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ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

americamagazine.org

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Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#101

Post by flkiwi »

shapenamer wrote: post #98
flkiwi wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a good time imagining a bottle that is in the shape of a continuous, right angled rectangular solid (a 3d representation of the outline of a square) with a spout hidden in a corner and how the design patent application would go.

They might even name the shape. Perhaps "cube".

Except I'm not talking about a cube. I'm talking about the 3-dimensional representation of the outline of a square, not including the filled in bit. (Wouldn't be a cube anyway, as only 2 dimensions of what I'm thinking of would be the same.)

Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#103

Post by fouric »

chii wrote: post #97
tzs wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel obligated to point out that many words in English have more than one meaning. "Theft" is the action of "stealing", and "steal" is one of those words with many meanings. We can "steal" identities, "steal" bases in baseball, an actor can "steal" the show, a team can with an improbable last minute play can "steal" a game, we can have our hearts "stolen" by a cute kitten, and so on.

they aren't arguing about language semantics. The argument (which, i don't buy) is that the training data set is deriving benefit without paying money back to the original creator of the data. But the only change now is speed - after all, education has always been possible from said data from the internet, free of royalties. These creators have not asked for a return, so what makes training an AI any different?

> These creators have not asked for a return, so what makes training an AI any different?

Is every work in the training set licensed in a way that allows modification and redistribution?

Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#104

Post by nate_meurer »

tzs wrote: post #84
userbinator wrote: post #34

I feel obliged to say that piracy is not theft... but more relevantly, I like how AI is showing us more clearly that everything is essentially a derivative work.

I feel obligated to point out that many words in English have more than one meaning. "Theft" is the action of "stealing", and "steal" is one of those words with many meanings. We can "steal" identities, "steal" bases in baseball, an actor can "steal" the show, a team can with an improbable last minute play can "steal" a game, we can have our hearts "stolen" by a cute kitten, and so on.

Absolutely, and by opening our minds to the broadest definitions of theft, we may see that nearly everything we say or otherwise express is "stolen" from earlier work, including your comment here.

Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#105

Post by nate_meurer »

Valgrim wrote: post #77
userbinator wrote: post #34

I feel obliged to say that piracy is not theft... but more relevantly, I like how AI is showing us more clearly that everything is essentially a derivative work.

If anything, piracy is counterfeit.

In common usage, counterfeit connotes a sort of fraud, where the work is presented as genuine in some way. Piracy on the other hand is just unauthorized duplication of all kinds.

Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#106

Post by educaysean »

rched wrote: post #50
30minAdayHN wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question along the similar lines. Let's extend your analogy. Someone read all J.K Rowling books and created a work in that style. Would that be a copyright violation? I'm assuming not. In that case, is that difference here that it's not humanely possible to train on world's information compared to a single human getting inspired by specific works. And hence an algo doing that is violation?

It's an interesting thought experiment but if the goal is to decide whether we should allow these types of AIs to be used for commercial purposes I think it's more helpful to ask a different question. If we had these LLMs 30 years ago would J.K Rowling's books ever have existed?

Do you have a definitive answer to that question? Can you point to anyone who does?

All your question does is give people an excuse to make up alternate history in order to argue whichever side of the argument they already believe. It serves little purpose in the dialogue of defining AI and human creativity.

Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#107

Post by nate_meurer »

naet wrote: post #20
uvnq wrote: post #5

Using this logic, every writer who has learned to read and write by reading books, or every artist who improved their craft by studying works, or every musician who learned the piano by practicing pieces, is also "stealing" in whatever they "originally" create due to learning via pattern recognition "tiny pieces of every work" in their data set. It's ridiculous to compare agents that generalize well to "stealing" pie…

I think this is a fallacy that I see a lot in recent AI discussions. An LLM is not the same as a human brain. You might see some superficial similarities in both being able to produce a block of text, but the method by which the text is produced is entirely different. For example, we can't download entire libraries of books instantly to our brains and then reproduce those books word for word in memory. Things that op…

> For example, we can't download entire libraries of books instantly to our brains and then reproduce those books word for word in memory.

Yeah. Nobody's talking about word-for-word duplication here.

> If a human was to reproduce a copyrighted book word for word...

Again?

> Even if a human paraphrases another work they can still be found guilty of plagiarism if the paraphrase is still overly similar to the original source material.

Go look up the dictionary definition of plagiarism. Notice the most crucial element, which you seem to have omitted here, and also notice that it's irrelevant to AI systems, which overtly acknowledge that they exist to generate derivative works.

> If I steal a stock image without paying for a license

Here's another version of your "word-for-word" analogy, which nobody else is talking about.

> I personally think it would be fair for an artist or author to say their work was not licensed to be used in training a neural net or otherwise request to opt out.

I am genuinely curious: how do you propose to enforce this?

Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#108

Post by cam_l »

nate_meurer wrote: post #104
tzs wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel obligated to point out that many words in English have more than one meaning. "Theft" is the action of "stealing", and "steal" is one of those words with many meanings. We can "steal" identities, "steal" bases in baseball, an actor can "steal" the show, a team can with an improbable last minute play can "steal" a game, we can have our hearts "stolen" by a cute kitten, and so on.

Absolutely, and by opening our minds to the broadest definitions of theft, we may see that nearly everything we say or otherwise express is "stolen" from earlier work, including your comment here.

Sometimes I think about how fucked the world would be if we approached all industries the way (say) photographers, authors or recording artists did.

For a start, maybe i would get paid every time my clients posted some snaps of their house online, or invited someone over for dinner. (Mind you, we are well aware at this point that 99% of all architecture is derivative. So maybe I would just have to pay it on to Aalto's estate.)

Imagine if chefs started suing people for posting pics of their dinner online, or the police turning up at your doorstep to prosecute you for cooking an unlicensed meal from a turned recipe.

Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#109

Post by chii »

Retric wrote: post #61
Gigachad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Style is not copyrightable.

Again depends on what is meant by style. Another post in this thread suggested plot elements as part of style Aka “a wizardry school for preteens.” Sharing a few surface levels elements like that is fine, but if a one page description could equally well be used to describe both works you’re well over the line.

> if a one page description could equally well be used to describe both works

lots of disney animations could've been described this way. And it's because they took storylines from well known folk tales and adapted it.

the idea of a teen wizard/witch going to a special school, fighting a villain, etc, doesn't seem to be copyrightable. While the russian ripoff version seems very similar and skirt the line between a copy and an original work, there's plenty of room where such a story could've been told and not be an infringement.

Re: ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft

#110

Post by chii »

musicale wrote: post #36

> Back in the day, programs like Napster had everyone believing that we shouldn’t have to pay for music. Back in the day, broadcast radio stations had everyone believing that we shouldn't have to pay for music. In 2023, we have youtube to thank for that. > If I own something, why shouldn’t I be able to share it with whoever I want? Good argument, especially since many intangible goods, such as MP3 files, are non-riva…

> Good argument, especially since many intangible goods, such as MP3 files, are non-rivalrous and non-excludable.

so the deeper question is 'what does it mean to own something'.

For a physical good, it's fairly straight forward.

For a digital good that can be copied infinitely and perfectly, it's not. The current definition of ownership seems to be broken down into a set of "rights". Sharing it with somebody else is one such right.

So when you purchase an mp3 off a store, you're purchasing not the ownership, but the rights to listen to it. More importantly, you're not purchasing the rights to share it with somebody.

But the idea of the song - whatever that might be - is not a right given to the owner to be sold (at least not currently). Therefore, someone who purchased the right to listen to the song _should_ be allowed to learn the idea of the song, and reproduce the idea in another form.

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