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

51–60 of 309 posts

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

#51

Post by neonsunset »

dandellion wrote: post #40
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.

Just look at what happened to nuclear energy :)

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

#52

Post by Ukv »

mschuster91 wrote: post #34
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 lik…

> torrents didn't kill the movie industry because people still want to see movies on a big screen experience

Given you believe the reason torrents didn't kill the movie industry is because people weren't satisfied with smaller screens: would you be satisfied with content that is stuck in "2020-2030 forever" and can never produce anything "entirely new"?

Personally I think novelty in art thrives when the entry barrier is low and experimentation is possible without a huge budget - which AI can help achieve.

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

#53

Post by thot_experiment »

__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.

Please explain to me how baking all the art into a big tensor and then giving it away to everyone for free to run on any half decent GPU from the past 10 years is somehow anti-commons.

Rent-seeking by controlling AI models is anti-commons, the models themselves are not, neither is training them. Don't delude yourself into thinking that Miyazaki didn't study Moebius didn't study Mucha. Even if you got your way and all training on copyrighted material was stopped today and all existing models were deleted it would only be a matter of time before we could synthesize arbitrary styles (at least as well as we can today) by identifying and controlling the correct axes in tensor space using a model purely informed by public domain data.

Your art is mostly not yours, your art is mostly an amalgamation of other people's art which itself is also the same, all the way down. You are a sprinkling of flavor on top. Your art is stolen styles, techniques and vibes mashed together. And here you are, trapped arguing about where we draw the line on what's okay. 75 years? now 95? Look at what you're saying! Introspect and realize that your understanding of the context is defined by Disney and Bono wanting to collect rent on ideas. You're just focused on getting your crumbs of the pie in a game that's rigged to centralize power and keep it centralized.

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

#54

Post by jerf »

AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #23
jerf wrote: post #15

No, it will result in a strengthening. It raises the value of things previous unprotectable, and thus will raise the incentive to get them protected. The Wild West of the AI world today will rapidly get captured because by the time you've amassed the resources to put up a credible AI, you're already a fairly large corporation. The scale of time necessary to get new protections passed is roughly comparable to the scal…

This is a really interesting take, but I don't completely buy it. Traditionally technologies like these become more accessible with time. Take the youtube example, this is actually a really good counterpoint as if you can create videos with an AI you created, nobody has any way of figuring out that you trained it on so-and-so's IP. It's completely black box which is the direction things are probably going to go IMO.…

One of the big factors is whether or not AI can stay in the hands of the public or if it recedes into levels of hardware that only companies can own. If the latter, then the control will win.

Keeping AI performance workable on personal-level hardware is going to be a big deal. Open source work on keeping performance at that level may be long-term more important that this or that feature.

Watch out for calls for AI ethics to turn into calls for controls on hardware capable of running AI. I'm half surprised we aren't already hearing calls for that. I wouldn't be surprised to see it by the end of the year, though my expectation would be at least next year if not the one after. The real goal behind hardware control will be this sort of thing (though copyright control may actually be a secondary concern versus just keeping the really good tools out of the hands of the plebs), not AI ethics. (The elites know AI ethics limitations have no meanings as they have no intention of limiting themselves.)

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

#55

Post by thot_experiment »

foobiekr wrote: post #36
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.

That's bad, but the problem there isn't the AI.

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

#56

Post by vdaea »

foobiekr wrote: post #36
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.

As a software person that feels great.

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

#57

Post by pjmorris »

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.

"Everything is free now

That's what they say

Everything I ever done

Gonna give it away

Someone hit the big score

They figured it out

That we're gonna do it anyway

Even if it doesn't pay"

- 'Everything is Free', Gillian Welch, 2001

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

#58

Post by robertlagrant »

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.

Is that from the perspective of a reader of novels or a writer of novels? Readers love free stuff.

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

#59

Post by tilwidnk »

mlsu wrote: post #43

Copyright is not a real thing. It's a fiction. Subverting copyright law is not like subverting the laws of physics. What happens when you subvert copyright law is some guys with guns, in either an overt way or a subtle one, force a trade of your imaginary resource (copyright) for the real resource (money), through licensing or fines. Debate about what AI means for copyright is really a debate about what we choose to…

> Copyright is not a real thing. It's a fiction.

Now, I don't have a college degree, but with my 60+ years life experience I can say, yes, copyright is a real thing, it protects people who create, from assholes and AI.

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

#60

Post by jncfhnb »

tilwidnk wrote: post #59
mlsu wrote: post #43

Copyright is not a real thing. It's a fiction. Subverting copyright law is not like subverting the laws of physics. What happens when you subvert copyright law is some guys with guns, in either an overt way or a subtle one, force a trade of your imaginary resource (copyright) for the real resource (money), through licensing or fines. Debate about what AI means for copyright is really a debate about what we choose to…

> Copyright is not a real thing. It's a fiction. Now, I don't have a college degree, but with my 60+ years life experience I can say, yes, copyright is a real thing, it protects people who create, from assholes and AI.

It doesn’t though
Post reply on HN