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Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

arstechnica.com

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Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#171

Post by Ukv »

DeIlliad wrote: post #167
Ukv wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity It's allocating resources towards preventing distribution. Maybe you'd agree that it's "direct" artificial scarcity, but believe without that necessary artificial scarcity we'd soon become worse off overall? > I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work. Sure - but you see that is not inherently the same thing as the specific me…

Sure, I'd agree selling access is not the only method but given that there is a story on the front page of HN about once a week about why open-source maintainers should be paid and how the current model isn't sustainable, in my opinion shows, that relying on donations or public funding is a fool's errand and not a viable alternative.

> given that there is a story on the front page of HN about once a week about why open-source maintainers should be paid and how the current model isn't sustainable

Opinion articles on HN notwithstanding, do you not think that free and open-source software has, as a whole, been fairly successful?

Moreover, IP law doesn't just apply to art or code - evergreening of medical patents is enforcing artificial scarcity on information that could save lives. Textbooks that could teach millions being restricted to the few thousand that pay is also going to have a huge hidden impact.

I don't know if there are viable alternatives for all scenarios, but given how much is on the table if artificial scarcity can be replaced - I think it'd be wrong not to actively try, encouraging any potential alternatives, rather than just being resigned to the idea that this much waste is necessary. At the very least we should oppose the attempts to enforce artificial scarcity in areas that currently managed to do without it.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#172

Post by numpad0 »

Quoting another user from an adjacent topic[0]; I for myself believe in 1., it seems generative AI tools is slowly becoming popular as lesser substitute to human arts, wherever there has to be data but any noise will do. No one listened to low-effort Text-to-Speech content pre-AI, some did for high-effort TTS content, and in neither case it was because the quality of synthesis was bad or good.

> I think Max Tegmark said there's 3 main camps of people talking about AI:

> 1. The people who think AI won't really work (at least in some fundamental way - it might make some stochastic melody but it won't have any creative spark to it).

> 2. The people who think AI will be able to do everything better than humans (in every possible way, at least as far as a mere human can tell) and that this will be great.

> 3. The people who think AI will be able to do everything better than humans (in every possible way, at least as far as a mere human can tell) and that this will be terrible.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38289548

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#173

Post by Clamchop »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #156
bravura wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are millions of years of evolution conditioning humans to trust things that are familiar. It's naive to think we'll adapt effectively and quickly to extreme manipulation.

Adapting effectively and quickly is kind of our thing, also backed by millions of years of evolution.

You're being a little flip but adapting to one thing usually comes with compromising something else. Hanks is just an example of trusting a leader or authority. Whether you think he's a good fit for that is immaterial, everyone will be compromised.

Asking for critical thinking is all well and good but just the _knowledge_ that it's easy to generate gobs of high-fidelity forgeries, all corroborating each other as falsified evidence, could have chilling consequences by eroding faith in institutions and promoting misinformation and conspiracy theorizing.

You can adapt and still end up worse off than you were before there was anything to adapt to.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#174

Post by JaDogg »

nurple wrote: post #72

Even though it is going to be extremely painful, one thing that excites me most about AI is the distinct possibility that it obliterates the concept of artificial scarcity that so much of the world relies on to create money these days. IMO, AI is exposing the frail and unnatural aspect of this legally-protected rent seeking. No, I don't think the legal system will be able to keep up, and I also don't think the infoli…

Absolutely right. Copyright can be seen as a kind of nano-monopoly and is not truly capitalist. The rise in prices due to stagnation does not foster innovation. While capitalism has its merits, it does bring hardship to those less fortunate. It is essential to eradicate all forms of scarcity, thereby eliminating the necessity for an economy and finance, and subsequently, the need for politics.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#175

Post by riversflow »

DeIlliad wrote: post #162
Ukv wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nurple said: "their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value" In my example "their creation" is a textbook, and "legal walls" would be copyright/DMCA. There is also Getty/Universal Music/etc. attempting to enforce artificial scarcity in an area where real scarcity existed (in addition to plenty of artificial scarcity) but is…

I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity. I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work.

> I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity.

