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Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

techdirt.com

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Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#11

Post by 542458 »

jprete wrote: post #4

This is an incredibly biased article, hinging entirely on the assumption that AI training is fair use.

The article cites the Google vs Authors Guild case (https://www.techdirt.com/2013/11/14/google-gets-total-victor...) which was a total victory for Google. This seems fairly conclusive that the textual analysis here is fair use to me.

> Similarly, Google Books is also transformative in the sense that it has transformed book text into data for purposes of substantive research, including data mining and text mining in new areas, thereby opening up new fields of research. Words in books are being used in a way they have not been used before. Google Books has created something new in the use of book text — the frequency of words and trends in their usage provide substantive information.

Furthermore, is this actually AI training? This just looks like stats based on heuristics to me, I.e., garden variety sentiment analysis.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#12

Post by js8 »

jprete wrote: post #4

This is an incredibly biased article, hinging entirely on the assumption that AI training is fair use.

Why it wouldn't be? Indexing is fair use. I think where it gets murky with fair use would be if AI could actually plagiarize the book, but other than that, it should be fair use.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#13

Post by thendrill »

LikelyABurner wrote: post #3

I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. We already tried this with human communication and gave birth to the dystopian nightmare that is social media, why keep repeating our mistakes?

Well... We still can not agree if...

Technology has to be protected from dumb people, or is it worth protecting dumb people from technology....

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#14

Post by Nullabillity »

LikelyABurner wrote: post #3

I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. We already tried this with human communication and gave birth to the dystopian nightmare that is social media, why keep repeating our mistakes?

Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. Who cares about whether or not it's legal, the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable.

Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#15

Post by runj__ »

I honestly don't understand how people can refuse the idea of that some parts most certainly can be reviewed with the help of a computer. There wasn't a "how good is this book" score because a computer might not be able to tell that yet, I don't understand the issue in looking at the number of adverbs in a book with the help of a computer.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#16

Post by Nullabillity »

js8 wrote: post #12
jprete wrote: post #4

This is an incredibly biased article, hinging entirely on the assumption that AI training is fair use.

Why it wouldn't be? Indexing is fair use. I think where it gets murky with fair use would be if AI could actually plagiarize the book, but other than that, it should be fair use.

Indexing doesn't replace the book, it's just a different way to read it. The index is useless without the book itself.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#17

Post by PaulHoule »

fsagx wrote: post #6
ricochet11 wrote: post #2

its sad he took the site down, it looks like a neat project. it seems to be fair use, so it really is just an issue of consent and keeping people happy. the issue is some people will always be fearful/miserable. should the rest of us be held back in exploring culture because they refuse to play? anyway i'm sure there will be ten other similar sites by the end of the week...

With CLOUD and AI happily in the descriptions, with no private desktop version, and your email to sign up, please.

[flagged]

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#18

Post by jprete »

thendrill wrote: post #13
LikelyABurner wrote: post #3

I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. We already tried this with human communication and gave birth to the dystopian nightmare that is social media, why keep repeating our mistakes?

Well... We still can not agree if... Technology has to be protected from dumb people, or is it worth protecting dumb people from technology....

What do you even mean by this comment? Have you considered the possibility that people are smart in ways that you are not considering, rather than just labeling it “dumb”?

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#19

Post by capableweb »

Nullabillity wrote: post #14
LikelyABurner wrote: post #3

I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. We already tried this with human communication and gave birth to the dystopian nightmare that is social media, why keep repeating our mistakes?

Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. Who cares about whether or not it's legal, the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable. Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be.

> Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be.

Ok, so who decides what's OK to analyze or not? Is there some obvious moral line I fail to see, that everyone would immediately agree on?

It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors?

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#20

Post by mycologos »

542458 wrote: post #11
jprete wrote: post #4

This is an incredibly biased article, hinging entirely on the assumption that AI training is fair use.

The article cites the Google vs Authors Guild case ( https://www.techdirt.com/2013/11/14/google-gets-total-victor... ) which was a total victory for Google. This seems fairly conclusive that the textual analysis here is fair use to me. > Similarly, Google Books is also transformative in the sense that it has transformed book text into data for purposes of substantive research, including data mining and text mining in…

I think Google Books is cool, but "the frequency of words and trends in their usage provid[ing] substantive information" pre-dates Google Books by a long time. For example, there's a collection of word frequencies in the complete works of John Keats from 1917 [1]. Manually tabulated, too!

[1] https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001023999

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