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

Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 309 posts

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#31

Post by somewhereoutth »

Depending on the outcome of the NYT case, I.P. may in fact be the death of (profitable) AI.

One problem with AI (vs e.g. Google search) is that there is no mechanism for attribution. So it is impossible for rights holders to understand whether their works are being monetised (unlike, say, Spotify).

Should NYT win, then either AI services will have to pay into a (very large) common pot for rights holders, which likely will make AI uneconomic (even if it does turn out to have some business benefit), or (paid) AI services will simply be banned.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#32

Post by thomastjeffery »

I can only hope.

In the mean time, we have and even worse situation: "AI" models like LLMs are effectively allowed to launder IP. As long as companies like OpenAI are allowed to be ignorant of copyright, they get to monopolize that ignorance.

The result is that the rest of us are in an even worse position, because we have to respect DMCA, but can't benefit from it by monopolizing our own IP.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#33

Post by jprete »

adventured wrote: post #28

It inherently has to damage our present conception of IP, unless we plan to cripple the AI revolution in the crib. If you have smart robots in the home, much less AGI, what's the plan on restricting them? Sorry robot, you may only learn this limited set of skills, you're not allowed to create, because you've seen too much and might be too good at learning and producing. They'll be incredibly metered if they're not al…

Why do you think AGI is desirable?

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#34

Post by mschuster91 »

ricardo81 wrote: post #18

It's been dead a while because of big tech. YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter - they have no way of effectively managing IP and so you basically see people's stolen content and they monetise it, so TBF Napster and torrents are another and earlier angle. Purely IMO, big tech normalised the taking of other people's content, and it's getting to the point where content creators (as in, ones that are capable of producing…

> TBF Napster and torrents are another and earlier angle.

Napster didn't kill the music industry, torrents didn't kill the movie industry because people still want to see movies on a big screen experience. And so, actors, directors, VFX artists, cutters, riggers, lighting staff, costume/mask people, they all continue to have jobs.

But now, with AI being already able to do very realistic photos, and in a few years likely to create short movie sequences all based upon a prompt, not only will all these people be replaced by one prompt artist feeding a massive AI engine... but the diversity the AI can generate will always be limited by the diversity of its training material. It is by definition incapable of trying something entirely new, and since there will be no economic incentive to try anything entirely new there will be no expansion. (Oh, and guess what, movie prices aren't going down but since the expenses for all the humans vanish the profit concentration will accelerate!)

Widespread AI will freeze our culture in an era of about 2020-2030 forever simply because capitalism will not offer any incentive to feed the AI with new, creative things.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#35

Post by TuringNYC »

ricardo81 wrote: post #26
ronsor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> big tech normalised the taking of other people's content This was normalized by large media companies long before big tech.

Do you have examples? Obviously it's hard to compare scales though.

Any case where a small player cannot effectively defend patents they hold, but at any time, can be sued for infringement and cannot effectively defend themselves either.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#36

Post by foobiekr »

thot_experiment wrote: post #8

No subscription and archive.is is broken on 1.1 but it seems like the conversation is finally moving in a good direction. I'm very very tentatively hopeful that we might see some reduction of IP rights in my lifetime. It's going to be a long hard fight but maybe, just maybe we will see people wake the fuck up and realize how important the building up the fucking commons is to the progress of all humanity.

Let's see how software people feel when it becomes routine to AI wash projects to de-license them.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#37

Post by TuringNYC »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #31

Depending on the outcome of the NYT case, I.P. may in fact be the death of (profitable) AI. One problem with AI (vs e.g. Google search) is that there is no mechanism for attribution. So it is impossible for rights holders to understand whether their works are being monetised (unlike, say, Spotify). Should NYT win, then either AI services will have to pay into a (very large) common pot for rights holders, which likely…

>> One problem with AI (vs e.g. Google search) is that there is no mechanism for attribution.

Sorry if this is a silly question, but is that really the case? Can we not train an LLM on successively larger training sets, each will uniquely ID's model and associated better performance?

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#38

Post by KoolKat23 »

__loam wrote: post #22
thot_experiment wrote: post #8

No subscription and archive.is is broken on 1.1 but it seems like the conversation is finally moving in a good direction. I'm very very tentatively hopeful that we might see some reduction of IP rights in my lifetime. It's going to be a long hard fight but maybe, just maybe we will see people wake the fuck up and realize how important the building up the fucking commons is to the progress of all humanity.

It's rich to see people talk about the commons like AI models aren't a massive tragedy of the commons.

I assume you're referring to copyright. It could be argued copyright is a tragedy of the commons, the individual benefits at the expense of everyone else. Obviously it is intended that the wider impact of incentivising innovation will be beneficial to everyone, but that is not a sure thing, it is a compromise, a balancing act and that applies to AI too. The Luddites did lose their jobs after all.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#39

Post by foobiekr »

jprete wrote: post #33
adventured wrote: post #28

It inherently has to damage our present conception of IP, unless we plan to cripple the AI revolution in the crib. If you have smart robots in the home, much less AGI, what's the plan on restricting them? Sorry robot, you may only learn this limited set of skills, you're not allowed to create, because you've seen too much and might be too good at learning and producing. They'll be incredibly metered if they're not al…

Why do you think AGI is desirable?

Humans are too stupid to collectively govern themselves. Just look at the US election cycle that is starting. There is a genuine messianistic cult at work.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#40

Post by dandellion »

ricardo81 wrote: post #18

It's been dead a while because of big tech. YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter - they have no way of effectively managing IP and so you basically see people's stolen content and they monetise it, so TBF Napster and torrents are another and earlier angle. Purely IMO, big tech normalised the taking of other people's content, and it's getting to the point where content creators (as in, ones that are capable of producing…

There was no other outcome possible from the moment we invented a technology that allowed everybody to create infinite copies of digital content at almost zero cost.

If tomorrow we discovered a source of infinite free energy, oil and energy companies could try anything they wanted, their current business model would end up obsolete sooner or later.

Post reply on HN