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Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

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Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#121

Post by palata »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #77
palata wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's silly. Humans review books all the time, using very similar words. Where's the outrage over that? Easy: humans are not machines. "X does it all the time, so I should be able to do it" is never a valid conclusion. It depends on the situation . > In fact it's a terribly useful tool, and once the mob cools off it'll likely return. Maybe this tool in particular does not "abuse" the books. Maybe this tool in part…

That was the accusation, and it was misplaced here. So we agree, this is a smear campaign in this case, not a sensible reaction to a reasonable application of machine algorithms. The idea that counting adverbs is steal their work to the point they won't want to publish anymore is clearly FUD. As my remark made clear.

> The idea that counting adverbs is steal their work to the point they won't want to publish anymore is clearly FUD.

I did not mean that, I am genuinely not sure if you rephrased my point to make it sound wrong or if you missed it.

My point was that, IMO, it does not matter to the other whether counting adverbs is stealing their work or not. Probably if you counted them manually they would be fine (and most likely they were fine before generative AI).

What matters to them is that generative AI is trained from their copyrighted material, and they fear it (I would, too).

The day people stop reading my blog because they can just ask ChatGPT and will get something generated (partly) from my material without any kind of attribution, I can promise you I will stop my blog.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#122

Post by palata »

Palmik wrote: post #114
palata wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the issue in looking at the number of adverbs in a book with the help of a computer. I think that authors see an issue with their IP being fed to an algorithmic black box that will certainly make a lot of money, but authors won't see any of it, and for which engineers say "don't worry, it is not stealing your IP, just let us make money the way we want and shut up". What if OpenAI could prove that…

How was the tool in question, the tool the book authors were outraged about, "stealing their IP"? It's also unclear how it would make any money at all -- indeed, the tool's author even said it made no money.

I believe that the authors are not fighting against that tool in particular. They are fighting about generative AIs being trained with their material without their consent.

Which is totally legit to me. Maybe this tool is just a collateral damage of a much bigger debate, I don't know. The fact is that in the bigger debate, it does feel like engineers don't seem to care much about the artists. Why would the artists care about individual engineers and individual use-cases?

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#123

Post by bogwog »

jmull wrote: post #67

If you want to do this kind of thing, let authors opt-in (or publishers). Yes, it will take effort and probably go slow, but if the tool is really useful and amazing, it should be doable. I suspect the authors are put-off by a couple things: - the text of the works scanned seems like it may be from pirated sources. That poisons the project, no matter what it does with the scans, for many authors. - the use of these s…

> If you want to do this kind of thing, let authors opt-in (or publishers).

If it's fair use, why should you have to do that? The same copyright law protecting author's ownership rights over their art also provide "fair use" to other people. Someone may disagree with current fair use laws (and I suspect many outraged here do not), but that's a broader issue not related to this particular tool. It just 100% seems like misdirected AI outrage.

> the text of the works scanned seems like it may be from pirated sources.

Do you have a source for this? I didn't see that mentioned in the article.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#124

Post by pikahumu »

Riverheart wrote: post #105
pikahumu wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are exactly modeling the chauvinistic Silicon Valley attitude that is causing the outrage in the general population to begin with. Just like the writers he talked to and got positive feedback? Everybody not agreeing with you represents "chauvinistic SV attitude"?

(Edited) No, he didn’t say anything about them. People side against their interests all the time, finding a few writers that like this is trivial. Are those people the majority opinion on this or are we just trying to prove how wonderful this technology is?

I'm assuming you read the article.

Let's recap:

> I launched the prosecraft website in the summer of 2017, and I started showing it off to authors at writers conferences. The response was universally positive, and I incorporated the prosecraft analytic tools into the Shaxpir desktop application [...]

And he goes on mentioning that some authors even reached out to him to get their books added.

Unless you are accusing him of lying or unreasonably overstating the response he got ("universally positive"), for which I really don't see any indication, then a statement like "finding a few writers that like this is trivial" is not a good faith engagement with this topic/conversation.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#125

Post by danielbln »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #97
kiwih wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without trying to sound flippant - what do you define AI as? Things like autofocus in your video cameras or automatic gain control or noise cancellation in your audio pipeline could also be considered AI. Do you remove those too? What about the AI recommendation algorithm built into YouTube - how do you reconcile being AI free while still using that platform?

