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AI weights are not open “source”

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Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#111

Post by YetAnotherNick »

xg15 wrote: post #39
ndriscoll wrote: post #33

The complexity described seems to be resting on the unestablished idea that weights are copyrightable in the first place. If they're not, then presumably "available weights", "ethical weights", and "open weights" are all the same: open weights. Either your weights are under NDA and presumably considered to be a trade secret, or they are public, and the words in your "license" mean absolutely nothing? That seems like…

Furthermore, if weights are copyrightable, wouldn't this make the issue of training data licenses even more urgent? IANAL, but if weights are IP, wouldn't they constitute a "derived work" of the training data?

No, weights are not just data fed but also the training process itself. I think the whole argument hinges on how much human thought and action is needed in training the model.

On the other end of the spectrum, AI generated content couldn't be copyrighted if there is no human involvement. If someone asks GPT to write 1000 poems, it couldn't be copyrighted.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#112

Post by rockinghigh »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #9
meindnoch wrote: post #2

According to whom? Weights are a type of program, which are interpreted by the neural network runtime. Same as Java bytecode interpreted by the JVM runtime.

Weights are data, not a type of program. A computer program is a set of instructions that may be executed. Weights are values that may be loaded by a program, but are not a program in and of themselves.

When people talk about weights, they talk about a network of weights that takes an input and computes an output. There is really not much difference between a saved model and a program.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#113

Post by dragonwriter »

ndriscoll wrote: post #95
dragonwriter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural rights are a fiction to pretend that someone’s moral code is a privileged aspect of physical reality in a way every competing moral code is not.

Even so, you can ask whether a given moral code is more principled than another (e.g. in the sense of having some algebraic structure), and use that to investigate what might be considered "more natural". For example, one might argue that if a "natural" right exists, then it ought to be symmetric under exchange of humans (or sentient beings or whatever). It's then "more natural" to conclude that you have a right to p…

> Even so, you can ask whether a given moral code is more principled than another

What does “more principled” mean of a moral code? How does one quantify “degree of principledness”?

> and use that to investigate what might be considered "more natural".

What does the preceding (being “more principled”) have to do with being “more natural”? And what significance does being “more natural” have?

And none of that has any relevance to what is usually described as “natural rights”; its like taking existing words and coming upnwith entirely novel meanings and then a whole architecture around them, which is pretty advanced equivocation.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#114

Post by famouswaffles »

robomartin wrote: post #85

Can someone give me a legal answer to this? People, from early school, all the way up to university, use copyrighted materials to learn various topics and obtain degrees. This trains our brains using the work of others. The same is true as we navigate life. We learn various skills and subjects consuming the work of others. And, yes, in the case of most people, we use that training to pursue various careers, obtain wo…

This is an argument yes. A model could certainly be considered transformative enough to be fair use.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#115

Post by blharr »

robomartin wrote: post #85

Can someone give me a legal answer to this? People, from early school, all the way up to university, use copyrighted materials to learn various topics and obtain degrees. This trains our brains using the work of others. The same is true as we navigate life. We learn various skills and subjects consuming the work of others. And, yes, in the case of most people, we use that training to pursue various careers, obtain wo…

I am not a lawyer. But isn't this quite simple?

Copyrighted materials are either licensed specifically for a human or it's implied that a human will use them to learn.

Naturally, human memory is going to distort and change that information over time. But as soon as you use it in an AI, which has superhuman capabilities of memory, that would go out the window.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#116

Post by PartiallyTyped »

horsawlarway wrote: post #109

If anything - this entire conversation just highlights (Over and Over and Over and Over again) how absolutely bonkers abusive our current copyright laws are. The vast majority of small individuals are compelled by contract to surrender their rights to large corporations. Those large corporations then abuse the ever loving fuck out of those rights. The express intent of copyright is now a sad joke. Personally - I'm pr…

There is also the whole patent / copyright trolling issue too. The fact that $BIG_CORP can hire armies of lawyers to freeze competitors and beat them to market by filing frivolous lawsuits is yet another example of insanity in the whole system.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#117

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #110
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more interesting aspect of all this is that the confusion created by this new business model ( not sure to classify it so business model had to do ) appears to be largely intentional. The subject matter is complicated to begin with experts being niche of a niche of a niche and the assumption that the general public can even understand it ( and whether it can even dumbed down to digestible sound bites ) is…

"Now, courts are not typically stacked with dummies, but again how many are well versed in issues of technology?" Even if they are well versed in issues of technology that does not mean they'll make what any given one of would consider a good decision, as plenty of people well versed in issues of technology disagree with each other on these issues. Nothing guarantees that on, on any issue, really, as you can always f…

Sure. My point is that I would so much rather have a decision handed down that was considered on actual merits ( we might disagree, but at least I would be able to see some sort of real consideration and not what amounts to talking points from various lobbyists ). A judge that has zero exposure in that area is at best 50/50 and regardless of the ruling I will be annoyed that a person with zero knowledge is declaring how something he knows little to no about can be used ( just like I am more and more annoyed about political class in Washington, but I am more inclined to believe these days they know exactly what they are doing -- serve their own interests ).

To your point, it is absolutely not panacea ( new blood is inevitably ending in government and the result so far is in line with what you said ), but it would at least be a starting point.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#118

Post by 8note »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #60
jrm4 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. A lot of the difficulty here is how they skip is the hugely important issue: An entirely reasonable, if not fully tested, statement is the following: Every single one of these AI weight things itself is a result of unencumbered, massive, law-breaking, right-violating copyright infringement -- accordingly, it's extremely difficult to say anything morally justifiable or authoritative about anyone elses "rights…

If I collect a set of copyright free data or public domain data would we conclude that the weights are also public domain?

Are they a work of art in and of themselves? I don't think you could tell without litigation

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#119

Post by Animats »

ndriscoll wrote: post #33

The complexity described seems to be resting on the unestablished idea that weights are copyrightable in the first place. If they're not, then presumably "available weights", "ethical weights", and "open weights" are all the same: open weights. Either your weights are under NDA and presumably considered to be a trade secret, or they are public, and the words in your "license" mean absolutely nothing? That seems like…

> The complexity described seems to be resting on the unestablished idea that weights are copyrightable in the first place.

Yes. Weights probably aren't copyrightable in the US. See Feist vs. Rural Telephone, in which the Supreme Court ruled that telephone directories are not copyrightable. The copyright clause in the Constitution ("To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.") is understood to require human authorship. The US does not have database copyright, or "sweat of the brow" copyright. That it was expensive to produce some collection of data does not make it copyrightable.

Outputs from LLMs, machine generated art, and machine generated music probably are not copyrightable either. US Copyright Office: "Based on the Office's understanding of the generative AI technologies currently available, users do not exercise ultimate creative control over how such systems interpret prompts and generate material. Instead, these prompts function more like instructions to a commissioned artist."[1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-copyright-office-says-so...

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#120

Post by dahart »

> Some people have the perspective that if a license isn’t open source, it’s proprietary. I think it’s more nuanced than that and believe there are three more license types worth naming: non-commercial NDA, non-commercial public, and ethical.

It’s very useful to remember the U.S. government definition of commercial software: it is software that “Has been sold, leased, or licensed to the general public” [1]

This means that a “non-commercial license” is a bit of an oxymoron to a lot of people. Their definition of commercial includes all software with a license, and does not depend on whether the software costs money. (Perhaps not entirely unlike how FSF does not define “free software” based on whether it costs money.)

[1] https://www.acquisition.gov/far/2.101

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