Any concept of ownership beyond "what is possessed and am in physically controlled" is artificial. The law of nature is that might makes right.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#176

Post by pixl97 »

DeIlliad wrote: post #162
Ukv wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nurple said: "their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value" In my example "their creation" is a textbook, and "legal walls" would be copyright/DMCA. There is also Getty/Universal Music/etc. attempting to enforce artificial scarcity in an area where real scarcity existed (in addition to plenty of artificial scarcity) but is…

I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity. I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work.

>copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity.

Lets say I have a plant and I grow that plant with a bunch of other plants and make special seeds. This isn't a common skill set. Now lets say I sell you those seeds and you grow plants with them.

Now, which seems more natural.

You take the seeds of those plants and grow more seeds for yourself.

or

I prevent you with laws on taking those seeds and growing more plants.

When you put something out into the world, it is completely natural for people to take those objects and do what they want with them. It's only with more modern humanity that we reserve rights for the person selling after the sale.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#177

Post by Tallain »

nurple wrote: post #166
Tallain wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sure, their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value. If it was not protected by such a wall, and was not scarce, it would have no monetary value. That's... not artificial scarcity. By definition (and using your own words) it is actual scarcity. A person's performance -- which is more than just their voice reading lines -- i…

Allow me to share my own recent predicament, on which I'm still deeply cogitating, and from where a lot of my own frustration flows. I am a content creator, I write software and build compute systems to run it upon. I was RIF'd last week and, if I'm really conservative, I have a year of expenses in savings. I very much believe in OSS exactly because it allows me, not to tap into a monetary stream, but to overall bett…

> So many, yourself included, have this perverted view of the world where there's no way it could exsist without our current monetary system

I don't appreciate this assumption; lumping me into a group of characters based on nothing I've said / something you have assumed, based on no evidence, is quite counterproductive to a healthy conversation. If you're going to try to make an argument at least base it on the content of my post and not some inference you've made based on nothing I've provided.

I'm sympathetic to your situation, and do wish you the best in staying on your feet. And I am quite, quite far from a capitalist / capitalist-apologist / what-have-you.

It sounds like you're talking toward using AI tools to effectively "duplicate" yourself, to reduce the scarcity of your own time. I hope I'm interpreting that correctly. I'm 100% on-board with letting the computers do the work so we can all go off and enjoy our lives. It's dismaying that "productivity increase" means "do more in the same amount of time" instead of "do the same in less time and then go live."

This is still a far cry from duplicating the creative work of others (cloning a performer's ability, potentially for profit), and it's still got nothing to do with actual "artificial scarcity." Again, this is real scarcity. There are only so many hours in a day. You only have so much brain power to expend within those hours. These aren't pro-capitalist statements and I'm not insinuating that anything follows from them. I'm only being pedantic here. :)

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#178

Post by leobg »

thrill wrote: post #142

Voices are not copyrighted and do not require "authorization". If my nephew wants to go around sounding like Goofy all the time (as he does) he is free to do so, though it may cost him invitations to dinner - it'd be the same if he was using Attenborough's voice.

Interesting take.

The counter argument is that the basic idea behind copyright is that the expression of personality through the way you formulate ideas is a part of “you“.

That somebody would start talking like you, or looking like you, and enrich himself by essentially cloning you just has historically, never been a problem serious enough to create legislation. Just as there was probably no copyright law before Gutenberg.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#179

Post by DeIlliad »

pixl97 wrote: post #176
DeIlliad wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity. I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work.

>copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity. Lets say I have a plant and I grow that plant with a bunch of other plants and make special seeds. This isn't a common skill set. Now lets say I sell you those seeds and you grow plants with them. Now, which seems more natural. You take the seeds of those plants and grow more seeds for yourself. or I prevent you with laws on taking those seeds and growing more plan…

Artist aren't plants; Attenborough's voice isn't a seed.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#180

Post by bugglebeetle »

CaptainFever wrote: post #168
bugglebeetle wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now we’re just applying incel logic to every aspect of human creativity and expression? Do you also think that people refusing to make adult content of themselves for you is “legally protected rent seeking”?

This comment is unnecessarily rude and off-topic. Of course there's a difference between human labour and easily-replicable things.

I don’t think it’s all rude or off-topic. It’s just as easy to make deep fake pornography as it is to clone voices, so if someone claims they’re being unjustly prevented from having the one one under this insane logic, why not the other?
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