Yes, you are right, and I advocate the following: a detailed look at each of these technologies. However, for practical purposes, a direct definition that encompasses every situation is not necessary, but can evolve. For now, I think we do not need a precise definition and we can start with the following: AI such as ChatGPT, LLMs, image generation tools like DALL-E and ohters, should be restricted. As for YouTube's a…

Banning automation technology because it could put workers out of business.. isn't that the textbook definition of a luddite? Also, are you saying no creative people are using these technologies? It's not all "enter 1 prompt, get image, call it a day", they are tools that can be and often are part of complex chain. Creatives that don't want to use these tools are probably going to be superseded by creatives who do.

What's your take on generative fill in Photoshop?

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#126

Post by em-bee »

activitypea wrote: post #53

I just think it's really funny that a third or so of the article is the author struggling to figure out why this would be useful to anyone. > scanned and analyzed a whole bunch of books and would let you call up really useful data on books. [...] Frankly, all of that sounds amazing. And amazingly useful. Even more amazing is that he built it, and it worked. It would produce useful analysis of books. > This is all qui…

he is not even using an LLM, which is kind of the point. the tool is thrown in and judged as an AI tool when it is just simple statistics that anyone who studied some math can build with a little bit of effort.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#127

Post by palata »

robertlagrant wrote: post #109
palata wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific? Let me rephrase your question: "how is it different to the current process, other than ?" :-). I would say that the answer lies in the question.

Sounds as though your view of the AI is purely positive, in that case. That's fair enough. The answer for other people may well not lie in the question (e.g. for all the people who don't like this development), but it did for you!

Sorry I did not understand that :-).

My point was that it is different: when humans read a book, they don't train a machine learning model. They can't read as many books as a machine, at the same speed, and they can't remember nearly as much as what a machine can.

Humans and computers are fundamentally different, and it matters. You can't conclude that because it works for one, it will fork for the other.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#128

Post by paulluuk »

jmull wrote: post #67

If you want to do this kind of thing, let authors opt-in (or publishers). Yes, it will take effort and probably go slow, but if the tool is really useful and amazing, it should be doable. I suspect the authors are put-off by a couple things: - the text of the works scanned seems like it may be from pirated sources. That poisons the project, no matter what it does with the scans, for many authors. - the use of these s…

While I would agree in theory that a project like this would be best with opt-in, in reality that would just not work. Publishers would never opt-in to it, if they even respond to your requests at all.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#129

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

> I know we live in an outrage era, where the immediate reaction is to turn the outrage meter up to 11. I’m certainly guilty of that at times myself.

I’ve learned to feel my outrage, while refraining from expressing it.

I will usually avoid using anything more than vague terms to express ire or rancor, and reserve my eloquence for positive commentary.

Some ITGs probably think that I’m a “wuss,” but I learned, long ago, not to poop where I sleep.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#130

Post by fsociety999 »

What I find so odd about all this stuff is the target is very rarely OpenAI/ChatGPT. I understand it can be a useful tool, but if your concern is that AI has scanned your books without your consent and can generate new content in your writing style, then OpenAI is who you should be complaining about.

Somehow the project with tens of billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft gets a free pass, but a two person passion project that makes no money gets viciously attacked and killed. The same thing happened with generative art. The open source tools and smaller projects got served with lawsuits, but somehow DALL-E was not included in those.

Open AI is who people should be targeting since they are the ones who have all the money and the politicians in their pockets to basically stomp out any competition. My real fear is not that people find creative uses for AI on a small scale, but that Microsoft/Open AI builds a centralized system that works on their terms where you are forced to play by their rules and they decide what is fact and fiction.

I haven’t read Zach Rosenberg before, but I put this prompt into ChatGPT, and sure enough, it generated what I presume to be writing in his style:

> Could you write two paragraphs in the style of Zach Rosenberg arguing in favor of shutting down a tool that uses AI to analyze the text of his books?

Did the author consent to Open AI scanning the text of his books to generate new text emulating his writing style? Where is the outrage over that?

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