Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

> totally detached from reality in every aspect.

I don't think it is totally detached from reality. I believe that engineers are generally pretty bad at realizing the impact technology will have on society. There are many concerns with generative AI in general: it can potentially "break the Internet" (by finishing breaking search engines which already struggle with SEO), or maybe democracy, who knows? Copyright is one such problem.

> you think that the harassment was entirely justified. Is that correct?

I honestly don't know how far it went. What I saw in the article is a few authors who wrote online that they wanted their book removed from that software. Not sure if it is closer to harassment or to lobbying.

What I see, however, is many comments of engineers who don't see the problem with copyright and who don't seem to understand why non-engineers may be against this technology, or why one would even think about forbidding a technology ("but technology is neutral"). My point is just that those engineers should maybe take a step back and try to reflect on that "technology is neutral" belief.

Fully agree.

Not an artist myself, but this basic assumption in tech that you can just take somebody's shit without informing them, without permission, without compensation, without basic due diligence, and then go do whatever the hell you want with it needs to stop.

For the artists' sake but also for tech's sake. This model can't work, it's a complete dead-end that will wipe out livelihoods and culture.

But I can ensure you artists can/will be equally hypocritical themselves. Surely they've pirated themselves, removed paywalls from articles, blocked ads, borrowed the neighbor's Netflix account.

I think most people who have thought about it understand the impact AI models seem destined to have on writing (and digital 2d art, soon music, and later other things). In addition to writers and voice artists panicking, see the Hollywood strikes, for instance, and what's currently happening in the corporate world to digital artists.

Copyright is not the correct tool to address it. In the U.S., the basis for copyright law is a clause in the constitution which allows Congress to pass laws to secure for limited time creators' exclusive rights to their creations, for the purpose of "promot[ing] the progress of science and useful arts."

If AI is going to displace nearly all of that content, at least content that's mostly entertainment and less educational (novels, music, images, eventually movies), doesn't that imply that AI is better at generating useful entertainment than humans are? Aren't hypothetical laws restricting training of AI on past works to protect the market for future human-created works a direct violation of the constitution, if AI is better at generating "useful" entertainment (entertainment that people will buy) than humans are?

To whatever extent AI can eventually displace nonfiction content in the sciences and liberal arts, which is more indisputably useful, the same argument will apply; however, it applies to fiction content first, because current AI models have more trouble with facts (trouble in the form of hallucinations, for instance). The threat in non-fiction areas of creativity is more distant than the threat in fictional areas of creativity which are not as bound to reality.

I think it is not completely off topic. Here is how I see it:

Engineers tend to globally think that LLMs are not really a problem for copyright holders. At least those who develop LLMs pretty clearly don't give a damn. And on top of that, it is in their interest to not be constrained by copyrights.

If this is my feeling (that engineers globally don't care about copyright holders), then it seems reasonable to me that non-engineers could feel the same. That sounds fair, doesn't it?

So those people start speaking up when they see a situation where they feel like "it is happening". And because they don't really know the technology, it is hard for them to know if this particular case is a problem or not. And they can't really trust engineers to tell them, because engineers built LLMs in the first place, and really it does not seem like they care about copyright holders.

Finally, engineers see this reaction from authors, and instead of trying to understand where they come from, they dismiss their opinion. Which probably will reinforce the feeling that engineers don't remotely understand the concerns of those people, and keep building their AI-powered laundering machines. Again, engineers working on those technologies in big companies have absolutely no interest in even considering that it is a problem. Because they get a big salary to help their big company get more profitable, even if it kills many jobs and is a net loss for society (because they benefit from that).

The doctrine of first sale would never be allowed today if it hadn't already been enshrined in law over 100 years ago. Stakeholders would insist that creators wouldn't create if people could fund community libraries and thereby shrink the book market. They'd demand the same thing for physical books that they've implemented for almost all ebooks: a pay-per-lend system. The effect would be a substantially higher cost for each loan-out. Congress would go along, just as they went along with a new copyright term of min(120, life+70) years.

In the U.S., in 1909 when the doctrine of first sale was codified, the copyright term was 28 years + 28 years upon renewal, and copyright had to be registered. That would never be accepted by copyright interests today, either.