Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

techdirt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 309 posts

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#261

Post by ryandrake »

b112 wrote: post #241
slg wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious, why do you post here if you have this mindset?

This is not twitter, with its tiny little snippets of text, which are useless for meaningful communication, and its culture which incites groupthink. This is not Reddit, with its hostile, hate filled voting system, with its peer pressure laden culture. This is not Facebook, literally designed to drive hate, and anger, and upset, to increase engagement. This is Hackernews. It's not perfect, but it's far more palatable…

Well, there is hate and then there is criticism, and lots of people confuse the two, to the point where they just label any critics as "haters". Hate is worth totally disregarding, but criticism, as long as it's genuine and done in good faith, it's probably valuable.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#262

Post by tavavex »

al_be_back wrote: post #249

I think it's wise to take the concerns of the creative community seriously - after all their "labor of love" [1] matters immensely, without it LLMs are useless. matters not how much the coder "loved" the project, or did yoga, or that they've not made money for years, after all most book authors aren't exactly raking in the money either. also like many thinks in life, some tools/projects/startups etc just stop being n…

The thing with this project is that it had no conceivable way of threatening the original authors, financially or otherwise. The analyses it produced weren't replacements of the original works, and served as a writing tool, not as something that generated new content.

In this case, the shutdown seemed to hinge entirely on the irrational fear of anything with "AI" written on it and an unshakeable conviction that this clearly transformative use case wasn't fair use.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#263

Post by b112 »

slg wrote: post #258
b112 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not twitter, with its tiny little snippets of text, which are useless for meaningful communication, and its culture which incites groupthink. This is not Reddit, with its hostile, hate filled voting system, with its peer pressure laden culture. This is not Facebook, literally designed to drive hate, and anger, and upset, to increase engagement. This is Hackernews. It's not perfect, but it's far more palatable…

Your two comments here could each fit in a Tweet and Reddit has basically the same voting mechanism as HN. There is also plenty of groupthink here too. That was basically the reason behind my comment to see what distinction you are making. People here seem to often deride social media while pretending HN is not social media. HN is effectively just Reddit with only a few subreddits and moderation that is stronger than…

And an ink quill and a ball point pen, both write ink.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#264

Post by b112 »

ryandrake wrote: post #261
b112 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not twitter, with its tiny little snippets of text, which are useless for meaningful communication, and its culture which incites groupthink. This is not Reddit, with its hostile, hate filled voting system, with its peer pressure laden culture. This is not Facebook, literally designed to drive hate, and anger, and upset, to increase engagement. This is Hackernews. It's not perfect, but it's far more palatable…

Well, there is hate and then there is criticism, and lots of people confuse the two, to the point where they just label any critics as "haters". Hate is worth totally disregarding, but criticism, as long as it's genuine and done in good faith, it's probably valuable.

One of the problems is, if you're .. I don't know, say in your neighbourhood. Or maybe at a small local gathering. You do something which deserves criticism, or mild, but polite rebuke.

You hear it a few times.

Online, you may hear 100k of the same, and most of the politeness and empathy is gone. It's all about scale. About reach. And about the more of that there is, the less empathy there is.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#265

Post by gs17 »

sampo wrote: post #200

Summary: prosecraft.io counted word occurrences and presented statistics about them. I don't think you even need fair use for this, because this is something you obviously are allowed to do, without any permissions. This is not generative AI, this is old school statistics. And then it sometimes presented a page worth of quoted text from a book. Which should fall under fair use. https://blog.shaxpir.com/taking-down-pr…

> I don't think you even need fair use for this

You shouldn't, at least for posting basic statistics. They're facts, not copyrightable.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#266

Post by imchillyb »

stusmall wrote: post #240
h11h wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Facebook's Llama was trained on books3, a dump of pirated books.

It's so mind blowing to me that it made it past corporate legal. I don't get what defense there could be besides "lmao try and stop me, nerds"

"...but, but, that's illegal." Jenkins huffed out in an almost whisper.

"Jenkins, take out your wallet, and place it on the table. If you speak, I'll fire you on the spot. Do it." the CEO spat.

Jenkins trembled with rage but reached his right hand deftly into the inner folds of his suit, and produced his billfold. He waved it a bit and set it in front of him.

"Good, now push the package forward, and keep silent." the CEO growled at Jenkins.

Jenkins pushed his wallet out further from himself, and with a last shove pushed the wallet beyond his fingertips. Jenkins wiggled his fingers and sat back, raising his eyebrows at his bosses boss.

"Harold!" CEO Barcliff barked. "Take the package to logistics."

"Right away, sir." Harold nodded, retrieved the package and left the room.

"What the hell Barcliff!" Jenkins exploded.

"I suggest you call the card companies, and the DMV, for replacements." Barcliff stated in a deadpan low growl.

