s considered a new idea.

The reason none of the above applies to AI is simply because we’ve declared that only humans can transform and produce new ideas. AI aren’t human, thus they’re not afforded the same rights. Arguing about if there’s an inherent difference between AI creations and human creations is pointless, the law doesn’t care, it has already declared that there’s a difference between AI and human.

If you disagree with declaration, then you need to lobby to change the law. But until the change occurs, your believes are meaningless in the eyes of the law.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#376

Post by htfu »

denton-scratch wrote: post #324
flawi wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally what the AI does as well. It didn't walk into a bookstore and steal all the books off the shelf, it read through material made available to it entirely legally. The thing that authors are trying to argue here is that they should get to control what type of entity should be allowed to view the work they purchased. It's the same as going "you bought my book, but now that I know you're a communist, I t…

> they should get to control what type of entity should be allowed to view the work they purchased No, that's not it. It's more like if I memorized a bunch of pop-songs, then performed a composition of my own whose second verse was a straight lift of a song by Madonna. I would owe her performance royalties. And I would be obliged to reproduce her copyright notice, so that my audience would know that if they pull the…

Only if you released it. You could definitely perform it in the shower without owing anything. And the 99% of your compositions that didn't wholesale mirror any specific song would be perfectly fine to release.

Now, moving from holding the model creator culpable to the user would obviously be problematic as well, since they have no way of knowing whether the output is novel or a copy paste. Some sort of filter would seem to be the solution, it should disregard output that exactly or almost exactly matches any input.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#377

Post by jstummbillig »

KaiserPro wrote: post #366
kirse wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI companies can ask for permission if they want to train their models on other people's works Do you ask for permission when you train your mind on copyrighted books? Or observe paintings? Or listen to music? Do you ask for permission when you get new ideas from HN that aren't your own? Humans are constantly ingesting gobs of "copyrighted" insights that they eventually remix into their own creations without necessar…

> Do you ask for permission when you train your mind on copyrighted books yes, thats why I pay a fee to buy/borrow one (or someone pays the fee in the case of a library.) > listen to music again money is exchanged. > Humans are constantly ingesting gobs of "copyrighted" insights that they eventually remix into their own creations without necessarily reimbursing the original source(s) of their creativity. yes, and so…

You don't need to pay for or "borrow" anything to learn from copyrighted works. Nobody has had that expectation for years, and that is also not what copyright pertains to. It's not that AI breaks into libraries and isn't paying the fees. You can google an image of any great work of art and look at it for as long as you like, for free and take from it what you can and use all of that to create something else and get paid for that thing. The stuff that AI uses to learn is available to you, as a human. That is not being challenged in the least.

As parent said: Everything is derived work. We are remix machines. It is how we learn and how we make money. Now with AI, apparently, we are offended, when something does it better and faster than we can? To me it seems, if we expect AI to pay additional fees, the question is: Why?

I am not saying that it's not an important question. Google has built its entire business around information other people have provided. I would argue most people are quite happy with the existence of something like Google search and see it as a net positive in their lives. Does that make the business part okay? Where do we stand on this in regard to an open web? Is it okay for Google to do what they do (and if they do it well to win the space), or should there maybe be a license where people have to pay the owner whenever they are indexing a website? I don't know. Feels complicated.

> If you stop paying them, then it doesn't get created.

That's an interesting thought. But is it true and, more so, is it a problem? What if humans from here on will only be paid to create stuff that an AI can't?

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#378

Post by jillesvangurp »

peyton wrote: post #238
jillesvangurp wrote: post #202

US copyright law only applies in the US. AI can be developed outside of the US where other laws apply. So, the US using the straight jacket of copyright law to stifle innovation would only cause AI companies to move their business; or non US companies stepping up. I don't think that's actually going to happen though. The stakes are too high for that and this case seems quite weak. Copyright law has its limitations. B…

Where? Even Afghanistan’s joined the WTO. Wouldn’t the US file a WTO dispute if that’s the way the wind blows? The harm to US industries would be enormous.

I'd say China is an obvious candidate. They already have a fair bit of AI infrastructure and tech. Europe, India, and a few other places also could step up. That's where a lot of the AI researchers in Silicon Valley come from. The harm to US companies would only be enormous if anything actually happens. And precisely because of that, it likely won't. These companies can move some serious amounts of lobby power and historically the US doesn't like to constrain its own industry with arbitrary laws. So, this will likely just fizzle out with a nice court ruling.

And good luck filing a court case under US law in Afhanistan. That's not how trade agreements work. They'd be applying Afhan law (i.e. Sharia law as of recent changes of power). In China it's Chinese law. And in Germany it would be German law. All trade agreements govern is the notion that people need to have some notion of law that applies to things like intellectual property and a way to take legal action when they feel their rights have been infringed. But you get to do that under the local law whatever it is and in the local courts. And of course some countries like China have historically not really done more than pay lip service to such notions. Whereas other countries in the EU have strict laws related to e.g. privacy that don't really apply in the US.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#379

Post by joxel »

avianlyric wrote: post #375
_Algernon_ wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pirate a book, learn from it and then create something using the information you learned, would that creation constitute copyright infringement? If so how far does the tainting go? Once you put your eyes on something which you haven't purchased, all future works could potentially be inspired by that experience and should therefore be considered infringement, following your logic.

> would that creation constitute copyright infringement? No, obviously not, as that would clearly be unworkable and ridiculous. Mainly because we have a very unclear understanding of human creativity, and there’s no way to analyse an individuals mind to understand how they created an idea. Additionally copyrights reach generally stops at the point of “transformation”, once you take any idea an transform it “enough” i…

You see how you’re introducing a viewpoint and assuming it’s true — you’re just saying “humans can create things” and “ai can’t create things”. You don’t even address the possibility that the AI itself is a tool of the human who created it to create things.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#380

Post by yakubin »

bombolo wrote: post #184
sacrosancty wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably those same people who publish their code under open source licenses instead of giving it to the public domain. I don't understand why people cling so hard onto every worthless little bit of code they write while also sort of half giving it away to almost everyone for almost any purpose.

1. People who use copyleft licenses do it because they know that the end result will be using a good license forever. 2. People using non-copyleft license just do it because public domain seems to have a complicated legal status across the world.

Most non-copyleft licences require attribution. That's significantly more than than public domain. Copilot breaks even permissive licences.
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