"Screw you Barcliff, call him back. I want my wallet. That's my life in there man!" Jenkins now yell-whined.

"Connely, Mirasu, Fender, Scotts, did any of you see this wallet Jenkins is whining about?" Barcliff almost sneered.

"No sir, I observed Jenkins deliver a package to Harold to be taken to logistics." Scotts spoke out before the others could speak. Nods all around though.

"You see Jenkins, illegal is only what you can prove. You can't prove shit. Just like they can't prove shit. Now get out of here before I fire your ass. Don't forget to say hi to the wife for me." Barcliff purred.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#267

Post by zarzavat »

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…

Authors are not demigods, they don’t have a right to control the use of their works, only the reproduction.

When you publish a book you “consent” to the fact that people are going to take it apart, talk about it, review it, quote from it, and yes run statistics on it. If an author doesn’t want that to happen then they shouldn’t publish a book. Just keep it private, only distribute it to people you trust after they sign an NDA.

As far as anyone knows, no piracy has occurred. In the US you are allowed to scan books, index them, and post excerpts - it’s called Google Books and there was a big case that affirmed that it is legal. Downloading a book from a pirate website for the purpose of indexing by a computer program is not piracy, you have simply outsourced the scanning stage to someone else. It is only an issue if you download from some p2p protocol (such as a torrent) that also uploads and shares the book.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#268

Post by al_be_back »

tavavex wrote: post #262
al_be_back wrote: post #249

I think it's wise to take the concerns of the creative community seriously - after all their "labor of love" [1] matters immensely, without it LLMs are useless. matters not how much the coder "loved" the project, or did yoga, or that they've not made money for years, after all most book authors aren't exactly raking in the money either. also like many thinks in life, some tools/projects/startups etc just stop being n…

The thing with this project is that it had no conceivable way of threatening the original authors, financially or otherwise. The analyses it produced weren't replacements of the original works, and served as a writing tool, not as something that generated new content. In this case, the shutdown seemed to hinge entirely on the irrational fear of anything with "AI" written on it and an unshakeable conviction that this…

>> had no conceivable way of threatening the original authors, financially or otherwise

how so? what's inconceivable about it?

>> seemed to hinge entirely on the irrational fear

how are the authors "fearing without reason" or "illogically fearing" ?

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#269

Post by hughesjj »

b112 wrote: post #166
randallsquared wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he says he didn't do something, the pitchfork mob will simply tell each other that he is lying. They will do this in the most confused and twisted way possible, driven by lack of understanding of what was happening combined with a need to drive outrage and thereby advertise their work. If he says he didn't intend to do that thing, this is still compatible with a later update that he didn't do that thing, but immed…

The best response, for us all collectively, is to always ignore everyone's opinion online. There is zero value in anything on reddit, twitter, facebook, the media these days. Just ignore it. All of it. Outrage or not. I see downvotes, but I mean it. You know who you listen to? Your friends. Your neighbours. Your local community. You listen to PEOPLE, not sockpuppets. You listen to legitimate human beings, not AI gene…

> Your neighbours. Your local community. You listen to PEOPLE, not sockpuppets. You listen to legitimate human beings, not AI generated blather, or curated news stories, or groups working together to generate hate, outrage, to stoke anger, upset.

You either have a significantly better social circle than I do or are glossing over a bunch of nuance.

Some of my family back east have been getting their brains rotted by fox news and the likes for literal decades now.

Some of those family members were also shaped by insular groups (their 'community') with fucked up thinking

As for the friends who I choose to associate with today, I indeed like and prefer their opinions (probably why we've self selected to be friends), but I assure you they have nonzero exposure to online communication.

I agree Twitter is shit and always has been due to the lack of context, but I often prefer reddit to real life conversations because I can actually take my time to think about my thoughts and even dig up sources. It also exposes me to more diverse viewpoints than I'd get solely in my physical circle of friends.

Now, I don't really use reddit after the most recent shenanigans, but here I am back on hackernews like I was slashdot before reddit. I don't think I'd ever want to abstain completely from online communications or forums.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#270

Post by riotnrrd »

TrackerFF wrote: post #211
nness wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside, this would be completely legal in Japan, as classification and statistical analysis are protected as fair-use. I wonder if similar language exists in other copyright systems, but I would imagine it is likely the opposite...

Are generative models also covered by that clause? Because one thing about the generative models is that you could in theory get the model to recite copyrighted work, word by word.

> one thing about the generative models is that you could in theory get the model to recite copyrighted work, word by word.

Only if it's so badly trained as to be considered broken. It's not fair or smart to judge an entire method (LLMs) by some broken examples. I wouldn't claim "all cars leak oil" just because I saw a broke-down beater one day.

Post reply on HN